A Geek in Japan

My Best Photos in 2013

Post author By ageekinjapan
Post date January 2, 2014

I started 2013 in Spain where I took the first pictures of the year. I spent the rest of the year in Japan taking photos with my Nikon D800, Fuji X100 and my Iphone 4. The only addition to my photography equipment this year was a Nikon 28-70mm f/2.8D lens (until now I just had a 50mm f/1.2 lens). I am very happy with the new lens, it has helped me take photos with a different style than that captured with the 50mm.

This year more and better photos!

Japan photos 2013

You can see all the photos in this Flickr set and download them in high resolution.

Best photos of past years:

Food Traditional

Toshikoshi Soba

Post author By ageekinjapan
Post date January 1, 2014

One of the traditions of the Oomisoka (大晦日: last day of the year) is to eat toshikoshi soba (年越し蕎麦: year-passing soba). It is believed that eating soba noodles, which are very long, is good to have a long life. Morevover eating toshikoshi soba brings good luck and good health for the year that is beginning.

Happy New Year 2014! Shinnen Akemashite Omedetou! 新年あけましておめでとう!

Toshikoshi Soba

New Year Soba

Other Japanese year-end and new year traditions:

Various

Christmas Lights in Japan

Post author By ageekinjapan
Post date December 29, 2013

Celebrating Christmas in Japan is an “import” from Western countries. Apart from the tradition of giving presents to others, one of the things that the Japanese have imported is Christmas lights. In most places the Christmas illumination consists of thousands of blue LED light bulbs and the themes are usually more romance-based than Christmas-based. This is the ranking of the places in Japan with the best Christmas illumination in 2013.

Christmas Lights