journal features
movie reviews
photo of the day

and then the rains came

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Amami Oshima, 2024.03.19

The weather forecast wasn't too conducive for fishing today, and the actual weather bore that out. Lousy weather usually makes for good photography though, and today was no exception. I did manage to get some fishing in, and found to my surprise that the entire southern half of the island has very few stores where I could for instance find lunch.

One happy surprise occurred when I visited a mountain-top that was cut off from the sea by the thick clouds. I found a square-cut tunnel on the grounds, and in that tunnel I realized that the acoustics were amazing. I recorded the sound of banging two rocks together and then played a song from my phone and recorded it with its reverb and echoes onto my camera. On the way down the mountain, a little yellow bird insisted on repeatedly landing in front of my car, causing my to slow only to see the bird bop its way down the road another thirty to fifty meters. I'm quite sure it was playing with me.

I got some pics in, dabbling in slow-exposure waterfall images and using the wacky art modes on my camera liberally.

As the afternoon rounded into evening, the rain gave way to the forecast wind, and I found myself way out in the south-western corner of the island with a terrible gale in front of me and a single-lane path with a lot of twists and rock-falls and saggy parts. I had flagged a couple of sites that I wanted to see and did make it to the first of these -- a world-war two "pillbox" that was I supposed a machine-gun emplacement.

From there I turned and fled and managed to get back to the city in ninety minutes -- including the quaint local rush-hour.

rand()m quote

If anyone tells you all is lost or all is fine, just nod and move on and live in the middle where everything matters.

—Dr. Elizabeth Sawin @bethsawin, Twitter