Tōjinbō II
Following on from my last post, it struck me that one can either return to a location and see all of the changes, not help but make comparisons to how things were (for good or for worse), or the location remains exactly how you left it. It’s usually the manmade world that will change the most in a period of 10 years, though natural disasters and erosion can also drastically impact the natural world, of course.
Walking around Tokyo, much is the same as when I lived there, somehow now over 10 years ago. Differences are that the number of foreigners has increased dramatically, there are far more western and Chinese tourists all around Tokyo. There are more queues for “attractions”, or rather, places of social-media “interest” (i.e. places that everyone saw whilst doomscrolling instagram, and decide they must take a photo at this location, or make “content” for reels and shorts. Tokyo’s opening hours have also changed due to the pandemic and things are either slowly recovering, or we are now in a “new normal” (i.e., they’ve changed). I think it’s the latter, that we will not return to many situations “pre-covid” as it marked such a huge shift in many countries around the world. The rest of Japan still has the tourist influx – a special shout out to Kyoto 京都 – but for those brave enough to venture out of the smartphone-recommendations, there’s a lot more to explore.
I am aware of some of the irony in having a photography blog when I so clearly chastise social media and those running from location to the next to post the next photo/video. I suppose many of the locations we visited were either completely sporadic or at the very least did not come from a list derived from an “influencer”. I guess there’s nothing wrong with learning about places or finding out things from social media, but it does feel much more satisfying to stumble upon something using methods a little more “old school” (word of mouth, simple maps, etc) and take out your camera accordingly.
So, these rocks have looks like this for thousands of years. For hundreds of years, this location has unfortunately been a famous suicide spot in Japan (there are many). Interestingly, the game *Pokémon Go* has been credited with drastically reducing suicides (all around Japan) as people are using their phone cameras to locate the Pokémon in the augmented world, and I guess if you’re so low that you’re going to kill yourself, you don’t really want to have a load of people filming you. So, there’s a big plus for smartphones.
It’s unsurprising that something that’s been here for *millions of years* looks the same as when i saw it almost exactly 13 years ago. Perhaps the surface of the rocks has changed ever so slightly, but I couldn’t tell you. I have a different camera, though. My eyes are worse, but the camera is better. Go figure.
I first came here en route to a field location for a research lab I was visiting with my colleague, and one thing I did notice, is that the surrounding shops were far less numerous, and far less busy. I felt a little sad for the locals here - they rely on crab fishing and tourism, with the latter probably peaking in the 1980s. No new buildings have been made since the 1960s or 1970s from what I could tell, and upkeep stopped in the 90s. This is the case for much of rural Japan, as much of the domestic tourism has completely dried up and people now fly to Korea, Southeast Asia, or China for their holidays.
Tōjinbō (東尋坊) is a series of cliffs on the Sea of Japan in Japan. It is located in the Antō part of Mikuni-chōin Sakai, Fukui Prefecture. The cliffs average 30 metres (98 ft) in height and stretch for 1 km (3,281 ft).[1] The area is part of the Echizen-Kaga Kaigan Quasi-National Park.
The cliffs have an official website, and much like everything else, the way the Japanese “do the internet” is very… Japanese. Which is a polite way of saying that Japanese websites are pretty awful to look at, but, and it’s a crucial but, they are heavily text-based and have good readability (if you read Japanese). This is not something that can be said for the general “western” internet, which has large images, slower loading times, big amounts of data etc, all to look “modern”. I guess the Japanese thought, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. On the other hand, we can see the copyright for that website is 2002-2006, which tells you everything.
This post marks the first post written entirely on my iPod (iPad Pro, 13” M4). It’s quite an interesting journey, starting on this very trip to Japan. I got the iPad to edit photos on the go, and to use for blogging. Mission accomplished! Though it has been a somewhat painful journey. I would have saved myself an awful lot of time if I would have purchased a MacBook Air instead, but there are reasons—aren’t there always? Firstly, I have a 12” MacBook. It has an i5 processor, and is great for its diminutive size and weight, truly. The 13” iPad and Magic Keyboard are larger and heavier by quite a margin. Where the iPad wins, is a) touchscreen and pen, b) raw computing power. The M4 chip is underused in this machine, but it means that there’s never any lag, that editing 62MP, 150 MB RAW files is fast and trivial. Opening them on the little 12” MacBook I’ve not tried. The time i will save editing photos and blogging on the iPad will make up for the setup time. Secondly, the new MacBook Airs are great machines and very capable, but ironically they’re somehow too big for me. Somehow that is a ridiculous statement, as the iPad 13” is the same size and weight, with the keyboard. But there’s the hook—the iPad can be just a screen, and last days on its battery. The catch with that hook? iOS. A great software, no doubt, but quite clunky when it comes to coding and programming, or when the user wants to “get things done”.
There are some very good workarounds, and some clunky ones. In another post, I will detail the process, as well as share my iOS Shortcut that allows me with one click to publish a post directly from my minimalist and distraction-free editor, *[Bear](https://bear.app)*. I’ve used Lightroom for over a decade, and though I am now a user of the iOS app, the desktop version is the better software. The things with the iPad, is that you have the Apple Pencil (Pro, yay) which was one of the main reasons I wanted to go into this rabbit hole in the first place. I can import RAW files directly into the iPad and edit them *on the go* rather than wait until I get home to the Mac. This is great when travelling, and the idea was that I would blog “on the road”. That completely failed, as it’s January 2025 and the photos here, bar one, are from October 2024. Small steps, I guess.
The big news, the gherkin under the bun, is that after 13 years I am leaving Squarespace. The costs have crept up year after year, to my current plan which will now be just under $200/year. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. There are many other reasons I am leaving Squarespace, which I will go into at length, but in short I have migrated my entire website over to GitHub. This was not a painless task, and took many hours. Then I needed to find a way to write posts for the blog, which is quirky enough when using GitHub but is almost comical when using an iPad, which is basically a large iPhone. The good news is that the excellent software Working Copy is a fully featured GitHub client. After playing around with it a little I very much enjoyed it, and decided to buy the app for its reasonable price, as I can use it for more than just my own website. The aforementioned Bear app was to be my editor of choice when writing on the iPad, and so I needed to somehow get my markdown Bear notes into Working copy. So after lots of online searches and trials and errors, and many hours, I had my shortcut up and running, so that I can “share” the post to the workflow, and within about 10 seconds, the post is published online*. Text is converted as required, images are resized and pushed to the repository, and there we go. I still have to figure out two things: 1) comments, and 2) likes. Likes are less important, but thank you for liking! Comments, I may use Disqus. I have a few regulars to the blog that will often comment, and it means a lot to me that people do enjoy the photos and ramblings, or find them useful, or want to discuss things further. I’ll need to build the functionality into the new site, but we’ll get there.
The kicker with this setup is that Apple could break all this functionality with a simple software update. Either I can avoid the software update (rolling back iOS is very challenging), or find other solutions. The good news is that unless things change drastically with GitHub, my site will remain there, hosted for free, and I can then find another solution. Editing directly will always be an option, but using a WYSIWYG editor is intuitive, so I would rather work like this if possible.
That wraps up the post. I have lots more photos from Japan to publish, as well as from elsewhere. I’ll also be taking photos this year and posting them. I will aim for a minimum of 1 post per week. I know that it’s important to be consistent in life, with anything really, and this really is the case for a blog. It’s no good if you land on a blog and see no posts for 2 years, or if posts are every few days, then a few months gap, etc.
So, until next time!
*actually the post is then pushed to GitHub and it takes a few more seconds to process.