gfPHOTO Update

Same basic site design, but fleshing out my portfolio some more. (Link in title)

Facebook's ToS & User Created Content

As the din of outcry swells against Facebook's terms of service in regard to user created content, I've decided to take a good look at what is actually written there and discern if there's any real concern.

Link in title.

While you're there, Facebook users, become a fan of my gfPHOTO page.  ;-)

When Religion Collides With Japan

Fumiko was watching a TV show the other night on Japan's shortage of medical care workers - specifically nurses.  In response to this shortage, the country has begun bringing in workers from other - often poorer - areas of Asia and importing them to work in Japan's hospitals.  In many cases, these workers are coming from Islamic areas of Asia.

*SCENE*

-Immigrant worker wearing a hajib being harassed by her Japanese supervisor:

"You don't see anyone else wearing them, do you?!"

-Worker breaks down in tears.

I want to be careful here.  This could easily turn into a discussion about immigrant's expectations of their new home-country, but I'm specifically not interested in that question.  Instead, I'm curious about this supervisor's inability to be sensitive to her employee's feelings.

Japan is not a religious country.  Sure historically speaking Japan is both Buddhist and Shintoist, and these two practices are the root of Japan's beautiful temples and shrines.  Yes, people still visit temples and shrines for holidays and auspicious events in people's lives.  Nevertheless, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who actually believes in either of these as a religion these days.  In fact, many people speak quite openly and frankly about their lack of religion.  Much like I love celebrating Christmas even though I'm firmly agnostic, for Japanese people visiting shrines and temples is about practicing their culture rather than practicing their faith.

It's also an important distinction that neither Shintoism nor Buddhism recognize a single all-powerful non-human authority, and this is likely the reason why the two systems coexisted in harmony in the lives of Japanese people for thousands of years.

Morality.  In Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, morality is defined by God - a being external from the human race.  Japanese people have no experience of an externally defined morality.  Here, morality is defined by "normal behavior".  This is the reason why, to Westerner's sometimes great amusement, Japanese people are so obsessive about what is normal and what is not.  Unusual, uncommon, different - all of these words in Japanese stink of "immoral, dysfunctional, delinquent" and thus it can be a challenge to explain the vast variety of cultures and beliefs living together in California.

Let's look at the line spoken by the supervisor once again.  "You don't see anyone else wearing them, do you?!"  At once, this person has belied their complete inability to comprehend the power of a person's belief in an external morality, and simultaneously has tried to impose their own Japanese morality.  If I've explained myself well, then hopefully you now see the true power and weight that this simple sentence carries in Japan.

Japanese people are well aware that people in other countries practice Christianity, etc.  but behind closed doors they find it all pretty ridiculous.  "Why would anyone believe something so silly?"  If you live in a Christian country, even if your personal beliefs deviate from those of a major religion, you are still capable of recognizing the sheer power that faith has for believers. 

Faith is, regardless of your personal beliefs, a common cultural experience for people living in the U.S.  Japan has no equivalent to faith.  This is why Fumiko and I sat at dinner last night trying in vain to come up with some similarly powerful experience in Japanese culture that could be used to illustrate for the supervisor just what she was demanding of her employee.  "If you could meet with the supervisor," Fumiko proposed, "with a chance to give her some insight into just how powerful the employee's feelings were on this issue, what would you say?"  If I were to say, "this woman fears burning in hell for all eternity," then the supervisor's reaction would be, "that's all silly nonsense."  If I were to say, "in this woman's mind, this is normal behavior," then the supervisor's reaction would be, "but not in Japan."

Fumiko and I are still puzzling this one out.  Usually we're pretty good at coming up with similar cultural experiences to illustrate differences, but this one really has us stumped.

Jing, Screencap for the Masses

If you work in tech at all, chances are you've been confronted countless times with trying to explain a strange behavior to a tech support person.  Instead of trying to explain your way through it, send them a video.  So much easier!  The problem is, most solutions are either clunky or you have to buy the software, and more often than not, both.

Today I had just such an experience with my web host.  As part of the troubleshooting process, they sent me a screencap video of the testing they did on their end.  The service they used was a combination of Jing and screencast.com.  Jing is the software on your local machine, and screencast.com is the free hosting service.  Both are so tightly integrated, it's a no-brainer to share what you've captured.

Jing let's you capture the whole screen, define a portion of the screen, or just select a specific application to capture.  You then have a 3 second countdown, and it starts capturing.  Do whatever actions you need, click stop, and you have a chance to review what you captured.  If you don't like it choose discard and start over.  If you want to keep it, click save, and you have the option of writing the file to your local machine, or uploading it directly to your screencast.com account.  I chose to put it online so my tech people could see exactly what was going on.  The (remarkably small) file uploads, and there's a few moments of waiting, presumably while the website processes it into a web-ready presentation, and when it completes the URL to the movie is automatically put directly on your clipboard ready to paste into any program you want be it email, chat, whatever.

Simple, sexy, slick.  No more trying to convince tech support you're really not crazy!!

Photo of the Day

Left to right:

Gavin, Kim, Will, Fumiko touring around the 天草 Amakusa islands.

Canon 20d, 10-22mm efs, canon 580 exII into a bent up (after being taken by the wind) shoot-through brolly camera left, fiery celestial body subject rear

Photo of the Day

OK, OK, photos this time. Still working on my portraiture skills.

Canon 20d, 10-22mm efs, canon 580exII into shoot-through brolly cam left, canon 430exII subject rear onto wall

Click the slideshow to jump out to the full album.

Time Warp Online

Adobe Zoetrope permits seeing online content change over time in ways more powerful than ever before.  Check out the MIT Tech Review.

Photo of the Day

Fumiko and I spend the whole day exploring the countryside last weekend. I have quite a few shots I'd like to share with you all; here's the first of them.

Canon 20d, EF-s 10-22mm @ 21mm
1/90s @ f4.5
580 EXII on shoot-through brolly camera left, ST-E2 transmitter

Self Critique: I need to be more cautious of hair. The flyaways on the left (our left) areas of her temples is pretty much a deal breaker. An edge light to camera left, subject rear would have added some pop and helped pull the subject out of the dark background.

They Say History Repeats Itself

He claimed that he would happily reverse his vote if the president could prove that first blood was shed on American soil, but since he "can not, or will not do this," he suspected that the entire matter was, "from beginning to end, the sheerest deception." Having provoked both countries into war, Lincoln charged, the president had hoped "to escape scrutiny, by fixing the public gaze upon the exceeding brightness of military glory . . . that serpent's eye, that charms to destroy." He went on to liken the president's war message to "the half insane mumbling of a fever-dream." Perhaps recalling the turtles tormented with hot coals by his boyhood friends, Lincoln employed the bizarre simile of the president's confused mind "running hither and thither, like some tortured creature, on a burning surface, finding no position, on which it can settle down, and be at ease."

-Doris Kearns Goodwins, "Team of Rivals", Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2006, pg 121-122
On Lincoln's criticisms of the handling of the Mexican War by then-president James Polk

Awww Yeaaaah

I LOL'd

Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are

Photo of the Day

View of Tokyo at night from the 38th floor of the Garden Place Tower in Ebisu. (Thanks, Noriko!)

Canon 20D, EF-S 10-22mm @ 21mm
1.5s @ f4.5, ISO400
Imported and post-processed in Adobe Lightroom 2

Fun Quote of the Day

Strangely, market forces seem to impose a sort of equilibrium on this matter.

I love lines like this. Does it even matter what the subject of the article was?

Photo of the Day

Once again, Fumiko is a real sport and lets me use her as a guinea pig. 70cm shoot-through brolly directly above camera lit by Canon 580 EXII, reflector held in lap, gold reflector behind the shoji screen lit by Canon 580 EX (v1). Canon 20D, Canon EF-S 10-22mm. 1/125 @ f 8, ISO100. Flash at 1/4 power. Shot at the end of a long day of work, so the poor model is not "prepped" or anything.

This was a total experiment. I wanted to see what would happen using this translucent shoji screen as a backdrop and lighting it from behind. For attempt number two, there are a number of changes I need to make.

1. Turn up the power of the back light.
2. Move the model further from the backdrop so that...


1. ...the backdrop goes father out of focus (DOF is a problem for portraiture with these super wide angle lenses)
2. ...less light from the key falls on the front of the screen. I was hopping for it to look more back lit than it does. In fact, you can only barely tell I've done anything at all by the slight warming of color just over the model's shoulder.
3. I'm using a small reflector in the model's lap. Would like to see how a much larger one impacts the image.
   

Perhaps if the Shoji were back lit better, it wouldn't be so important for it to go out of focus.

Differing Points of View

There's a tourist point near here where young couples attach padlocks to chains as an expression of their dedication to each other.



Nevertheless, some couples may have differing points of view on the trip.  Take this padlock for example.

Side A (Mom's message)

"Second time with kids, fifth time as a couple.  Keeping in good health so we can come every year.  -Shyoko, Mom"

Side B (presumably dad's message)

"Sick of coming every year.  Will bring a different woman next year.  About time for a divorce.  5th time - probably never again."

Quality of Light

I just got my first shoot-though translucent umbrella, light stand, and multi-clamp combo. Over at Strobist.blogspot.com, a site I've been frequenting of late, they make the case that a photographer is only as good as the quality of their light. Thus, I'm in a mission to improve that very thing. Here are some very quick and dirty test shots from yesterday using the umbrella.





I'm sure you'll agree that just having this single new light source makes a dramatic improvement. I'm torn on the catchlights though. On one hand, they're better than they've ever been in my photography. On the other hand, if you look at the cat, you can clearly make out the shape and spines of the umbrella. A soft box would be a far better solution, but at nearly 10x the price of an umbrella it will have to wait a bit.

Canon's 5D Mark II

If you have any interest in cameras, imaging technology, or content creation, you need to stop what you're doing, turn up your speakers, and watch this video "Reverie" by Vincent Laforet. From the very beginning I've been drooling over this new camera, but I've drooled strictly as a still photographer. This, however, just took the game to a whole new level. Canon put icing on the cake that's a whole new cake in and of itself.

Make no mistake. What you are about to see was shot on a still photo camera, using Canon's still photo lenses. Further, the entire thing was shot at ISO1600 - ISO2000. Prepare to have your mind blown.

I'm linking to a mid-def version of the video, but if your machine has the power be sure to flip to the high-def version.

Photo of the Day

For some reason, I just love photographing insects. This spider is very common in Japan, and can be seen practically everywhere as long as the temperature isn't too low.

On this day I was practicing using off-camera flash. The sun provides the back/edge lighting, while my flash provided the fill.

Canon 20D, Speedlight 580 EXII (hand-held off camera), Canon EF-S 10-22mm @22mm
1/250 at f8.0, ISO 100,

Photo of the Day

I thought I'd give you all a break from cheezy pet pictures, so here's a cheezy fireworks picture instead. This is from the August fireworks competition in Hitoyoshi. （人吉の8月の花火大会）

Moo-lah!

[Note: While most of my blog lives under Creative Commons, the three images in this post are NOT Creative Commons. I retain full rights of ownership, and you are NOT free to do with them as you please.]

So I'm sure this isn't so exciting for you folks out there in internets-land, but I just had to share that I made my first income ever from photographs I took.

I must admit that on occasion I feel a little silly having such awesome photo gear and never using it to make any money with. Today that's no longer the case. I've put up a little sign at the reception area of the hospital downstairs with (ridiculously low) pricing, and our two employees (bless their little hearts) managed to sell me not once, but twice today. The cost is about $10 for the photo sitting, and $5 per A4 (that's damn-near letter size to you Westerners) print. Two dogs came in for grooming today, and both owners left with one photo each. Here are the two images I sold.



In place of the first image I personally prefer this following one, but I guess it's just not as marketable:


(I know it's probably not a great idea to put images I sell up on my blog, but just today I'm going to let it slide since I'm drunk and celebrating.)

Ok ok. As an art-graduate, I must admit that if any of my classmates and friends from college see these, I'm going to be rather embarrassed. Seriously. Pet photos?? But you know what? The excitement of getting paid for some silly pictures I took is doing a pretty good job of trumping my art-school pride.

I did a lot of reading on the internet in order to get the setting built that you see (or rather don't see) in these photos. This is called an "infinite-white background" and they are a royal bitch to set up. Well, that's not entirely true. If you're a photographer with bags of money and a big studio, they're not so hard. If you're just starting out, the cost-of-entry can be considerable. While there are many severe flaws in the images above, I'm downright tickled that it looks as good as it does considering I'm only using a single Canon 580 EX strobe mounted directly on my camera.

I keep toying with the thought of doing a separate post on how I set up my little studio space, but so far I haven't gotten around to it. Is anyone out there interested? Perhaps if I hear back from you, I'll get around to writing it up.

East vs West, Graphically

(link in title)
These are fun to ponder. "East vs West" is a bit too large a grouping for these to be considered accurate, but they are accurate in certain specific examples. Thanks for the link, Tong.

How To Fire An Employee In Japan

Day 1, Boss: Ignore the employee completely.
Day 2, Boss: Ignore the employee completely.
Day 3, Boss: Ignore the employee completely.
Day 4, Boss: Ignore the employee completely.
Day 5, Boss: Ignore the employee completely.
Day 6, Boss: Ignore the employee completely.
Day 7, Boss: Ignore the employee completely.
.
.
.
Day??, Employee: Mr. XX, I've decided to quit.
Boss: Oh no! I'm so sorry to hear that. When is your last day?

Credit Cards in Japan

One last thing I should touch on before I rest this topic is credit cards.  If you manage to get one as a foreigner (still a rather difficult thing to do) you should know that it doesn't work like your card back home.  Well, that is unless you had an American Express card.  Visa, Mastercard, all the big credit card companies are here.  (Oh but no AmEx.)  When your credit card bill comes, you are expected to pay the entire balance in full by the due date.  If you miss your payment for that month, the card freezes immediately, and you won't be able to use it again until you pay it off.  No, you can't take three months to pay off that new laptop you just bought.

But wait, you can take three months.

Imagine you're buying $100 worth of clothes in a department store.  At the time of checkout, the clerk will ask you if you'd like to split the payments.  Usually you can choose a one-time full payment, two payments over two months, or three payments over three months.  More than three is unusual.  The department store itself is responsible for managing the split payments. Expect to pay a handling fee for choosing to pay in more than one installment.

How We Pay 'Da Bills

In the U.S., how do you pay your bills? Any bills. Utilities, groceries, rent, etc. I'm sure you all have a checking account, but how much use is that checkbook really getting these days? Do you even remember where your checkbook is? Chances are for many of you the answer is "online payment" or perhaps "credit card".

Here in Japan there is no personal checking system, and having a credit card puts you in the "lifestyles of the rich and famous" category. My personal understanding of day to day Japanese personal accounting still has a lot of growing to do, but I'm going to try to give an introduction based on my experience thus far.

How Do I Pay For This?

Face-To-Face Transactions: Cash, cash, cash.

Even small business employees' paychecks are commonly delivered in cash. Very large organizations may have a direct deposit system, but in order to participate in this you must have a bank who has a contract with your direct deposite provider. Banks which don't qualify are more common than you think. If you're purchasing something in a large chain restaraunt or a major department store, you may be able to use your credit card. Ask before you pull it out. Cash is hugely popular because it's convenient, instant, and most of all, it doesn't incur a handling fee.

Utilities & Such: Automatic account withdrawl, convenience store, account transfer, and bank window.

Automatic account withdrawl is exactly what you think it is. Every month on a fixed date, the electrical company attempts to withdraw the amount you owe them from your account. If that day happens to fall on a Sunday or national holiday, they'll attempt on the following business day. If there's not enough money in your account, they'll try again every few days following until the withdrawl goes through. They'll keep attempting for months if need-be. This method is popular because the consumer pays no handling fees, and so long as enough money is in the account, doesn't have to think about it too much. Similar to direct deposit above, your bank must have a contract with the electrical company or they won't be able to make the withdrawl. Even if you think you are with a fairly large bank, you may be asked to wait up to 24 hours while they check to be sure they have a contract with your bank. You have to be on top of your account status with this method. If, for example, the electrical company has been stuck in a loop trying to make a withdrawl that you've forgotten about for weeks, and you deposit $500 to cover that $499 bill that you know is coming from your car insurance company, then the electrical company finds that money and finally takes the $200 you owe them, you've just missed your insurance payment without realizing it. This example probably wouldn't be too awful, but if it's your home loan you miss there could be trouble.

Convenience store payments are a bit of an adjustment for us foreigners. A computer-printed bill comes to you in the mail for your electricity bill. On it is the amount you owe and a barcode. Go in to damn-near any convenience store you like, they scan the bar code with a laser wand, you pay a $2 to $3 handling fee plus the bill amount. Done. These are extremely popular because you can pay at any time you are able up until the due date, you pay in cash, the handling fee is reasonable, and there's probably three to five convenience stores much closer than your bank, you can even pay past the due date if needed. These days some companies (such as NTT Docomo) hesitate to set people up on this payment system because too many take advantage of the fact that you can pay past the deadline.

Account transfer is another system we don't see a lot of in the U.S. Perhaps this is what's happening on the back end when you do an online payment, but (to put it in nerd terms) the user interface is exposed quite differently here in Japan. This is another very commonplace way to pay for things, and probably the hardest for a foreigner to learn. Convenience store payments require little to no language skill, doing an account transfer requires that you be able to read banking terms in kanji under the time pressure of a waiting ATM machine. For this system the electrical company has told you their bank name, branch name, branch ID number, account number, and account type. Let's assume this is our first time paying the electrical company by account transfer.

1. Touch "account transfer" on the ATM screen.
2. Put in your ATM card and pin number.
3. Search for the name of the bank to which you want to make the transfer.
4. Search for the name of the branch of the bank that is the home branch of the account to whcih you want to transfer.
5. Enter the account number to which you want to transfer.
6. Enter the account type to which you want to transfer.
7. Enter your name.
8. Enter your phone number.
9. Enter the amount you want to transfer.
10. Confirmation screen: bank/branch/account/account owner to which you are transfering.
11. Confirmation screen: your name/your phone number/ammount of transfer/handling fee
12. Yes, I'm sure I want to make this transfer.
13. Would you like to record this transfer to a mag-stripe card for future transfers? (Yes is a good idea.)
14. Take the mag-stripe card, transaction receipt, and your ATM card.

Done. Now that you have that specific transaction recorded to a card, next time you can replace steps three through eight with a single step: insert mag-stripe card. Handling fees on these are hard for me to swallow. They're calculated on a sliding scale depending on how much you send. The minimum fee is about $3.50 for any amount up to around $200. Then the fee slides up to about $10 at $1,000 and over. Transfers over $1,000 are uncommon, and require a special sign-up process with your bank to allow them from an ATM. If you don't do these very often, you probably fill out a transfer request slip and do it the old-fasioned way -- at the teller window.

Teller window payments are new even to me. Some kinds of bills (the only one I can think of for sure at the moment is water and sewage) are paid directly to the bank. Hand them your bill with money, and you are considered paid-in-full.

Online/Fax Purchasing: COD, account transfer, convenience store payment, credit card.

You may have guessed that if most people don't have credit cards, ordering something online (or more commonly by fax) is a bit different as well. COD has to be the most popular way to do this. Not all companies allow it, but most do. The handling fee will run you $6 to $10. It's considered the most secure way to pay because you can confirm the product is what you ordered before you hand your money to the delivery man. Yes, that $2,000 laptop you just ordered can even be paid for by COD.

Account transfer is another common way to pay for this. It's less secure though because you wire cash into the seller's account before they've even shipped the product. Recommended only for companies you trust. See the section above on this method for more details.

Convenience store payment was also discussed above, but in the case of an online purchase the company will usually let you print the barcode yourself. You can then walk across the street to Seven Eleven and pay for your purchase only seconds after completing the online order.

Of course online orders allow credit cards, but again you have to have one first.

Paying Vendors as a Small Business: all of the above, cash/check collection.

In a one month accounting cycle as a small business, you're likely to touch every one of the above methods of payment at least once. We also have established relationships with other small local businesses such as building repair, taxi service, etc. Among these companies, at least ten of them actually send someone over to collect either cash or a check directly from us. (This also surprised me a great deal. Doesn't it cost these companies a rediculous amount of labor to send two people around the region collecting money?)

"What? Checks? You said there were no checks!" Yah, no personal checks. There are business to business checks. They were uncommon a long time ago, and are even less so now. A few things about the checking system in Japan. 1) Your business must be very well established before a bank will allow you to have a checking account. Many businesses of ten years can't even get them. 2) Your account transaction book (remember those? haha) will only show you deposits made to the account. Never withdrawls. If you want to know how much remains in the account or who has deposited those checks you passed out last week, you have to call the bank. 3) You must use one of those giant steel wheel presses that both puts ink plus a physical impression in the paper to make a check. 4) Some people take a lot of pride in being able to cut checks. 5) Swallow your pride. This system is a royal pain in the arse. Just hand the bastards cash.

I hope you've enjoyed this tour-de-force of the day-to-day grind of paying bills in Japan. Perhaps one day someone who just moved to Japan will stumble on to this and find it actually useful.

[Edit: Forgot one more thing. ATM cards are never used to make payments in Japan.]

The Japanese Postal Savings System

Will had to sign off in the midst of a question about the Japanese Postal Savings System, so I thought I'd just throw up a few words here instead of writing an email.  Also, this is written entirely from a consumer's perspective.  There's no economic analysis here.

First, let's get one thing straight.  The Postal savings system IS NOT A BANK!!  (Never you mind the ATMs, annual interest rate on deposits, home/personal loans, and automatic monthly payments to other companies/accounts of your choosing.  IT'S NOT A BANK!)

OK, I'm glad we got that out of the way.

So Will's question was, "Isn't the personal banking system in Japan essentially a monopoly?"  To which I sought clarification, "A monopoly as in, only one bank for anyone to use?"  (I know it seems like an uff-duh question, but in fact it's not a monopoly at all so I wanted to be sure we were still talking about the same thing.)  "Yeah.  Isn't the postal system your only option?"

The postal savings system here is the largest personal banking money storage system in Japan.  It's larger than any bank by many hundreds of times.

Why?

Size.  There's a post office in every town of Japan.  When you travel, you can access your money at any post office ATM, and for about a $3 handling fee, even make withdrawls in most convenience store ATMs.

Why is that such a big deal?  Well with the regular banking system, once you leave your bank's region you can't access your money anymore.

A personal annecdote:

Yoko, Leif, Kevin, and I had plans to visit a small town near Mt. Fuji.  We would take a three hour bus ride from Shinjuku, get a room at a Ryokan, visit an amusement park and a local lake for some paddleboating.  We left home very early so the ATMs weren't open yet (ATM hours are roughly 8am to 11pm -- 24hour ATMs are unheard of.)  I didn't have any money, but figured I'd just get some when we arrived in Shinjuku before getting on the buss.  In Shinjuku we searched high and low for an ATM that would take my card.  No bank ATM would be useable - very few banks have interoperability arrangements.  That meant I had to find a convenience store ATM.  Lawson?  No dice.  FamilyMart?  Sorry.  AM/PM?  Go fish.  Finally we found one that had my bank's logo on it.  Now this is promising!  I put in my card, and was promptly told that I couldn't do anything because the ATM system was down for scheduled maintenance.  Scheduled monthly maintenance is pretty much standard on all kinds of systems such as this, even for major banks and web services.  I can't remember how we got through the issue anymore - I think perhaps Yoko ended up making a cash withdrawl against her parent's credit card - but whatever it was it certainly DIDN'T involve me accessing the money in my bank account.  This is in Shinjuku mind you.  Hard-core downtown Tokyo.  Not podunks-ville.  I remember being a little miffed when Leif walked into a nearby post office branch, put his Wells Fargo card into their ATM, and withdrew money directly from his account in Japanese Yen.  (IT'S NOT A BANK!!)

While nothing has happened to me personally yet, I imagine one could get themselves rather screwed in a country where your money is inaccessible after 11pm, and the only place you can use credit cards is major department stores.  A word to the wise: in Japan, always be sure you have enough cash to get you through the night.

So ultimately, accessibility has to be the number one best reason to have a postal savings account.  I'm pretty sure it was shortly after returning from this very trip that I opened one.  There are some things that you can't do at the post office, and some things the post office can do that other banks can't, but I'll cover those in another post.