The Color Season

The Golden Season

Professional hockey in Japan has had its share of ups and downs over the years. All of the turbulence is due to the fact that hockey is just not a dominant player in Japanese sport. In a country dominate by baseball, sumo and soccer, sports such and volleyball and even handball routine drown ice hockey in the headlines. There is nothing wrong with that. To each their own I say. But there is a core group of fans and players and for the moment, they have the Asia League to turn to.

The AL is league made up of teams from China, Korea and Japan. they play a regular season followed by a brief playoff tournament. A northern team based out of Hachinohe joined the league last year. They are called the Tohoku Free blades, and they represent my area. I got the chance to see a game when they came to Morioka earlier this year. They played ‘Halla Korea’ the eventual season champions. They lost the game, but it was a fairly exciting game . I would compare it to tier 2 Junior hockey back in Canada, though it did have its Major junior moments. There was even a nice fight that broke out.

Given the instability of the league at moment, I am not going to hold my breathe on how long it was last, but I given some updates to the progress of the Free Blades and their 2010 season when the new becomes readily available. For now I am going to try and purchase a ‘season’ ticket and make sure I can see them when they are playing in their home rink and in Morioka.

Mt.Iwate as seen from Hachimantai City

Now Mt. Iwate is famous for a number of reasons. It looks just like Mt.Fuji from some angles. It’s a great mountain for climbing, and its snow cap paints a picturesque view in the winter. Recently, I have discovered that Mt.Iwate, like other cone shaped volcanoes such as Fuji and Mt. Rainer act as amazing lenticular cloud making machines.

Lenticular Clouds near Mt.Iwate

Lenticular clouds are saucer shaped clouds that are often seen stacked like pancakes near large mountains. On certain days winds rolling off the mountains create a standing wave. If stable and moist the air is around the mountain and falling downwind when the dew point is reached, the disks condense into clouds will stack up on each other. Every year, many people call the police to report these odd clouds. They looks either like a flying saucer or a cover for one. they are perfectly normal clouds. But you tend to find them around mountains.

Mt.Iwate has been a perfect source of lenticular clouds this year, and I’ve had my camera going most of this summer trying to document them. The following is what I have recorded so far. Sometimes, the lenticular clouds bend and warp out of shape and form incredible bulges in the sky. Once or twice a year, they provide for a spectacular sunset. Please enjoy these photos and look out for them the next time you are hanging around some mountains.

And you can see the version they used in the article here:

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/06/19/wikileaks-a-somewhat.html

I wonder if I should be shooting more of these little models and figures in B&W settings.

I call it Hachimantai.

Even the poor flowers got buried. I was worried they wouldn’t make it under the heavy snow, but most of them seemed to have pulled through.

Yesterday, it seemed that spring was finally making an appearance. The grass started to glow green and warm winds blew over Mt.Iwate. That is usually a good sign that spring is on the way.

To put this all in perspective: This is the first time since I came to Japan that I’ve seen snow this late in April. In fact, if you browse my flickr archives, you’ll see with the cherry blossom photos of previous years that spring is usually quite a bit more punctual. I even spoke to a local farmer about it and he says he has never seen anything like it before. Is this a sign of rampant climate change, or just a random act of nature. I have a sad feeling it’s the former.

It appear as if a large ribbon had formed over the sky.

This amazing lenticular cloud appeared out of nowhere.

More of the lenticular cloud with Mr.Iwate.

The lenticular cloud and the ribbon wave seen together.

Mt.Iwate seen with the ribbon wave and a bridge.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/12/haiti-earthquake-relief-h_n_421014.html

1. Japanese Red Cross

If you want to send money to the Red Cross in Japan, please visit this page to get the bank transfer info you will need to send money:

http://www.jrc.or.jp/foreignrescue/l3/Vcms3_00001448.html
If you need assistance with instructions in how to do the transfer please leave a comment and I will give you a quick overview of how to do a Japanese bank trasfer.

2. Doctors without borders Japan branch:

https://www.msf.or.jp/donate_bin/onetime.php

This one time donation allows you to donate with a japanese credit card.

First, I need to be fair to Japan. As a person who used to live in Edmonton, Alberta, where the 55 degree latitude gave me amazingly long 17 hour days in the summer, there is going to be a stark difference between Japan and Canada . Earth’s tilt dictacts that countries in more extreme latitudes will experience long summer days and short winter days. Japan is situated  closer to the equator than Canada and therefore, the days in the summer and winter are not so extreme. Of course, we pay for those long days in Edmonton with long, cold winter nights.  However,  let’s leave that aside for the moment and explore why Japan seems to have a shockingly short day, even in the summer.

One thing I quickly noticed upon my arrive to Japan some seven years ago was that in the summer, you don’t really need an alarm clock if you are getting up at 6:30am. The sun is up at around 4:45 and by the time you need to get up for work, the light is pouring in.  That is crazy early for sunrise. And since Japan doesn’t have any daylight savings scheme, the sun never comes up any later that 7am in the winter. This means plenty of early morning light all year long.  This was probably set up early on so that farmers could enjoy as much early sunlight as possible.

Of course, on the other end of this, the sun goes down quite early. In the winter, the earliest sunset occurs between 4:10 and 4:40 depending on what part of the country you are in, and this in itself is not too shocking, but in the summer, the sunsets between 7:10 and 7:40.  Sure, it is about 15 hours of daylight, but it doesn’t feel like it to me. I don’t wake up at 3:50am, so I can’t really enjoy that early summer sun.   This meant I got a case of  summer SAD(Seasonal Affective Disorder) during my first summer here .  Crazy, huh?  Having grown up in a northern country I took those late summer sunsets for granted.

You’ll probably notice however, that I am still in Japan. There were many other factors that kept me here, and I wasn’t driven off by the short summer days. But while, I’ve adjust to a certain point, I still long for those long Canadian summers.  I often wonder if Japan is in the wrong time zone, but then it doesn’t really affect people here. In fact, when I brought it, a salaryman told me he’d prefer it if things stayed exactly as they were. If there was more sunlight,   his company would have him work more overtime. Point taken.

Do summer sunsets here seem early to you as well? Or normal? Let me know in the comments.