Changing Impressions

In one of the first posts I made in this blog, I talked about my "neighborhood" in Japan, my early impressions of Japan in general. When I look back at the photographs I took at that time, they're filled with scenery and relatively mundane vistas: my room, my street, my route to the station, muddy puddles outside pachinko parlors, shopping streets, train tracks, bicycles that don't belong to me, the unexpected lovely view from the bathroom window of a campus building's upper floor. And of course, the exciting new world of a Starbucks in Japan:

There's an excitement visible in the rampant photo-taking. And why? Somehow I felt these things needed to be documented. It's not so much that there's anyone in particular to show the images to, and perhaps some of the quantity can be chalked up to the photo-taking fervor that tends to overtake most people, I would imagine, should they spend any amount of time around groups of Japanese teenagers spending time with one another. Though many of the places and things I photographed were those to which I would often return, and many on a daily basis, there is something to be said for capturing them as they were in that particular moment in time, and being able to go home and look at the image and remember.

T-shirt in a store in Shinsaibashi, Osaka

It has been approximately three months now since I arrived in Japan, and as I have looked over my photos and considered what to write here, I've noticed a dramatic increase in the number of "mundane" photos. Most of them have been replaced by pictures of people: mostly endless shots of friends in increasingly ridiculous poses. It's not difficult to imagine why this might have happened: the novelty--perhaps one might even go so far as to say "otherness"--of the tiny things like bicycle racks and train stations has worn off (when one no longer registers shirts like the one to the left as "off" is an indication that this condition has likely gone on to the advanced stage). That they no longer seemed quite as impulsively fascinating and "documentable" struck me as awfully sad. There's a slight embarrassment in encouraging a photo-taking temptation and suddenly, awkwardly stopping in the road to bend down and photograph a stand selling fried potatoes, then straightening back up and walking away as if no one is staring after the peculiar foreigner with apprehension and perplexity. Despite that, however, I decided to endeavor to take such pictures again. To take more pictures. To be sure, not all of them have been especially good photographs, but it is better, I feel, to have taken them at all, than to only bring out the camera for a perfect shot of a temple view which all day echoes the sound of snapping shutters.
Quite by accident, some pictures framed the same scene that had apparently caught my attention in earlier months.

September,  2011

December, 2011

This is a scene to which I've grown accustomed, but as the images show, it certainly hasn't stayed the same. The riverbed has fallen, and with the onset of winter the clouds have set in, the greenery has faded, and blossoms spread on the branches of one tree. For the cat, I cannot account. It leaped across the stream and fled from my paparazzi approach.
Similarly: outside of Korien Station:

September, 2011

December 2011

Naturally, the December photo is a night-shot, and therefore difficult to make out, and furthermore contains very little plant life to signify seasonal change, though the puddles on the street were not an installation in the warmer month of September. Nor were the winter jackets and seasonal drinks sold along this street. The people, too, have changed, ever so slightly, and maybe become just a bit more familiar.

Getting used to a slightly different way of life and becoming comfortable with things that may have struck one as peculiar or different is a good thing, I think it is safe to say. But even--especially--in one's home, or a place to which one has acclimatized, whether simply artistically or otherwise, I feel it's important not to stop documenting whatever small thing may catch one's interest. When you look back on that picture later, it may carry more weight, and say more about that place, and that time that you imagined when the shutter clicked.