In Which Mike and Anna Get Hitched

By zach | Published September 8, 2009

My brother Mike and his new wife Anna were married on Saturday at Phipps Conservatory in Pittsburgh! Actually, they were married on paper as of a few months ago for logistical reasons, but now it’s official. Mike and Anna asked me to be The Photographer for their big day. I took about 700 pictures, so I’ll likely be post-processing for the next few weeks, but I’ve managed to post a quick, random-ish sample up to flickr.

Anyway, I got into town after an uneventful flight on Thursday evening. On Friday, I helped get my parents’ house ready for the party that would happen after the ceremony. I also went to the dentist (no cavities!), and got a haircut. That evening, we went to Phipps for a rehearsal after a quick dinner of carry-out Chinese food, and I figured out where I had to stand to take pictures, and stuff. During the rehearsal, we learned that a bunch of stuff for the G20 meeting is taking place at Phipps, and that Secret Service dudes had been doing lots of snooping around, and such.

On Saturday morning I loafed around until it was time to get ready. My parents were way more nervous and hyper than Mike was, which was not at all unexpected. We arrived at Phipps more than an hour before the ceremony and even ten minutes before the previous wedding was supposed to clear out. I wandered around taking pictures of random stuff and people for no particular purpose until guests started showing up and it was time for things to start. It was a nice ceremony. Anna’s dad ran the show, and my dad and older brother did a couple readings. The ceremony was also very short, though people were nice enough to walk slowly for the most part so that I could take pictures. After the ceremony, I took lots of pictures of a great many of the possible subsets of relations before wandering around outside of Phipps taking photos of Mike and Anna and the bridesmaids (the best man having mysteriously disappeared.)

We went back to the house after the ceremony for the party. My parents had dinner catered by Atria’s, and they did an amazing job. They even sent over a lady to run the kitchen, which for some odd reason was only very slightly more expensive than just having the food delivered. I took a few pictures at the party, but by this point, being The Photographer was interfering a bit too much with things like eating and drinking and talking to people, so I stopped . Hopefully Anna will forgive me. Mike’s best man reappeared and gave an awesome speech in which he delivered a video to my parents containing footage of Mike singing “Friends in Low Places.”

When things started to wind down, I went with Mike and Anna and their friends to the South Side. Any inferences you might make about what happened there based on knowledge of that neighborhood would probably be accurate. The highlight of the evening was definitely at the end, when upon failing to hail a cab, we managed to flag down a limo, which we all piled into, and which took us back to the hotel.

Anyway, it was a fantastic weekend! Wedding photography is Really Hard! And that’s even without factoring in the post-processing, and the fact that my brother can’t avoid making bizarre faces in pictures unless you sneak up on him or make him laugh first.

Tomorrow I head back to California. Hopefully there have been no explosions while I’ve been gone.

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Dazaifu fair

By christina | Published September 7, 2009

Dazaifu Main Shrine

On Saturday, I went to Dazaifu for the flea market/antiques fair. I wanted to get some old kimonos to rip up and make into other things, and this is one of the best places I know for doing so. It’s easy to get a silk kimono for under ¥1000, and the way that kimonos are made, you can end up with a reasonable length of uncut fabric. You have to watch out for stains, but with the help of a washing machine, you can often make those better. I came away with a pretty good haul. The Kyushu National Museum is also right near the temple, but I didn’t go in because the line was apparently 3 hours long! And it wasn’t even for some special event.

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Obon trip last post

By christina | Published September 3, 2009

Time for the final installment of Obon 2009: Trip to Shimane!

Getting to Masuda took some time, because the trains don’t come by that often. I ended up having to wait about an hour and a half total at a couple different stations. I could have waited all at the same station, but it was raining there, so I decided that staying on the nice dry train was the better choice. However, when I got to the transfer point, it was almost cold! August is generally pretty gruelingly hot, but it was probably in the low seventies and breezy, making it just on the edge of chilly.

Giant Pumpkin!

I eventually made it, though, and set about wandering around Masuda by bike. Sadly, Masuda is not the most exciting of Japanese towns (sorry, Masuda!). I went to a couple of shrines and temples, with gardens by Sesshu, some particularly important Japanese painter. However, I failed miserably at getting reasonable pictures of them (it was raining). When the rain stopped, I set off for the Masuda Grand Toit, a museum and music hall that seems to serve a good portion of the area. The museum itself was pretty small, but it had an interesting exhibit of a Japanese artist who had studied with the French masters. My favorite thing was the giant pumpkin. Who can resist a giant spotted squash? Afterward I went to my ryokan early and spent the rest of the evening pretty lazily, and even got to have fun playing with fireworks with the owner and his family.

Tsuwano old street

The next morning I continued my leisurely pace, as the morning train options were 7:40 and 11:15, and I wasn’t up for the early option.　At 11:15 I got on the bus to Tsuwano, a town that had been recommended to me by a coworker. It’s a small town that has a good old-Japan flavor, and is an excellent place to spend an afternoon and bike around (there are bikes to rent right across from the station, if you didn’t bring one like I did). There was a big shrine up on a hill with a long path of Torii gates leading up to it. There was a paper factory where I got a demonstration on how to make traditional Japanese paper, there were some more nice old houses to see, and I had some tasty cold somen for lunch. I then got on the steam train for the first leg of the trip back home. The steam train is a special train that only goes once per day, and has each of the cars decorated for a certain era. My favorite car was the Meiji car, but I was on the Showa car, for that post-war-seventies-American feel. It was fun watching the people outside the train taking pictures, and there was even a luggage room for my bicycle! I only had about three and a half hours in Tsuwano, but I think it was probably good for only a couple more. I was sad to hear that there had been a big festival the evening before!

Eventually, after a few more train switches (including a couple where I had to switch trains to go only one more stop), I was finally home. It was a pretty fun trip overall, and I was definitely happy to have had my bike with me, although most towns with any expectations of tourists seem to have bike rentals nowadays.

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