Snap! Interesting Japanese Folk, Part 2

I really enjoyed photographing the people in Japan, as well as tourist attractions, architecture, and nature. The bottom row are typical workers. The top row includes people dressed up to work with tourists: a group of Samurai that stopped for ice cream and to take a selfie and someone willing to transport tourists in a rickshaw. Linking up with Helena's Snap! photography meme this week.

Snap! Interesting Japanese Folk, Part 1

When we travel, I try to do more than just take photographs of the standard tourist attractions (although I do take plenty of those shots). I also enjoy taking photographs of interesting people I see. So, I thought I'd share a couple groupings of interesting Japanese folk as part of Helena's Snap! photo meme. I took the first photo at the Inari temple, spied the second pair trying to decide which bus to take in Kyotoa, and the last two at a baseball game. More interesting folk coming next week.

A Visit to the Deer Park (Nara, Japan)

One of the delightful places we visited in Japan was Nara, home of a temple and a large park where the deer are considered sacred. They wander among the tourists (including large groups of Japanese school children).

They are very tame, and they have even been trained to bow if you offer them a deer cracker.

One of the things I did on my vacation was to keep a travel journal, where I wrote about the day's activities and added simple water color drawings and sketches. Here's the page I did about Nara.

I really enjoyed the process of sketching during the trip, and I"ll be sharing more pages, along with photos of some of my favorite places in Japan.

Snap: Japanese Street Hole Covers

While traveling in Japan, the variety of street hole covers caught my eye. I decided to take pictures of them in the hopes of turning them into an entry for Helena's weekly photo meme called "Snap!" that features a visual set of photographs. The first photo was taken in Tokyo on the street where our hotel was located; the second features deer and was taken in Nara, home to a park full of wild, sacred deer (blog post coming sometime this summer).The third was taken near an amazing bamboo forest (blog post coming sometime this summer); and the last was a fairly typical one taken in Kyotoa (but I loved the characters).
Thanks Helena for hosting this meme. It's something that I do think about and have created other sequences for almost every week, even if they didn't make their way to my blog. 

Memorandum Monday: First Time Travels

Sian from over at From High in the Sky hosts a meme asking people to share something new they've done over the weekend. This week I'm sharing some musings from a week ago, along with some fresh thoughts thrown in. 
I took this photograph a week ago at the Palm Springs airport. There's a very faint rainbow (can you see it?). It got me thinking that the Palm Springs airport is the first outdoor airport I've been to. It's so hot in Palm Springs that, after you go through security, you go outside to the various gates which are indoor/outdoor. I've been to a lot of memorable airports, from the miles in Heathrow to the underground walkways in Chicago. I remember the first time I flew on an airplane, and we walked down a ladder off the plane because it was the days before jet ways.
Palm Springs reminded me a bit of the airport in San Salvador, El Salvador where I walked outside to the softest air I ever felt and was overwhelmed by floral smells that were totally foreign to me. These sensory memories flooded back to me when I went to the outside portions of Palm Springs airport. 
Have you ever been to an outdoor airport? Any other memorable airports?
Now on to the new thoughts. This spring, I'll be going to two new airports! I'm going to teach in Shanghai, China in May. I've been to Beijing but never Shanghai. Paul is coming with me, and we are going to spend a few days in Japan on the way! Very excited for my first trip there. Do you have any upcoming travel plans?