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Tag Archive 'hokkaido'

time for festivals. yosakoi soran

Posted by rocksea on 07 Apr 2006 | Tagged as: japan

Click for the original image

Winter is saying adieu and am impatiently waiting for the spring to arrive at Hokkaido. Spring is already in Honshu, main island of Japan where Tokyo, Osaka and other cities are, and they are already having cherry blossoms! Hokkaido is the northern most island, and we have spring, cherry blossoms, everything late  On top of everything, we have winter early!!!! sho!

Spring and we awake full of life and dandelions to a lot of festivals and parties. Let me get into the mood by browsing and bringing back some of the photos of the yesteryear.

Herez a set of photos from one of the greatest dance festival, the Yosakoi Soran. Yosakoi Soran was started just 12 years before, by a university student like me. It gained popularity so fast that it is one of the most vibrant festivals of Sapporo. Yosakoi Soran Festival combines Yosakoi-Festival in Kochi prefecture of Shikoku and Soran folk music of Hokkaido. 45,000 participants and 1.5 million audience, as reported over the internet.

 

Click for the original image
yosakoi-soran-9 * Yosakoi Soran 2005 * 1024 x 766 * (222KB)yosakoi-soran-91 * Yosakoi Soran 2005 * 800 x 599 * (128KB)yosakoi-soran-5 * Yosakoi Soran: Yosakoi is dynamic dancing and Soran song is rhythmical. was celebrated for the first time in 1991, on the idea of a student. * 1024 x 766 * (279KB)Click for the original image

Pretty japanese school gals huh? Their uniforms are popular that even after graduating they like to wear it around  Now you know why am waiting for winter to get over
 
Those are from Yosakoi Soran 2005. Some old shots from Yosakoi Soran 2004 are here:
 

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mating

Posted by rocksea on 20 Jan 2006 | Tagged as: photography, prakriti

hmm..uhhh..ohh?? this guy seems to be interesting. but simi 1, look, look at those photos, those poems.. all circumnavigate around one central theme, mating! seems hez not researching in oceanography. he must be researching in mating!! This was what simi’s friend told her when she showed this website to him.

So is it? I think so.

Is there any better theme to talk about? The very existence of life thrives on mating. Though human beings assign a lot of terms like love, passion, blah blah (me don’t mean itz all blah blah, me mean etc etc, ok?) to sex we can’t deny the role of hormones, those animal part in us which determines (though not solely 2) this love and passion to a great extent. Ok, letz not stray away. Just thought of sharing some warm pixels emphasizing the theme, mating and here we go:

Bugmates. My aunty asked me “eda, athu thala-kuthane aano?!!” (have you put it upside-down?). Nah, itz as you see it.. defying gravity. This was taken from the Hokkaido University Botanical Gardens, while the sun was shining at Sapporo. Yet to identify these bugs.

bugs_mating_001 * bugmates. gravity dare not play on these playmates. hokkaido university botanical gardens, sapporo, japan * 1024 x 766 * (111KB)

Dragonflies mating. These are male (red) and female (orange) from the same species Orthetrum chrysis (Family: Libellulidae). So what are these guys doing? The acrobatic mating formation 3, sometimes assumed in mid-flight, is commonly known as the wheel formation. The position of the male’s rear end is how the male caught the female at the tandem position. Then the female arches her abdomen around to transfer the sperm in a pouch in the male’s 2nd abdominal segment into a special pouch of her own, completing the wheel formation. By the pond at my home in Kerala.

orthetrum_chrysis_dragonfly_mating_003 * Dragonflies Orthetrum chrysis male ( red coloured one) and female (orange, in wheel position) mating. Family: Libellulidae. near the pond @ home, kerala. * 1024 x 766 * (186KB)

Houseflies mating! Though this one isn’t as colorful as those above, I feel an affinity towards it as may be because it was one of my first shots on mating or may be because it is just small and simple. Foothills of Usu mountains, 4-5 kms drive from Sapporo.

housefly_mating_001 * houseflies mating. Tomomitsu Minato's guesthouse premises, Usu, South Hokkaido * 1024 x 766 * (156KB)

Damselflies mating at a pond at Noboribetsu, on the way to Usu.

damselfly_mating_003 * damselflies mating at a pond. Noboribetsu, South Hokkaido * 1024 x 766 * (119KB)damselfly_mating_001 * damselflies mating at a pond. Noboribetsu, South Hokkaido * 1024 x 766 * (105KB)damselfly_mating_002 * damselflies mating at a pond. Noboribetsu, South Hokkaido * 1024 x 766 * (107KB)

1 names and other details provided in this website are not fictitious and they can be traced back to living characters.
2 social/political/cultural influences apply (see how neutral i can be!!)
3 the author, in no ways will be responsible for any casualties resulting from taking these posts into practice. the characters performing in these photographs are specially trained

 

 

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monsoon on my desk

Posted by rocksea on 16 Dec 2005 | Tagged as: prakriti

on my research work at Hokkaido University

monsoon asterix

Monsoon, oh how thy rule the daily life of petty Indians!!

The minds, the economy, the agriculture, the life and prosperity and happiness of Indian subcontinent heavily depend on the ups and downs of the monsoon. Those rains bring mixed feelings. Oh the picture of the students running with uniforms and school bags drenched in water, the rushing vehicles splashing muddy water on the pedestrians, tiny paper boats sailing thru, these are some of the daily shots from my part of the world in kerala. Everyone but are unanimous in heartily welcoming the first spell of rains, as they bring a relief from the hot summer days. When it rains every day and for long time but it used to give nightmares to daddy cuz if it rained too much, our rubber trees can’t be milked and poor me won’t be able to buy new pants n shirts n shoes hehe. That is how monsoon used to affect me other than the several nights when the power went off for days [when the winds n the rain throw the trees n branches over the electric lines or when the water level in the dams are low], several days when the thunderstorms warned me not to come out, several days when coming from school or college my shoes weighed a ton from the water soaked in. Ya it affected me too as a change of season and daily routine of taking umbrellas but not as much as some other small farmers whose daily bread depended on it. Our part of India was mostly blessed with plenty rain during the monsoons.

Rains all over India, dances in different proportions, giving variabilities in space and time. Some parts of India like western ghats[southwest India] and the ganges mahanadi basin [central east India] receives rain in plenitude while other parts like tamil nadu in the south east and the north western parts of India receive weak rainfall. Droughts, floods happen at the same time at different corners of the subcontinent. Agricultural sector, Indian economy, daily life all listen to the rhythm of rain. The peacock’s dance or the curves of the eyebrows of a farmer on his field used to give signals on the monsoon. Now here lying around on my desk are so many plots and charts and I’m trying to find out such signals and curves which can write out some of the short paragraphs out of the epic called monsoon.

To put it simply, I’m having a look at the subseasonal variability of air sea interaction over the Indian Ocean and how it influences the subseasonal and spatial variability of monsoon over India.

Oceanographer CTD launch at Sagar Kanya, Arabian Sea

Thatz me at the ARMEX (ARabian sea Monsoon EXperiment) cruise on ORV Sagar Kanya, during Mar-Apr 2003. Instrument in view contains Nansen bottles [for water sampling at different depths], CTD [measures conductivity (salinity), temperature, pressure (depth)], ADCP [current profiler] etc. These are lowered to the deep ocean, collecting data all the way and sending it back to a computer terminal.

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ainu museum hokkaido

Posted by rocksea on 15 Dec 2005 | Tagged as: prakriti

Ainu means human. Ainu people were the original inhabitants of hokkaido and the ainu culture extended from 1400 to early 1700s. Later under control of Japanese from mainland. Ainus are still here, a few, trying to preserve some of their culture. Most of the others have got mixed with the japanese community.

ainu museum and toya lake; autumn trip from hokkaido university

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homestay at furubira

Posted by rocksea on 15 Dec 2005 | Tagged as: prakriti

Homestay at Furubira, arranged by the Furubira Exchange Community and Keiko Asano Sensei. Spent the days with Raymond & Junko [Etos] n the Furubira people

homestay at furubira

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