Great Despite Ginza

Days don't get any better than this. (at least not until we are out of Tokyo for good.)

Laying in bed until 8:00 (after waking up at 6:30) with the birds crawling over me, a great lunch and later dinner (I have dearly missed Tomoe's macrobiotic cooking while I was in Hakuba), and an afternoon trip to Ginza to meet with some folks at an NPO that offers support to people who want to move to the country-side where rural populations are on the decrease (actually, according to scientists from North Carolina State University and the University of Georgia: For the first time in human history, the earth’s population became more urban than rural on May 23, 2007.)

The man was happy to hear that we have some leads in the Hakuba area, but was also anxious to help us get support from the village to set up our own environmental education program in the Sakae region which I mentioned yesterday. Although they have record amounts of snowfall, Tomoe seems to have all but forgotten that when she heard that people get paid $300/day to shovel roofs in the winter.

Although Ginza was a bit too much "city" for me, and we had to cancel plans to go to Shinjyuku and get a new pair of glasses made, I was able to stay somewhat sane because I had my camera and a new toy...

Recently I had been looking for a lens with more zooming power and was happy to get my hands on an old Nikon 80-200mm lens, but it does not work with my camera's auto-focus or auto-metering systems, so finally I have to learn about exposure. I spent the day experimenting with getting the proper exposure using my hand-held meter and the "exposure rules", and here are some of my results. Although they are just photos of random people that I came across, I am quite happy that out of about 50 shots at least 4 of them were exposed somewhat correctly and relatively in focus.

The thing that really made the day so great though is that getting out and living our dream is soooo close. We can touch it. We can taste it. Tomorrow we give notice to the landlord that we will be moving out. (Too bad we just renewed our lease a few months ago... that was $1,000 down the drain.) I am cramming in as many "see ya round" dinners as possible into this next week. We are looking into movers, and by the time I go back to hakuba next week I hope to have as much packed as possible.

Finally it feels real. And real feels amazing!