Once again, I'm having technical difficulties (blog posting software seems antiquated compared to other software out there), so I'll try to break this post up into smaller posts and hope for the best.
Yumi's 3-year long wait for me to be free of the yoke which was my Ph.D. is now over and she has wasted no time filling up our social calendar. In the month we've been back to Japan (mostly in the 2 weeks since my Ph.D. corrections were submitted and accepted), we've managed to do the following:
Sunday, June 13
Joe O'Donnell Photos
My beautiful wife convinced me to buy a bicycle so that we could both go places in the evenings and weekends. Some huge percentage of people here have bicycles and they are very utilitarian; they almost all have baskets in the front for groceries, etc. Yumi got one shortly after I moved here and I resisted until February or March. But once I did capitulate, I enjoyed riding it; so much so that on the weekend of this photo exhibit, I had already logged about 6 hours on the bike exploring the neighborhood.
So when said wife said we should go to this photo exhibit about 5 miles away, I suggested we ride our bikes (the ones she made us buy, I reminded her). It was a beautiful, if hot, day and I was insistent. I told her it would be fine if she wanted to take the train and meet me there but I really wanted to ride. She apparently preferred to suffer with me than go by herself so she conceded. An hour later, two sweaty and tired bikers arrived at the photo exhibit (I did enjoy the ride even with the massive hills of Yokohama; Yumi - not so much).
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Joe O'Donnell was an Army soldier tasked with photographing the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and he later went on to be a White House photographer. In Japan he used two cameras, one for the Army and one personal one. The exhibit is of the personal photographs he took of the atomic devastation and they are quite impactful. It's fitting that I'm posting this today as it is the 63rd anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima.
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