Winding down

 It's not been a good last two years. Even ignoring the effects of the pandemic and the complete shutdown of outdoor live events since the beginning of 2020, it's not been a good time. (Some of the things that have happened are best kept in private.) Regardless, it's been harder to find anything to take pictures of for the blog, and I am moving on to other interests.

The kicker though is that I've lost two cameras in the last 2 months. The first one could have been a simple accident. I had the camera case on a carabiner, clipped on a belt loop on my jeans, and it had fallen off once before (fortunately, someone called my attention to it lying in the middle of the road and I managed to rescue it then). But, the action of the 'biner against the loop had caused it to cut through the loop and ruin one pair of jeans already, so I'd taken to keeping it in my backpack normally. Anyway, when the first one disappeared, I had to assume that I'd had it on my belt loop and it had simply fallen off while I was out walking around. I checked the stores that I normally shop at and no one had turned it in as a "found item." I completely retraced my steps and couldn't find it that way. And I reported it to the police as lost, and they never contacted me back about it.

After a couple weeks, I got a replacement of the same model from Amazon, and this time got a carry case with a sewn-on belt loop. Now, I had to thread the belt through the loop in the case, and there's no way it could fall off. But that was kind of a hassle, and I couldn't easily take it off my belt when I was teaching in class, so I left it in my bag all the time. The only two places the camera could be when I didn't have it on my belt or wasn't using it to take pictures, were in the backpack or on a shelf in the apartment.

Last week, the second camera also went missing. I turned the apartment upside down, revisited the same shops as before, nothing. This time, I know it was in the backpack, and I'd hadn't used it for a couple days. I was going to take a picture with it outside, and it wasn't in the pack. While nothing is guaranteed, I'm close to 99% sure that it had been in the pack before I went to the school. I checked everywhere it could have gotten to in the school, and checked with the owner, and we couldn't find it.

So, yeah, that's the last straw. I don't think the disappearance of the second camera was an accident or my misplacing it, but I won't point fingers. And I don't want to buy yet another one for $500 (the last two are out-of-stock models), or to even have to upgrade and go for the $750 current model, just to have it "go missing" again.

What this means is that even if I get a cheaper model (and I don't have a smartphone because I don't have the money), I'm not going to take it outside with me except for very special occasions. And, without a camera, I'm not going to have anything to post here to keep the blog running.

I'd like to thank everyone that has been coming by here to look at the pictures. I started the proto-version of this blog back when I first came to Japan in 1992 or '93, and I've kept it running mostly non-stop, even when I was back in the U.S., for pretty much 30 years. It's time to move on.

So long, best wishes, and thanks for all the fish.