After one week on the island of Sado, I am back in Niigata city with a stable internet connection, some frozen toes and a wedding to go to in 3 hours.

I was met at the ferry by what I am sure will somehow find its way into a new nick-name by my friends back home.

I was fortunate to have a great guide named Kaori who led me around the island, translating, suggesting, driving and holding up strobe lights. I was actually able to do this:

I did buy one of these:

so I could make a few of these to show all of my friends and family back home, who are often disappointed that the photographs I make of a place don’t fulfill thier wishes to see what a place looks like; so these are a few for my uncle Harold, who told me, after returning from Hawaii years ago that he had no idea how Hawaii was because he hadn’t gotten his slides developed yet.

I am finding, when in a foreign place, I am attracted to both the mundane and the exotic; often these are one in the same…