okinawa – Page 4 – basili mobile images

6:22

Posted on September 28, 2020February 19, 2021 by basili

The skies over Okinawa are spectacular: ever-changing canvases painted by wind and cloud and sun. The cloud formations are endlessly fascinating, whether monumental sculpted cumulonimbus masses, smudged impressionistic stratus layers or wispy painterly cirrus streaks. The skies are of course at their most dramatic as the sun is setting, the blue and grey vistas charged with gold. By the shimmering sea is the best place to witness them and the first impulse is to photograph them.

I stood on the beach and did just that, framing a section of the sky over the sea as the sun was low over the horizon. I took a photo — the photo above — and immediately wanted to take more. I decided to make a series of similar photos, to capture and highlight the changing skies. It’s far from an original idea, but I decided to take a photo each day, for a week, framing the sky above the sea from the same spot and at the same time as that first photo: 6:22.

Each day, we’re gifted beautiful variations on a theme, but the best part is the encore that comes after the sun slips below the horizon. On a good day, if the clouds are right, the sky is transformed into a series of breathtaking canvases tinted with a spectrum of crimsons, oranges and pinks that gradually fade to black.

Nowadays

Posted on September 22, 2020February 19, 2021 by basili

Nowadays I love riding my bike. In the city it wasn’t always so: sidewalks thronged with pedestrians and cyclists going every which way, roads packed with cars but devoid of bike lanes, city air, long riding distances between destinations in such conditions, and parking was difficult. My bike didn’t see much action; I usually took the train.

Nowadays things are different. Living in a small town that is scaled to human proportions, cycling is a joy.

Nowadays parking isn’t a problem. In the backstreets there are few cars or pedestrians or even other cyclists to contend with. Along the seashore the air is clean. The place is easily navigable; I can get most places I need to go within fifteen minutes. The Okinawan climate ensures I always work up a good sweat, but here, where there are no trains, a bicycle still seems the perfect mode of transport.

Divergence

Posted on September 15, 2020September 14, 2020 by basili

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

— Robert Frost

Tokyo is home to around 14 million people, while the greater Tokyo area houses some 37 million residents. Space is a rare commodity and horizon lines are even rarer. The world’s most crowded urban agglomeration is dynamic, exhilirating, stimulating, endlessly fascinating … and often exhausting.

Okinawa has a population of around one and a half million people. The seaside town of Chatan has fewer than 30,000 residents. Half the area is occupied by US military bases, fenced off no man’s lands accessible only to military personnel, their families and local base employees. The rest of us enjoy a collection of compact coastal neighborhoods that lie along a part of the west coast of Okinawa’s main island, facing the South China Sea. It’s almost nothing but endless horizons. These vistas put an honest perspective on our place in the world and are a striking showcase for the forces of nature. Their expansiveness is meditative, soothing and restorative.

No man is an island

Posted on September 1, 2020September 1, 2020 by basili

Like the fisherman perched on a tetrapod barrier preparing to cast his line into the sea or the woman on a promenade wall staring into her phone, alone with her thoughts, I find solitude therapeutic. I enjoy walking city streets with just my camera or sitting in a cafe alone with a book or keeping my own company riding my bike by the sea. But this new socially fragmented world of enforced health precautions we find ourselves in — where handshakes, hugs and kisses are now forbidden pleasures — drives home just how much we are social beings; for all the contentment that can be found in solitude, we need to make connections and to share moments with other people. And these days, encounters that would hardly have been noticed a year ago seem so much more precious, and hopeful, whether it’s two friends aimlessly chatting on a sea wall or a cafe waitress doting on a customer’s pet puppy.