FanPost

Hipuks' Pictorial Journey Starts Getting Old Part III: The Japanese Garden.



First of all, let's get this out of the way: Turning Japanese I think I'm turning Japanese I really think so.

Second, except for a pic or two, these are among the weakest pics of the whole series, the next and final installment will be better, if I ever get to write the final installment.

The Japanese Garden is pretty close to my house, I don't think most people are aware it's even there, which is a shame because it's a really nice place, and it's only 3 bucks for a ticket. The only weird thing about it is that when you enter the gate, there's security guards who ask for your license and write down your name....I don't know what's up with that, unless they're afraid someone will poach their bonsai. Or maybe it has to do with the fact that there's a water treatment plant next to it. Or maybe it was racial profiling.

I couldn't take pictures of the coolest thing in the place because my batteries ran out, a phenomenon known as Kudell's curse, due to that photographer and well known pedophile's penchant for running out of batteries. But I will try to describe it using the best language that I can, which granted, has been atrophied from years of using the internet.

From all the pictures I took during my trip my goal was to get at least one good one. How do you define good, CapHill drunkenly asks? Well, for a me a good picture is one that says something, or has a mood to it. You can take a thousand pretty pictures and people will forget them as soon as they see them, to take one that people will remember is what separates the pros from the rest of us.

Take HDR photography for example, it's no doubt beautiful, even surreal, like this one. Pretty nice isn't it? Even for someone like me who doesn't much care for HDR. Now, look at one of my favorite pictures evah, Dog Resting. It's not as technically impressive, but it stays with you, once I saw it I couldn't forget it.

With digital cameras now any borderline retard can take a technically good picture, and with photoshop you can correct any little mistake. But you get people obsessing over every little flaw in a picture while ignoring the picture itself. I'd take a blurry picture with a mood than a technically impressive picture of a gorgeous landscape any day of the week.

In Flickr there's a group that votes up or down on a picture, if a picture is voted down, it's deleted, if it's voted up, it stays. Someone wanted to prove that these people were idiots, so they put up a picture of one of the masters of photography, Henri Cartier-Bresson , guess what happened to the picture? Yes, it was voted down by people who probably take pictures of themselves in front of the mirror while looking the other way and think that's artistic.

All I'm saying, is that unlike with women, you have to be able to see beyond the minor flaws and appreciate the larger theme of a photograph, it's better to have flawed genius than perfect blandness.

Also, I pretty much failed in my goal.

I won't make funny captions for these pictures, just some Japanese saying translated into English to accompany each one, so that we may all reflect on them. ( Click on any pic to make it bigger, TWSS).

" Is that your member? Said an old teacher-man. No, for I have not eaten dead raccoons since dawn, replied his young student-boy. Ah, I see."

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via i218.photobucket.com

"If you see a goose flying towards you, do not try to stop it, for feces bring good fortune, and yummy excellent times is make happy family."

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via i218.photobucket.com

" Do not dental inspect an equine given for free, your balls may be in great danger."

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via i218.photobucket.com

" A father and his idiot son were walking by a manless home, when the father said, is my behind shiny with excitement? And the idiot son understood."

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via i218.photobucket.com

"It is better to buy ten horses for a sexy time, than to have a feisty mongoose".

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via i218.photobucket.com

"My car seems to have contracted gonorrhea."

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via i218.photobucket.com

"Lonely men more often carry callouses by the hands of their parents."

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via i218.photobucket.com

" Music? But my wife is in the cemetery!"

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via i218.photobucket.com

"It is good manners to pack tightly your anus with food for the travel ahead."

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via i218.photobucket.com

" Godzilla! Oh no wait, I seem to have been wrong in my initial assumption of this being a large bipedal reptilian with a fondness for destroying building and the capability of breathing fire. My bad."

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via i218.photobucket.com

" I seem to have set myself on fire."

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via i218.photobucket.com


"You lie-maker, your shark fin soup has done nothing to cure me!"

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via i218.photobucket.com

The coolest thing was towards the end, there's a huge artificial lake in the center of the garden, but there's a little pool that's off to the side, and it's pretty shallow so the biggest fish ( there's some huge ones) can't get in there.

In it there were lots of little fish doing little fish stuff. Then we see it, a spawning pit, a little depression in the dirt that fish make to attract mates. There were all over the place, like when you see those pictures of WWI and the earth is pockmarked, like Pop's face in a way. The fish were guarding them. I had read about it, it's normal behavior for some Cichlids, but I had never seen it. It was so cool, each fish swimming around, guarding his spot, keeping it clean of any debris and showing off to the females. Some of them had pretty big pits while other had pitiful ones, and in nature size does matter. Some had pits where they obviously didn't give a shit and were full of dirt. I could've watched it for hours but it about 90 something degrees that day, so that wasn't an option

Finally, when we were inside the building you see the in the 5th picture,there were a lot of huge fish. The building itself is on pillars, so the lake runs under it. I don't know why, but all the huge Cichlids were hanging out in there, much as body builders congregate in groups and compare physiques.

I think of the time spent in the garden, about 90% of it was dedicated to watching fish. It's The Japanese Giant Pond to me, rather than a garden.

Well, hope you enjoyed that, I didn't enjoy writing it. You also have a lot of patience and free time. Stay tuned for the next chapter where we find if I died or not!

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