where the sun rises - say chee-zu!

Ryan and I tried to take lots of pictures in Japan. Of course, we figured we'd want to preserve the memories for future years' perusal. We did take some nice shots, but naturally there were plenty of weird wacky shots of us and our friends or students. We found a photo shop in our town where we would go and develop pictures.

I don't even remember how we figured out the process of filling in the little Japanese form for developing, and how we'd know when to come pick them up, or even how we'd explain that we were here for our photos, but all that aside, on one such occasion, Ryan stopped the car in front of the shop so I could pop in and pick up a roll we had waiting for us. I told the lady behind the counter in my broken Japanese that "I was here to pick up my photos" and she pulled them out.

There wasn't anything exciting on the roll - just a bunch of pictures of us and our friends, Akiko and Takashi, having a night out in Niigata City. We went out for dinner and then for a walk through a park with a bunch of fountains. It was a nice evening, though nothing extraordinary.

Either way, the woman pulled out the pack of photos and handed them to me, then sheepishly grabbed an envelope from behind the counter and said a sweet, "ah, sumimasen ga..." (um, excuse me, but...). She started explaining away in Japanese that there was a certain photo contest that the photo shop would enter using their clients' pictures. They would keep an eye open as they developed photos and if there was a particularly good one, they'd send it in to the contest, with the clients' consent of course. She explained that we had one such photo that they wanted to send in, and she pulled out from the envelope an enlarged print of this photo:

I admit that I was a little puzzled. Um, you do realize that this is not meant to be a beautiful, well posed shot right? There was little to no effort put in, and for pete's sake, there's a hand holding a fry with chopsticks jutting in from the side!!! However, I did see what a gorgeous thing it was to see me holding my water glass in such a manner. And Ryan, look at that hunk!!!

Aaah, it was yet another example of "foreigner favour". I'm sure that the photo shop just looked for a clear, crisp photo out of our selection to send in because we were different looking. I'm sure we were two of the only foreigners ever to develop photos there. We went along with it, in any case.

We were shocked that we never heard back about winning the contest....