As a multi-themed visual artist, anyone who has worked with me or has joined one of my workshops knows I am non-stop 24-7.   Some have even referred to me as the ‘Energizer Bunny’ or commented, “You have too much energy, can I have some of what you’re taking?”  Aside from the pun, I love my job, and I love to be on the go.  Zen and the ‘Beginner’s Mindset’ allows me to constantly refresh my perspective so I have no desire to shove my visual arts abilities in other people’s faces or to hear praise and reassurance from my peers, and sometimes I even feign ignorance, or I pretend not to hear the persistent questions about my work, refusing to feed their spiral of negativity.  I’ll always approach the visual arts as a beginner, but as contradictory as this sounds, I do enjoy mud slinging now and again, and in some themes of pro photography I’m in the top 5% aiming for the top 1%.  Only time will tell.  I am still a beginner in my mind, so I am enthralled by the challenge.  I have the dogma ideology discipline of the Hagakure, and I love the visual arts so much that I feel a deep and unabiding need to finish any project.  My first conversation with John Cornicello was 2 hours and 14 minutes, and after a decade break from speaking on film, I have some catching up to do, and it could take an entire week of photo discussions for me to feel caught up.  My office manager, staff writer, and I are working on an upcoming book with my name rather than a pseudonym for the first time.  On July 22nd, at the same time 10 am Pacific Daily Savings Time (2 am July 23rd JST), I’m going to discuss topics that I was not able to cover in the first discussion, such as Japan’s four seasons.

I am going to discuss various themes, one of them is my annual Hokkaido Photo Tour, including Hokkaido wildlife such as the Red-crowned cranes, Steller’s Sea Eagles, and the White-tailed Eagles and their winter feeding grounds on pack ice off the coast of Rausu in the Shiretoko Wildlife Refuge National Park in Hokkaido, Japan.  I will include spectacular images of eagles clutching fish in their talons, in flight, and some eagles in strife.  Also included will be the Ezo Red Fox, Shima Enaga, and more of Hokkaido’s menagerie of wild animals, but no photographic discussion of Hokkaido would be complete with out mentioning the largest herd of Sika Deer on the planet as photographed by me, winter in Mt.Fuji, snow monkeys, and finally the Kawazu sakura with its avian companions the brown-eared bulbul and mejiro, also known as the warbling white-eye, that love to slurp and devour the sweet nectar of the cherry blossom bud flower.

Once I reach Japan’s northern most island, once our photo adventure has begun, I tell all my participants to look up to see Red-Crowned Cranes, also known as snow ballerinas.  Their courtship dance is as graceful as ballerinas.  They bow to one another, then raise their heads towards the sky and call in unison, the pair or the entire flock will leap into the air at the same time commencing in the courtship dance.  Out on the pack ice, I see the Steller’s Sea Eagles, huge and beautiful and one of the most fierce diurnal birds of prey on our planet, relics from prior ice ages.  They feed out on the pack-ice in the rich fishing waters of Japan's north.  The White-tailed eagle which is smaller and native to Japan also feeds on pack ice next to the Steller's Sea Eagles; tensions are high when fishing and the White-tailed Eagle hold there own against the much larger and legendary sea eagles.  The area is also home to the largest herd of Sika deer on our planet.

Part of Hokkaido’s northwest is comprised of Akanko, Kushiroko, and Mashuko Lakes, which are among the clearest and cleanest on our planet, and lake Mashuko is the 2nd cleanest on our planet; the mountainous landscape is breathtaking, and is sacred land including burial grounds.  The First Nations People of Japan, the Ainu, are world-class artisans including wood carving, painting, and storytelling among other creative pursuits; I visit with them with clients and we photograph their museum-quality arts and crafts. We then experience the Ikor theatre, the Ainu performance of spiritual, cultural awakening, during the evening’s lomante fire performance where we have press box seats, followed by fireworks by the lakeside.

During the spring is my annual Japan cherry blossom tour which is a cross-country adventure due to the fickle cherry blossoms and how they open, and like anyone of my Japan photo tours, Mt. Fuji is included along with snow monkeys, a few castles, shrines, and temples with some cultural and candid festival photography.

If international visitors associate one thing with a Japanese spring, it’s cherry blossoms, and cherry blossoms photo tours carry an extra significance due to the fact that they are one of Japan’s cultural emblems.  Over 20 years of experience pursuing the perfect cherry blossoms means I understand how to scout out the perfect cherry blossoms.  I take my participants on a cross-country cherry blossom expedition with a full-bloom guarantee while members of other cherry blossom tours may not even have the chance to see one full-bloom sakura and their tour leaders throw up their hands saying they can’t predict when the blossoms will open, bloom, or fall away.  If you take a tour with this type of company and you actually see a full-bloom sakura, you should immediately go and buy a lottery ticket because you’ll never have a luckier day.  These companies use smartphone apps and Google as their main sources of information.  Good luck!

Photographing sakura also means seeing the Mejiro, which I have nicknamed 'little ninja' because of their lighting fast speed and acrobatic abilities; they move quickly up and down cherry blossom tree branches gulping down the nourishing sweet nectar of the cherry blossom flower just as they freshly bloom.  They are as lighting fast as a kingfisher on the move. Timing and patience is everything to view and photograph the Japanese white eye and cherry blossoms together.  I know only a handful of birding photography leaders in Japan who can shoot them - the how, when, and where.

My personal photo expeditions and Japan autumn leaves photography tour have the most breathtaking scenery Japan has to offer.  I am humbled every year as my clients and I journey as pilgrims on the time-honored route and embrace the ancient villages with their majestic landscapes shrines, temples, and castles.  On that tour, the journey begins in the Yatsugatake Chushin Kogen Quasi Nature reserve, in the Japan Southern Alps.  My participants and I use the ancient pilgrim route that legendary 'Samurai-Takeda Shingen' was known to use with its many mirrored ponds while viewing Japanese autumn maple leaves and Mt. Fuji in the backdrop, 130 km away. 

No autumn in Japan, however, would be complete without a trip to Jigokudani Yaenkoen Monkey Park and seeing the Japanese Macaque.  The Japanese Macaque is a terrestrial Old World monkey species that is native to Japan. They have become known as the snow monkey due to the fact they are the most northern living non-human primates on Earth.  At first, the hot spring bath up in the foothills were built for human use where the source of the hot springs water pours naturally from the ground and is fed to the famous hot springs village Yudanaka where visitors have gone to relax in the healing hot springs for hundreds of years.  But soon after the construction of hot springs baths in the foothills, the monkeys soon claimed them as their domain.  After five years of scouting, for this year and next, I have added Niigata to my autumn leaves tour which includes rice terraces and way off the beaten path locations where few westerners have ever tread, and in some cases only once every decade. 

Festivals are held during the entire Japanese summer, and Murakami is one of the most amazing off the beaten path locations to enjoy.  During July every year the Murakami city is home to the Taisai Festival where mikoshi, or portable shrines are carried by townsfolk as part of the city-wide celebration in appreciation of the local shrine which folklore dictates was relocated there nearly 400 years ago.

Summer sights continue with Niigata’s amazing floral beauty.  During summer, the ajisai, hydrangeas in English, spring into bloom across the prefecture, the soil and its pH level dictating what color the blooming flowers will be.  The range is a royal shade of purple to cobalt blue and all the way to white with just a tinge of pink as an accent.  The flowers also bring birds to the ajisai combining floral photo ops with birding photo ops.  Nearly all of Niigata is blessed with abundant flowers and other agriculture, not to mention some amazing rice wines which I am happy to share with participants who join me during any of my Japan photo tours.

No visit to Japan for photography would be complete with a visit to Mt. Fuji, but I talked about that in my first photo discussion, so for summer, I am going to introduce the Aokigahara jukai, the forest that was created in 864, basically a forest created in volcanic planting pots that surrounds the base of Mt. Fuji, a fantastic mystical forest that spans 24 square kilometers across the Northwest base of Mt. Fuji.  I introduce others to it so they can have their own Japan photo adventures there as I did when I first arrived in Japan years ago.

I may change up the order of the discussion starting with a Japanese ryokan that inspired Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away, or mix in discussions of cities, art, people, or any of my various multi-themes photographic pursuits.