I just returned home a few days ago from a 12 day trip to Japan. No, I didn’t do any blogging from there as I have on my other recent trips. This was my third trip to Japan – the first two having been in 2004 and 2005 – but the first on a tour and the first with my mom coming along.

I went with her on a tour of Hong Kong and Thailand five years ago, so I told her I would take her someplace else this year and Japan was the choice as she’d never been there and as I had recommended it. I figured that a tour would be easier all around for such a visit, and things went pretty well. Finding time to blog was not a priority, but now that I’m back, I can write about it a bit.

Most of the places the tour visited I’d been to before – Tokyo, Kanazawa and Kyoto – but we also visited the Hakone region, which offers some beautiful views of Mount Fuji, which I had never seen before. I was also lucky to see it this time, as the mountain is notorious for being shrouded in clouds most of the time, but when we were there that famous conical top was clearly visible, though the cloudy backdrop didn’t allow it to stand out as much as it would on a clear day. (Still, no real complaints from me.)

You can see one of my photos of Fuji-san, as the Japanese call it (never Fuji-yama!), made with my new Canon S90 pocket digital camera. At the top here is one of my favorite photos from the trip – a plant in a window on a beautiful street in Kyoto called Shinbashi-dori.

I even went back the following night with my Pentax 67 camera and a tripod to photograph it with black & white film – even though it was pouring rain. (As I explained to people, photographing at night can be difficult and photographing in the rain can be difficult, but photographing at night in the rain can be very difficult indeed!) Regarding film, in the 12 days I only shot 13 rolls of 220 BW film – much less than usual on a trip to a place like Japan – but the trip was more about being with my mother and taking her to someplace new.

Still, on those 13 rolls, I think there are some good images. One day, when the film is all developed – whenever that will be – I’ll scan some and post them here. In the meantime, I’ll be posting some photos from the new pocket camera. I also have loads of film to still scan from my earlier trips to Japan. Stay tuned.