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A bit of this, a bit of that.

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105/365: Oct 27. I often find myself in the local co-op on Mondays. It's a very Japanese grocery store, they stock truckloads of weird little things I've never seen anywhere else. I will miss their tofu section - look at it would you! 4 shelves of it, with 20 different variations!

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106/365: Oct 28. I woke up in the Odawara Fuji-Xerox training centre, in a business hotel-like room. Spent the day pretending to be a foreign Fuji-Xerox staff member on a bunch of international communication exercises. Got paid quite well. Then we got to take the romance car back into Shinjuku at the end of the day. UK Sound was on that night, so like the dutiful Tiger staff member I am, I trundled down to the Shibuya Hobgoblin to attend the event and support DJ James & Kazumi in their work. Guy Perryman was DJ'ing, he played some great old tracks from my/his youth including Echo & The Bunnymen's Spare us the Cutter. Almost made me cry with nostalgia. I quite enjoy this event - realised I really miss classic "pub" culture.

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107/365: Oct 29. Spent the day teaching then caught up with Jane who wanted to show me the hotel photographer's studio portraits from the wedding I photographed a few weeks back. I was really impressed by the photo presentation - lovely folders and paper. We sat in Mishima over a beer, and waited for Kota to show up. I taught Kota for 3 years when he was in high school, and is by far the most awesome kid I ever taught there. Polite, intelligent, independent and fun. He spent the summer in Portugal (he saved up for it by working part time jobs through his first year of uni) and had the time of his life. He raced through the 200+ pictures still in his camera while Jane and I ooh-ed and aah-ed at the beautiful Portuguese summer. It was odd to drink beer with one of my ex-high school students. We plan to meet again in January with a bunch of the other students from his year, and have dinner together. He lives not far from me so we caught the train back together, and I took some pic's of him on the train much to his amusement.

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108/365: Oct 30. Rushing to my 4th lesson of the day, I dropped into the konbeni to grab an onegiri. Standing at the onegiri shelves was my friend and inspiration Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert, with his wife Yuko and gorgeous little girl Hikari. He just got back from an amazing 2 month shoot with Greenpeace through Papua New Guinea and I'd been meaning to drop him a line to get together so it was a nice bit of synchronicity. We arranged to meet up after my lessons were done. Hung out in the park and chatted and played.

20081031

109/365: Oct 31. Games halls in Tokyo, and all Japan, are massively popular. They include purikura booths, and a staggering array of computer games. This shooting game is right at the front of the many games halls in Shinjuku and made for a cool pic.

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110/365: Nov 1 2008. I was invited by a friend to attend a lecture by Michael Yamashita, the National Geographic photographer. I got to speak with him before the lecture and he told my friend Charles Glover (a great photographer!) and me that he thinks photography and magazines - as we know them today - are dying. Actually, I don't think they are dying at all. I think they are evolving and that it's an exciting time to be a part of photography. His lecture was based on the Marco Polo project he did with National Geographic - an epic sprawling adventure that took took the team through Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Read his notes from the field. Inspirational stuff.

20081102


111/365: Nov 2 2008. Every year, around this time, private schools have their entrance exams. Mothers in black suits with pearls march their little ones in quaint little suits and hats off to the schools of their dreams to sit for an exam. If they pass, they are integrated into that school from first year through to university, regardless of their grades. Makes for a shockingly lazy bunch of students and I used to despise the "lifers" at the school where I used to teach. They were lazy as hell. Anyway, I live near a girls school and caught these little girls and their mums making their way in to a testing day. Imagine spending 15 years in the same institution, from the age of 6.

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Martine wrote this on November 29, 2008 5:00 PM
Comments
innocentgirl said:

Good to see you're not slowing down any! Just wanted to make a quick comment regarding Mr. Yamashita... totally agree with him but not in the way that you'd think. I presume he's in his sixties or so and he parallels nicely with a very famous illustrator called Brad Holland, also big in editorial and magazines his whole career. Half way through their careers the internet appears and suddenly photographers and illustrators are offered to sell their images to Getty or iStock, stupidly they do, and suddenly the value of their commodity drops dramatically, brainless art directors, who are always running on ridiculously tight deadlines, no longer bother commissioning work. Brad Holland says he was getting paid 10 times as much for the same size/quality illo in the 80's as he is now! For them, it is a death. For us, still optimistic, still hopeful, and no doubt not realizing people 'USED' to get paid in the $1000's and not the $100's, it is all about making the best of a situation, taking control of it and making our own opportunities, no doubt just as he was embarking on his career. The fact is the internet IS having an enormous impact on print, it is dying but it will definitely move on and survive, just as hand written type and craft has had a revival but whether it will be recognizable as the form it is now I don't know. Anyhow just some thoughts to munch on Aunty Marty! Stay warm and eat lots of tofu and onigiri for me!

On November 30, 2008 9:03 AM,
frangipani said:

I know for these long-established people it may seem to be dying. But I think it's just that the old-style business models need to be changed the way they have in the music industry - online shops like i-tunes selling songs rather than albums - artists signing with promo companies rather than labels (look at Madonna & U2, for example).... there will certainly be some deaths - this kind of fundamental change can be brutal indeed. But there is still a healthy living to be made if one is clever and adaptable and recognises opportunities when you see one.....

I love reading this guy, he's always got an interesting, positive and exciting take on things, I like this article - you should read it.... http://www.aphotoeditor.com/2008/11/20/why-a-magazine-is-like-a-record/

On November 30, 2008 12:32 PM,
Juggs said:

"This is the lovely little street that leads from Nishi-Ogikubo Station to my place well after midnight."

Love this shot because I love that walk. I often think about how I loved the cozy silence of that street at night,...and how on my first solo landing in Tokyo, I was trying to find your place (via the fantastic map) slowly strolling down that street covered in sweat in the hot Tokyo summer with all my camera gear & a skateboard, when a young hip Japanese girl called out to me,.."hey!,..you skater boy?". I thought it seemed pretty obvious and I entertained her, but loved how she just approached me out of nowhere and then guided me all the way to your place. It reminded me of why I loved Japanese people so much. I'll never forget that afternoon.

Thanks for that memory.

- Juggs

On December 12, 2008 12:40 PM,
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