A dog who lived in Gunsan, South Korea. Pentax K50. 2015
One cat who lived in Fall River, Canada. Olympus Pen EP3.
Let this information enrich the rest of your days.
My chronic back pain, which the Nova Scotian healthcare system thinks I should go suck eggs over, can lead to some pretty sleepless nights even with some Tylenols in me. I try to explain to people without chronic back problems how it feels, when I attempt to either lay down or get up, by saying it's like my back is having a deep yawn. However the lower half of my body wants to cramp up at the same time.
I bring this up because I slept in pretty late today after a bad back night and the coffee still hasn't done much for me. So the world is these two photos above.
I took these photos while I was taking the Mugunghwa train with a visiting friend from Gunsan to Seoul. He had gifted me yet another Olympus Pen when he arrived, which I later lost the lens cap on which drained what little juice was left in the selenium light meter. I'm a serial killer of cameras. We spent the ride up in the dining car, as much as you could call it that. The little food kiosk was long shut down and your meal was whatever you thought to pack. At least we managed to snag some stools, there not being any regular seats available that day.
Now, here's the thing: Senior citizens get to ride for free. And they do. In whatever seat they can find. You will have to get pushy with an 80 year old pretending to sleep if you want to sit down. They're not happy but if you can present them with a printed copy with your seat number they always comply.
One summer, coming back from a trip to Seoul with a very heavy backpack, I booted a not-actually-sleeping old fellow out of my seat. I was the hero of all of the students who were forced to stand because they lacked the courage and social freedom to tell various grannies to get the fuck outta their seats.
I assume they tell tales about me around soju bottles to this day.
Man, I wish I still had the ability to carry a very heavy backpack around....
Mugunghwa is notable for being slow and meandering. The seats are also wider than the ones on the high speed trains like the SRT and KTX, so there's that. That meandering does take a significant amount of time to get you anywhere, but the views out the window can be amazing depending upon the time of the year. I preferred taking it if I had a lot of time to get to places.
If you visit Korea some day and aren't in a hurry, I recommend it as your main way of getting around the country.
One of the frustrations of a continuously deteriorating-due-to-chronic-pain-and-age brain is that you are not only terrible at organizing things, you're terrible at finding things as well.
Finding things you were looking at just minutes before.
I also need to re-read everything I type a few dozen times and I still find missing letters and whole missing words after hitting publish. I know people with things like Alzheimer's and it's certainly not the same thing. But here I am, the only new memories I'm able to make is how much Nova Scotia's healthcare system sucks now.
Anyway, both of these photos were in the wrong folders and it took me ten minutes to remember which ones they were.
Miyazaki-ken isn't a very well populated area and all of the young people there head off to the bigger cities in Japan as soon as they're able to. Fukuoka seems to be the main destination but if they can get to Osaka or Tokyo, so much the better.
Familiar story.
Because of the low population of young people a lot the downtown areas was always struggling on the weekends. Public events, assuming the budget was there for it, were common on Sundays. Small stuff. A local band with stars in their eyes playing a gig outside of the bookstore. A local dance school showing their stuff. A DJ in a clothing store.
Why this never gets done of here in Halifax I have no idea. It's a similarly sized city with all the same problems. Only big events are allowed. Probably because they want utterly unnecessary cops crawling around and acting like World War 3 will start the second someone starts to, you know, be happy and enjoying themselves.
Pentax ME Super
Pentax is a Forever Loan from a friend who only used it back in the 1990s for a trip to Japan and he doesn't want it to corrode in his closet. I do like old Pentax cameras but I need to plan around using in since it's a classic heavy metallic camera and I only want to pack it and it alone into my bag for the sake of my aching back.
Olympus XA2 & Olympus Pen EE2
Olympus XA2 is a gift from a friend because he knew I like point & shoots. The Olympus Pen is from the same guy and because he knows it's my favourite camera. These two are most likely to be found on my person at any time. My most only-has-meaning-to-me photos in Japan were taken with a Pen EE2. I should share more of them.
Nikon Coolpix P510
My sister works at the airport. Every few months the lost & found trashes the always growing pile of unclaimed items left behind. Staff get a chance to pick through the bin before it goes out. She gave me the Nikon she snagged after asking me to check if it was still working. Excellent telephoto lens but mediocre everything else. You can tell by the layer of dust that it never gets used. I might gift it to a young relative if they ever get into photography.
Fuji X100s
The Fuji X100s was part of that trend of modeling modern mirrorless digital cameras after classic film cameras. The viewfinder has a digital overlay like it was Iron Man's helmet. Everything about the camera is quality. It's not as handy as my dearly departed Samsung NX500 was for waist-level street photography, but it was a good replacement as a walkabout camera.
And speaking of waist-level...
Mamiya C220f
The Mamiya has been in my possession the longest, has lived in five different nations, and has flown more than most air force pilots. It worked hard and its age and heavy use has become obvious. I could spend the money to get it knocked back into prime shape again, but between that and the cost and effort of getting and developing 120 film now, I think it has earned its place as an honoured retiree.