Good news! It’s Friday!

Actually pretty  busy tomorrow

later

Damon

One of the interesting encounters I had at the anti-nuke demo on Sunday was with the teen idol group, Seifuku Kojo Iinkai, who were invited to speak and lead the protest march.

They had all that your self respecting teen-idol group should have: They had their strange, fan-boy dancer out front; they had school uniforms on and they had their smiley but very protective management. What was different however is that their songs also had a message, a massage about the the folly of nuclear energy which apparently got them banned from Fuji Rock festival in 2011.

Stronger messages in popular music or the “talento” media mass-production machine are not something that is common in Japan. To attack the companies or products that advertise on the TV or in the magazines; or to go “off-message” at in anyway can find you lost in the celebrity wilderness. Ask the actor, Taro Yamamoto, who angrily tweeted his feelings against nuclear energy after the problems at Fukushima Daichi and has since found it difficult to find work. It was perhaps a growing experience for him though that allowed his interests to broaden into politics and activism. He even stood for the governor of Tokyo.

How much the teenage girls that sing in this group know or believe in the message they speak is debatable. It could be a cynical attempt to exploit a vert particular niche. Yet if it is is seems curiously short-sighted and they cannot get reported on in the usual media. They do have a bit of a history with their pop song containing a message also.

Of course no-one in the media in the west knows or even really cares who they are so these images are not exactly profitable. Still it was interesting meeting and learning a bit about them on the day.

Later. got to rush off now to another job

Damon

There was a biggish anti-nuclear protest in Tokyo on Sunday. The government of Shinzo Abe has stated its determination to restart and exapand on the nuclear generation of electricity and around 7,ooo people took to the streets to protest this. Though the Japan Times quoted organisers saying 60,000 people attended this seems way too many. Even the police estimate of 20,000 to 30,000 still seems high compared to my own rough calculation at the site. The police are not known for talking-up the numbers of protesters though; indeed usually they do the opposite so I wonder what the real number was.

Some might say that it is foolish to hope the country will be nuclear free in the future,;Japan has no choice but to use nuclear energy when it consumes electricity at the level it does with no significant natural resources of its own to support it.

True these protests are not of the same scale they were at their height in 2012. But a lot of people still do care that government and industry collusion and corruption created the problems that Fukushima Prefecture and Japan has been dealing with since the earthquake and tsunami of March 11th 2011.

One man, who many people credit for having saved the country shortly after those events took place is Naoto Kan. When the situation at the damaged Daichi plant was at its worst and TEPCO were apparently preparing to abandon it, he is supposed to have  forced them to go in and manage the shut down. Rumour has it that he did this quite forcefully. So forcefully in fact that it appears as soon as was possible the powers in the political system and the vested interests in the power industry got rid of him pretty quickly afterwards.

So even he wasn’t exactly among friends when he turned up later in the day at the protest to speak, he could find some sympathy and gratitude in the crowd of protesters that surrounded the National Diet building.

Still as a politician, despite having nailed his green credentials to the mast most of his political career, it was a brave thing to do. His security was quite light and he was right there in the middle of an angry, motivated crowd that have a visceral distrust, even dislike, of most politicians.

I think history will be kind to Naoto Kan though.

A good day shooting.

More images of Naoto Kan speaking at the anti-nuclear demo at my archive here.

One more gallery to add to my collection of Japanese Prime Ministers past and present.

Talk later

Damon

I am not crying, there is actually nothing in my eye, but I do feel nostalgic. We often appear to cry when we have dust or grit in our eyes. Perhaps I am a little melancholic due to some grit, Gritstone to be exact, from the Derbyshire Peak District.

At this time of year I always miss that particular rock most. May is the perfect climbing season for those wobbly edges of beautiful rounded stones: the days are hot (mostly) but not too hot, the moor smells fresh and the rocks are dry and frictiony after winter.

A strong feeling of adult loss for that younger, freer, fitter me had me looking around the web earlier today for names from my past. I should have been working obviously but enjoyed the short surf through the great and good of my twenties. Coming across images of outrageous climbs in the the Peak and names like Ben Moon, Jerry Moffat and Johnny Dawes.

Now I am a photographer and my heroes live on this unreal space where I write these words. Their personalities and wares inhabit webpages that are meant to be easily accessible. Accessibility is our business after all and we push it out to find new people that will learn to like us and what we do and in turn give us jobs in interesting places and money to spend in less interesting places.

How different to the climbers of my earlier life. Inaccessibility was where they made their mark and reputations. Most have webpages now of course: their business is also to bring the idea of adventure to the consumer. Their reputations have to pay for the scraped-together maturity building itself from the vagabond life they used to lead perhaps. We used to lead.

I never quite made it a career that could support me. I was not quite good enough or brave enough. I did live the life though: ten years of travelling irresponsibility that has me struggling for respectability now. An ambition to be tanned and free is one no employers unsurprisingly finds worthy, (believe me a photographer is not much higher up the food chain either). Climbing for the sheer visceral pleasure of it is still possible with friends in high places though and not just an altitude freak show as some Everest climbs seem to be these days. The people I admired when I started climbing were full-on lovers of experiences that you had to earn and maybe would never get. You couldn’t be real if you didn’t feel the history of the activity you undertook or gloated too much over reaching some goal. Everyone posted their colours to their future greatness but stood them in a veneration of the past and and the best were confident but humble. I loved them for it.

It was perhaps the desire to connect with that past that made me send an email to one Johnny Dawes. Without a doubt one of the boldest and best climbers of his generation, he was the person we all aspired to be. I had nothing to say to him really; we are and were not friends. I have perhaps spoken less then twenty words to the man in my entire life when I ran into him at the crag occasionally. One of those encounters I remember well is at my beloved Burbage Crag, when I was trying to solo some E2 climb I liked but kept bottling the top smear and clmbing down to rest. Johnny Dawes was bimbling around the boulders and edges nearby and asked politely if he could climb past me.

“Of course.” I said and by way of explanation on my lack of upward progress said something like, “I can’t seem to get the top moves anyway.”

“Yeah, it’s a bit bold, I’ll probably fuck it up myself.” said Johnny.

“Who are you kidding!” I snorted. “You’re Johnny Dawes.”

He smiled and climbed through on a move that was way below bold for him. And that was the last I ever saw of him in real life. I moved to Japan a few months later and have barely climbed since.

It is a mark of the man that the supreme self confidence needed to climb the routes he does and did is not exhibited through a crushing ego. He didn’t rub my face in his ability that day and he was incredibly nice when he replied to me just now. Despite both my interactions with him this last ten years having something of the stalker about them. He thanked me for my mail said it made him feel good as he was feeling a sick today and it was nice to hear someone say something about days that were in his own words “a great time on the rock”.

I have written before about heroes of that time. About Alan Rouse who informed my every ambition on the life I pursued then. How it was the  book: Alan Rouse: A Mountaineer’s Life, written as an act of love by his friends after his death on K2, that made me turn up in the Byron Pub in Nether Edge knowing no more than that one name and the craziness I wanted to join. The middle-aged climbers that humoured me must have seen some passion in wanting to follow in his footstep. I was naive and immature but they took me under their wing and helped me by taking me out cragging on grit for the first time ever the next day. That day changed my life permanently for the better.

Some people say it is never good to meet your heroes as they invariably disappoint. I am lucky, I think, in my twin passions of climbing and photography as I have not only been able to use the opportunities both give me to visit some amazing places and gain an understanding of them that is perhaps deeper than most passing through. I have also met some amazing people. Heroes and new new people alike, those without fame or notoriety but all have ambition and talent. The heroes have almost never let me down; being as generous and genuine in the flesh as you expected them to be. And the friendships I have made through sharing these interests, encouraging and educating each other are still the deepest and most meaningful of my life.

Great days indeed.

Pic at the top of this post is Over Owler Tor with my good friend Ivan Waldren scrambling around on an icy dawn, while someone was breaking into our car.

The second is Ivan again bouldering at Curbar Edge moments after we got to climb with the legendary Ron Fawcett.

The third is a climber I met, and whose name I forget now, cranking-out on the boulder problem, Brad Pitt at Stanage Edge. I do not know if the Hollywood actor Mr Pitt is aware that he has a boulder problem named after him and if he would approve. I fail to see how he could really take offence though, but then again I have not had my name attached to a grotty dark hole between some dripping rocks on a un-noteworthy low hill in a poverty-striken part of a small, insular island off the coast of Europe

It is all those things and I still miss it!

Later

Damon

Tokyo Skytree, the tallest building in Japan and the tallest free standing tower in the world (at the moment) is one year old today.

Still haven’t been up the thing. Must get onto that the next fine day we have.

More stock images of the Tokyo Skytree at my archive here:

Later

Damon

Toru Hashimoto may now have even surpassed the many and varied faux pas of Shintaro Ishihara but unfortunately I don’t yet have a photo of the Osaka Governor.

You’ll just have to make do with this image of another right wing nut job, the current Tokyo governor, Naoki Inose, who may recently have lost Tokyo its Olympic bid. He also lives in my town and can sometimes be seen jogging around on his tiny little feet.

Busy

Later

Damon

No-one knows his name. At least no-one I know does. Indeed no-one I know has even seen his face and that despite my good friend, Adrian Storey having made what looks like an amazing documentary about the artist known as 281 Anti nuke.

A kind of Japanese Banksy, with a strong ant-nuclear message, his artwork adorns many areas of Tokyo.

This link is only to the documentary trailer but even those few minutes are exciting enough. Cannot wait to see the whole thing.

Will have to wait until it has been through the documentary film contests grinder and, fingers-crossed, won a few richly deserved awards and rewards along the way.

More of 281 Anti nuke’s art work his website here:

Later

Damon

After a busy few weeks, both physically and mentally in Fukushima, it was not perhaps the best idea in the world to visit the Kanda Matsuri on Sunday.

I love Japanese festivals and especially ones that involve carrying a mikoshi around. A few weeks after I arrived in Japan I was wondering the streets of my neighbourhood when I stumbled across the local Aki Matsuri or Autumn festival. Now I was new in Japan and that day I learnt a lot of new words for the mayhem of these events: Words like mikoshi (portable shrine), tabi (festival jackets), “washoi!” (which as far as I know means nothing and is just chanted when people are carrying mikoshi during the festival) and even the word matsuri (which means festival) itself. It was such a magical, unexpected pleasure in a country that was leaving me, at that time, quite lonely, bored and poor. I could join in the fun of the festival without spending money and it had all the colour and unfamiliarity of the travelling life I had just left behind when I moved here. In short it was best day in Japan up to then and I have had a soft spot for this part of Japanese culture ever since.

The Kanda matsuri is one of the three great Shinto festivals of Japan and takes place on odd numbered years in the streets around Kanda. I had never been to it before and it made the news this year as it was returning after a four year hiatus caused by the earthquake and tsunami in Tohoku on March 11th 2011. I just had to go.

Also friends of my sons had relatives involved in the matsuri so we could really join in. Indeed I could not avoid joining in.

I have carried a mikoshi before and know from that experience that firstly they are really heavy and secondly that I am apparently genetically unable to get into the rhythm of the carry due to the fact that I am just that bit taller and my legs that bit longer than most of the other people I’m having to share the burden with. If you can’t get the “washoi!” beat going as you carry the mikoshi you can guarantee some nasty shoulder bruises in a very short while. My first experience found me under the sharp-edged wooden beams, that support the mikoshi’s weight, performing some very ungainly, bandy legged waddle in an effort to lower my shoulders to the same level as everyone elses. This of course also made my thighs scream in pain and my hips twist uncomfortably.

Those memories were still fresh when I was pulled from the crowd by well-meaning but obviously sadistic new friends and thrust under those same, sharp beams yesterday. I tried to get the rhythm I really did: I held onto the man in front and even a mumbled “washoi!” left my lips. The person behind helpfully and perhaps angrily adjusted my posture every time my head dropped a little too far or my arse stuck out a little too much. But try as I might I just couldn’t get the same bounce in my step as they could. My legs had to bend that bit more to travel the same vertical distance as theirs; there was a delay: I couldn’t move up with the ups and down with the down as well as they could and the weight of the mikoshi smashed again and again and again and again into my shoulder.

My sons were smiling at me, proud and photographing madly. Yet I was in agony. I stuck it out as long as I could: I wanted to make them proud of course, but my clown legs meant clown feet spread wide and as we moved the mikoshi around a corner I couldn’t follow the shuffled steps; my feet seemed seven sizes bigger and caught on the heels of the man in front and the toes of person behind.

It hurt, I looked like an idiot and though they smiled and said “don’t worry” I am sure my accidental removal of most of my neighbours footwear, multiple times, was somewhat annoying.

But at the rest stop the food and rink was generous and friendly. My kids and their friends had a ball. And I was free now, having done my part to photograph, up close, with my mikoshi colleagues.

Exhausted and bruised but a great day out all the same.

Images of some of the Japanese matsuri I have visited are available at my archive here.

Later

Damon

Young Hina adds a splash of bright red to the drab temporary housing that many people in Tohoku are still living in even two years after the March 11th 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

As I wrote before; the ability of kids to make the best of these less than ideal living conditions still never fails to impress me: both the strength of the Tohoku people and the underestimated determination and sensitivity of the children themselves.

It is sometimes harder for the adults: the houses are small and noisy;privacy is minimal and they have the memories and the greater sense of loss. But the kids adapt quickly it seems and their happiness must be something that keeps the people who look after them going through bad times that were promised to have been over by now.

Busy on other Fukushima stories that I can’t show you until the client has used them.

Been a great couple of weeks of  some quite amazing encounters.

Damon

Cars can no longer cross the bridge in Tomoioka Bay. The earthquake dropped it about 30 centimetres and on the other side the radiation readings climb rapidly to levels that are getting unsafe. We walked it across on our last day  in Fukushima. It was a windy day and the sound of the wind howling through the arches and railing of the bridge was unsettling. Indeed it would have been hard to find a scarier soundtrack for the foolish steps we took into this empty, overgrown place. We were about 7 kilometres from the Daichi nuclear power station and had we been stupid enough to leave the road and wander the paths through the highly radioactive undergrowth to a nearby hilltop, we could probably have seen.

Hillside, forest and craggy coastlines. A nice place to live before the events of March 11th 2011 which made the encounter I had above more poignant. I saw this couple dressed in makeshift radiation suits photographing the area as I crossed the bridge.

“is this your house?” I asked the man as I got closer and he had started to leave.

“Yes it is.” he said.

Then he turned and looked at the house and in the saddest tone I’ve ever heard said “Bye Bye”

He said no more, he didn’t need to.

He crossed back over the bridge, pausing one last time to look at his house, perhaps for the last time ever. Then he went down and we carried on into a place where there have been many similar, sad good-byes.

Damon

More images of Tomioka Town inside the Fukushima Exclusion Zone at my archive here: