#Sea of Japan

[awehbra]

[maoyeamh]

[japandreamscapes]

A storied cove, Sea of Japan #japan #japandreamscapes #日本 ＃写真好きな人と繋がりたい ＃写真 ＃ファインダー越しの私の世界 ＃旅行 ＃旅 #travel #travelphotography #photooftheday #picoftheday #photo #photographylovers #seaofjapan #seascape #seascapephotography #海 ＃海景 ＃日本海

[dailylighthouse]

Wakkanai Lighthouse

Wakkanai, Hokkaidō, Japan

Source: Wikimedia Commons | Wikimedia Commons

Constructed: 1966

Have a favorite lighthouse? Curious about lighthouses in general? Send an ask!

[donsasuke]

[sitting-on-me-bum]

Unidentified hermit crab from the Sea of Japan by Alexander Semenov Via Flickr: With Balanus barnacles on the shell

[redsamuraiii]

Okunoshima by Visit HIROSHIMA

[flexingtyger99]

The Sea of Japan

[alexxx-malev]

Vladivostok 52 by Alexxx Malev Via Flickr: Russia. Vladivostok. Russky Island. Russky Bridge Владивосток. Остров Русский. Русский мост

[thesystemphotography]

Glass Cove (Стеклянная Бухта), Vladivostok, Russia

-anxiety soother

[head-post]

North Korea fires unidentified projectile towards Sea of Japan ahead of Trump inauguration

North Korea launched an unidentified projectile towards the Sea of Japan on Tuesday, Korean media reported citing the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Republic of Korea Armed Forces.

The South Korean military later clarified that North Korea launched several projectiles, presumably short-range ballistic missiles, from the area of Kanggye City in North Korea’s Jagan Province.

The launch was carried out around 9:30 local time, the missile was launched towards the Sea of Japan. The committee said in a statement:

“The military has stepped up surveillance and vigilance in preparation for further launches.”

On January 6, the South Korean army command said that the DPRK conducted the first hypersonic missile test of the year. The South Korean military said the missile flew about 1,100 kilometres and fell into the Sea of Japan.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said that the new DPRK missile can overcome any missile defence. He called the main purpose of the test the need to strengthen North Korea’s deterrent forces and emphasised that only a few countries have such weapons today.

Read more HERE

[miphotosblog]

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.

[maviyenot]

[warningsine]

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea test-fired a suspected intermediate-range ballistic missile toward waters off its eastern coast Tuesday, South Korea’s military said, as it pushes to advance its weapons aimed at remote U.S. targets in the Pacific.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the missile was launched from an area near the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, and flew about 600 kilometers (372 miles) before landing in the sea between the Korean Peninsula and Japan.

Lee Sung Joon, spokesperson of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the launch likely followed up on a North Korean test in March of a solid-fuel engine built for a new intermediate-range hypersonic missile it has been developing. If perfected, such weapons could reach the U.S. Pacific military hub of Guam and beyond, experts say.

Lee didn’t specify why the South Koreans were assessing the missile as an IRBM or whether it was flown at less than its capacity, but said the North Koreans were likely experimenting with new warhead technologies.

Japan’s Defense Ministry gave more details in its assessment, saying the missile flew about 650 kilometers (403 miles) while reaching a maximum altitude of 100 kilometers (62 miles) before landing in waters outside of Japan’s exclusive economic zone. The Japanese military didn’t immediately say whether it assessed the missile as intermediate range or something else.

Hours after the launch, Seoul’s Defense Ministry announced that South Korea, the United States and Japan conducted a combined aerial exercise above waters near Jeju island that involved at least one nuclear-capable U.S. B-52 bomber.

The United States in recent months has been increasing its deployment of strategic assets to the region, also including aircraft carriers and missile-firing submarines, in a show of force against North Korea. The South Korean ministry said Tuesday’s training, which also involved the three countries’ fighter jets, was aimed at enhancing their response capabilities against North Korean nuclear and missile threats.

It was the North’s first known launch event since March 18, when North Korean leader Kim Jong Un supervised a live-fire drill of artillery systems designed to target South Korea’s capital.

Japan’s coast guard shared an assessment of the country’s Defense Ministry that the missile has already landed but still urged caution for vessels passing the area.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told reporters that no damage related to the missile has been reported. He said North Korea’s frequent missile launches “threaten the peace and safety of not only Japan but also the region and the international security.”

Tensions in the region have risen since 2022 as Kim used Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a distraction to accelerate his testing of missiles and other weapons. The United States and South Korea have responded by expanding their combined training and trilateral drills involving Japan and sharpening their deterrence strategies built around strategic U.S. assets.

There are concerns that North Korea could further dial up pressure in an election year in the United States and South Korea.

Following the March 19 test of the solid-fuel IRBM engine, Kim said the strategic value of such weapons would be just as important as his intercontinental ballistic missiles targeting the U.S. mainland.

In recent years, North Korea has been focusing on developing more weapons with built-in solid propellants. Those weapons are easier to move and hide and can be made to launch quicker than liquid-propellant missiles, which need to be fueled before launch and cannot stay fueled for long periods of time.

Kim has also vowed to acquire hypersonic missiles that can overwhelm its adversaries’ missile defense systems. Other weapons North Korea have tested this year include cruise missiles and “super-large” multiple rocket launchers aimed at the Seoul capital area.

The latest launch came two days after North Korea reaffirmed its plans to launch several reconnaissance satellites this year. South Korea’s military said Monday there were no signs that a satellite launch is impending at the North’s main launch facility in the northwest.

Kim has described satellites as crucial for monitoring U.S. and South Korean military movements and enhancing the threat of his nuclear-capable missiles. Last November, North Korea put a military spy satellite into orbit for the first time.

[editionbm]

Beach Park on Japan Sea

[zegalba]

The Ama (sea women) are a group of japanese divers famous for collecting pearls.

Even in modern times, ama dive without scuba gear or air tanks, making them a traditional sort of free-diver.