Rocking in Hakata

Well, folks, the day has come at last. I’ll be gone from today until April 7th. Why? I’m traveling to Singapore and Malaysia for spring break! Yay! I will be taking my camera along, obviously, so you can expect some fun trip updates within a week or so of my return. In the meantime, this blog will sort of temporarily stagnate. Sorry! As soon as I’m off work, I’ll go home, grab my pack, and step out the door.

It gives me the opportunity to do a bit of an experiment, though. I will not update the blog or check my email for about a week and a half, so I will see just how much spam gets caught in the nets before my return. I apologize for anything in advance that gets through while I’m gone. I trust you won’t click on anything questionable. Ha ha. I’m curious. The blog attracts varying amounts of spam, but my email account has recently skyrocketed. I’ll report on it when I come back.

When I return, I will have had a Singapore Sling at The Long Bar of Raffles Hotel in Singapore, taken photos of the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, walked through the canopy of the rain forest in Taman Negara (staying in Kuala Tahan), and lazed around on a beach and possibly visited a turtle hatchery on Pulau Gemia (near Pulau Kapas, Terengganu). Looks like this will be a cool trip. Here goes!

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I took a spin around the tiny accessible islet called Michikajima (which means “Island Near the Road”) recently. Partially, this was to test out my ability to shoot video from my scooter again using a travel pack’s cross-strap as a mounting point of sorts. Partially, it is because it looks really weird right now. It is uninhabited, but has a camp ground that is supposedly free for use provided you sign up….somewhere. It’s weird. Anyway, here are some off-season pictures of it, and a video too.

Note - I am currently testing Shadowbox JS as a Lightbox 2 replacement. (Shane recently asked how I make stuff pop up and show in one go, and I started looking up newer scripts out of curiosity.) Let me know what you think. I’ve discovered that while I can embed overlay-type pop-up versions of larger resolution flash videos (see the update I made yesterday to my Sumo Vids post), it really cuts down on the caption flexibility. I have been known, on occasion, to write a really long caption… They apparently aren’t always readable - depending on your screen resolution, etc. Also, I’ve been told that it’s uncool that you must now click the “Previous” and “Next” buttons instead of on the right or left side of the picture being shown. I’m used to it already…ha ha. Also, I have noticed that depending on your browser, you may have a funny partial invisibility of FLV players on the page once you’ve opened a pop-up once. Again, I’m kind of ok with it. Let me know about any other issues and what you think, ok? (I just discovered that it resizes photos to fit on your screen, too…which is cool and all…except that it downsizes them for me…which makes them uglified. Grrr. Oh well. Maybe I can manually set the sizing? Testing continues.)

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This video clip features 2 lower rank sumo matches. The first one is pretty much the standard type of bout - it’s quick and it proceeds to the next match pretty seamlessly. The second one is a really long bout where both wrestlers apparently exhaust themselves. No worries, there are some extra skin folds revealed, but no naughty bits. Screened for your safety. Ha ha. Anyway, this is what the early afternoon looks like.

Here’s a quick montage including part of the entrance ceremony, a match with Yokozuna Asashoryu, part of the closing ceremony, and a slow motion recap. I hope you enjoy the videos! (I’m working on uploading a higher resolution flash video for those who are interested.)

*UPDATE* Here are the same videos, but in their original 640 x 480 resolution! Tell me if you like this, and I might try to continue it. Just click, and they should open up just like the big versions of pictures do when you click on a thumbnail, floating over the rest of the page.

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Here are 17 pictures that I took while watching the sumo tournament in Osaka last weekend. It was awesome. Most of these pictures were taken from basically the back row using my wonderful 18x optical zoom and image stabilizing camera. Yay! We got there pretty early, at about 11:30. We left at about 6:30, I’d say. That’s a lot of sumo. Most of the locals waited until the last 2 and a half hours or so to come to the gym. The morning was full of matches, and they went by pretty fast. When the higher ranked wrestlers started appearing, the process slowed down significantly. With an increase in rank, you add more steps to the ritual - salt throw, drink sip, additional practice squats, etc. - and you add more commercialism too in the form of advertising banners that are walked around the ring before a match. So, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to say that I enjoyed the earlier part for its brevity (and great wrestling), and I enjoyed the latter part for its showmanship. Tomorrow I’ll post videos of a bout by Yokozuna Asashoryu, and a bout by two lower ranked wrestlers (maegashira). Good times!

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Had a great time at Sumo, and highly recommend it for all. I’ll save that commentary for a more relevant post. For now, I thought I’d share a funny goof-up on a sign spotted in an elevator that made me instantly lose my appetite…and laugh. Ha ha. Can you spot the flubbed line? (Hint: one copy of the poster had the word “taste” where the error in this one is.)

Credit for finding the screwup and the original: Kathy.

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