Laughing Knees

Tochitsubo violets rearing their heads from amidst last year’s leaves. Ashitaka Mountains, Shizuoka, 2000.

Behind my old home in the town of Susono, at the foot of Mt. Fuji, huddles a small group of mountains known as the Ashitaka Mountains. It is a small group of rugged peaks, the interior of which is mostly inaccessible because [...]

Dawn is always my favorite time of day. People are still sleeping and the quietness draws attention to things that are often overlooked later in the day, things like the speed of the clouds passing overhead, the sway of the trees, the quick chirrups of sparrows darting over the rooftops, and the shifting of the [...]

Little Egret stepping along the Tama River bed. 1996.

In the midst of Tokyo, which struggles to retain any of the wild creatures that make their home here, the rivers still manage to sustain quite a large number of creatures, despite the walling up of banks and straightening of river courses. There is now not a [...]

Ice floes off the coast of Shiretoko, Hokkaido. May,1994

One of my childhood dreams, ever since I first visited the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, was to one day witness the ice floes filling the bay of the Okhotsk Sea. I got my first taste of what the cold and the ice from the Arctic meant [...]

Rufous Turtle Dove sleeping as she sits on her nest incubating her eggs. Nakai, Tokyo,1999

At this time of the year birds are nesting all over the northern hemisphere. Many birds have already long gotten underway with hatchlings that now varaciously demand that the parents deliver their food. Like pizza delivery boys, the parents oblige by [...]