日本語
I travelled around the Northern Japan with a close friend of mine for a week. I just got a new car, so I drove all the way up to Aomori and took a car ferry there, and then, landed in Hakodate. It was a lot of fun.
Nikon D800E + SIGMA 24-105mm f/4 DG OS HSM
After landed in Hokkaido, we visited the Lake Toya area and went to Muroran to join the Google+ 4 year anniversary photowalk. But it was heavily raining. I didn’t want to get soaked to take mediocre shots so we quickly left there and headed to Biei.
It is fun to do a photowalk with a mirrorless DSLR with an old manual lens attached. Don’t you agree?
Sony Alpha 7 + Canon New FD 50mm f/1.4
Recently, sales of art photographs grew up to be one of my main income sources. I usually try to take great landscape shots which I can sell at galleries. But I began photography because I enjoyed taking photographs. I just need to take photographs without any commercial aim at times to remember why I do it. Yes, I do it because I like it. So I did a little photowalk in Kawagoe after seeing pallas’s cats at a zoo in the area.
日本語
I have trouble translating this article. If I could, I wanted to translate the title of the article as “What are the Genfukeis of Japan?” A genfukei seems to be a concept only exists in Japan. Or at least, It doesn’t exist as an English word. I couldn’t find any words that directly correspond to the word.
Genfukeis (原風景) are landscapes that remain in one’s memory most vividly when he/she gets old. It depends on each individual. But when we use the phrase “a genfukei of Japan (Nippon no Genfukei),” it indicates landscapes that invoke the emotions of nostalgia for the majority of the Japanese.
After I posted a blog entry about Mt. Fuji and cosmos flowers, I received an unexpected reaction from a Slovakian guy. He argued that cosmos bipinnatus originated in Mexico and introduced to Japan in the Meiji era. They explosively proliferated in Japan, and now represent the autumn season. He said the photos are beautiful but it isn’t good in terms of environmental protection. Honestly speaking, I didn’t know that cosmos flowers were introduced to Japan in the 19th century. Kanji characters given to cosmos flowers is 秋桜. 秋 indicated autumn and 桜 indicates cherry blossoms. I vaguely thought that it didn’t originate in Japan but it was probably imported to Japan much before than that.
Nikon D800E w/ SIGMA 24-105mm f/4 DG OS HSM
Fuji with terraced rice fields and spider lilies, this is what we should call the Genfukei of Japan! It is, however, said that spider lilies are originally from the Yangzi river area of China and they came to Japan when rice agriculture was introduced to Japan.
Nikon D800E + SIGMA 24-105mm f/4 DG OS HSM
