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Thursday I was in Sendai for a conference and stuck around afterwards to buy a lens for my camera. Originally I had planned on buying a 50mm fixed lens, ideal for shooting low light... but they were charging way too much money for the one I wanted. Then my eye settled on a cheap Tamron 70-300mm telephoto lens, with a macro mode. I figured at under $200 it was a gamble, but cheap enough that I could pawn it off if I wasn't satisfied. I saw it came with a hood, and had the same size threading as my stock lens. That pretty much sealed the deal.

The optics are pretty good. There was some slight purple fringing on a couple of the shots (and major fringing on reflections from an aluminum bicycle) but sticking my UV filter on next time should reduce that a bit. The mount has a bit more give than I'm used to, but not enough to cause problems. And of course, being a telephoto lens with a large zoom range, the aperture suffers-- this is not a lens for low light shooting. The only real flaw I can see is that the autofocus is noisy and slow (about 2-3 seconds for AF lock, while making the mating call of the Terminator). But switching to manual focus gives better control over composition anyway.

With those limitations in mind, I popped this guy on my camera Saturday and went to town, eager to try it out. Two minutes later the frame on my glasses snapped in half as I was walking down the street, apparently from the cold. As it's rather difficult to take photos if you can't see straight, I walked back, arranged the half-broken glasses on my face, and drove to a glasses shop in the next town. After this little detour I had little time left before I had to meet with Mr. Watanabe (a local community leader who enjoys inviting me over to his place to practice English), and after that I was supposed to go to another person's house in the mountains for dinner. So I only had time to do a quick run around the block, borrowed monopod in tow.

(these are cropped images; make sure you click to see the whole picture)

The left statue's head had a tinge of purple around it. Nothing a little Photoshoppery couldn't fix.

This is taken facing almost 180 degrees from the previous photo, pointed at the intersection about 200 meters down the street. The range on this lens is pretty cool.

The same shot, focused close. As this isn't a photography site, I should refrain from using words like "bokeh". But since it apparently comes from Japanese, I can use it anyway! HA!

Having to think about focus makes shots like this more difficult. Recomposing wasn't an option as I was shooting through a shrub. Do you focus on the left stone which is closest to you, and let the details on the right fuzz out, or do you shoot for the middle of the road and get everything kinda in focus but not really? Maybe I should have stopped down a bit more, but this was already at f/10.

At some point, you have to stop thinking too hard and just shoot.

Overall I'm quite satisfied. I'm used to using the stock lens which is 18-55mm; with this one I found myself trying to zoom out, and then backing up to compose my shots. The minimal macro range is 90cm (about 3 feet), and in macro mode it won't let you zoom out farther than 180mm. At that range, a large orchid just barely fits into the frame, which is pretty much what I wanted. I'll try out the macro later and see how it goes.

I sat in on a short science lesson first period at my elementary school, as I didn't have any classes. The homeroom teacher was explaining base mass units using a crude balance made from plastic cups and a ruler. The first experiment was determining which was heavier, a pair of scissors or a glue container (the scissors won). Next she used 1 yen coins, which conveniently weigh 1 gram each, to determine the weights of common classroom items. Did you know a 10 yen coin weighs 5 grams? Well, now you do.

I traveled back home for Christmas and New Year's, from Narita airport in Tokyo through LAX on an ANA flight, and catching a connecting flight back home via Southwest Airlines. I don't know what the problem is, but service and civility at airports and by airlines in the United States have really gone downhill.

Both the airline staff and security at Narita airport were polite, cordial, and spoke both English and Japanese. There were plenty of open counters at check-in, I handed over my one checked bag with a bottle of sake (they helpfully affixed a red "fragile" tag to my bag), and was on my way to security within 10 minutes. One young woman asked if there was a laptop in my carryon bag as I went through, informed me that if I was wearing a belt it would probably set off the metal detector, asked for my jacket to send it through the x-ray machine, and bid me walk through the arch with shoes and dignity intact. The whole affair took about 5 minutes. The people at emigration were equally polite, and as my paperwork was in order my passport was stamped quickly.

As usual, my flight on All Nippon Airways was excellent. The food was very good, beer and wine was available with meals free of charge, and the staff handled every situation with politeness and grace-- from the two toddlers in front who were given a toy to keep them busy to the gentleman next to me who got a little tipsy and started hitting on a stewardess (who simply shrugged the incident off and handed him off to a male attendant). The flight was scheduled to take 9 hours and 40 minutes, but it got there half an hour early.

Then I got into L.A. and things went to hell. First you've got the seventy billion touts outside, each one scrambling to make a buck or five (and not a single sign telling you where to walk for your connecting flight). Then when you finally get there, you get to walk up and figure out how to check yourself in while the folks behind the counter sit and chat with their colleagues. They don't even take your bags; you get to walk all the way around and drop them off at a separate security checkpoint. Then you have to walk OUTSIDE the building and back inside through a different exit, where they redirected us through some employee corridor to a backroom security checkpoint. The grunts running the checkpoint were barking orders at everyone, yelling at every passenger who didn't know he had to take his shoes off or remove the laptop from his bag. As I passed by I overheard one loudly asking the rest of the crew if they'd taken their lunch break yet (it was 10 am). If I had been a manager on site I would have fired all of them on the spot. But if I understand correctly, this is average treatment when flying in the United States these days. And they wonder why nobody flies anymore.

If you think it's just me, I'm not the only one who thinks it's gone to hell. Read also this guy's article.