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Monday/ don’t stop believin’ 🌇

Just a small town girl
Livin’ in a lonely world
She took the midnight train going anywhere
Just a city boy
Born and raised in South Detroit
He took the midnight train going anywhere

A singer in a smokey room
A smell of wine and cheap perfume
For a smile they can share the night
It goes on and on and on and on

Strangers waitin’
Up and down the boulevard
Their shadows searchin’ in the night
Streetlights, people

Livin’ just to find emotion
Hidin’ somewhere in the night
Workin’ hard to get my fill
Everybody wants a thrill
Payin’ anything to roll the dice
Just one more time

Some’ll win, some will lose
Some are born to sing the blues
Whoa, the movie never ends
It goes on and on and on and on

Strangers waiting
Up and down the boulevard
Their shadows searching in the night
Streetlights, people
Livin’ just to find emotion
Hidin’, somewhere in the night

Don’t stop believin’
Hold on to that feeling
Streetlights, people

Don’t stop believin’
Hold on
Streetlights, people

Don’t stop believin’
Hold on to that feeling
Streetlights, people

– Lyrics from Don’t Stop Believin’, a song by Journey from their album Escape (1981)

Go Mariners!
The Mariners* are in Detroit for the third and fourth games (Tuesday night & Wednesday night) in the playoff series against the Detroit Tigers.
The Mariners and Tigers are drawn 1-1 in the series.

*Baseball team from Seattle that competes in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member of the American League (AL) West Division.
“The M’s,” named for Seattle’s nautical heritage, have never won a World Series. They have won the AL West Division four times and appeared in the playoffs in 2000, 2022, and now this year, 2025.

A sunset picture from last night (sunset now at 6.40 pm), from where I was standing at East Mercer St & 13th Ave East. That’s the Mariners flag on the Space Needle.
The graffiti on the ‘Stop Sign Ahead’ sign reads “Don’t Stop Believin’ “, likely a reference to the 1981 classic pop song with the same title, from Journey.
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Sunday/ at the Ballard locks ⛵

Three of us ran out to the Ballard locks* this morning.
Even though the salmon runs for the season are over (there were none to be seen in the windows by the fish ladder), there was still a lot of activity to look at.

*The Hiram M. Chittenden Locks, or Ballard Locks, is a complex of locks at the west end of Salmon Bay in Seattle, Washington’s Lake Washington Ship Canal, between the neighborhoods of Ballard to the north and Magnolia to the south.
[Source: Wikipedia]

Here’s looking towards the waters of Puget Sound.
It looks like the Salmon Bay bridge (drawbridge) had to be opened just for the little sailboat with its tall mast! (in the middle of the picture). There are seagulls in the sky above the sailboat, and a speck that is a seaplane, as well.
This is the smaller of the two side-by-side locks.
The gates are just closing behind the two vessels. We chatted briefly with the owners (an elderly couple) of the larger vessel at the back that goes by De Anza III.
She was built in 1958, and this was the first summer they owned her.
A closet look at the woodwork on De Anza III, as she is lifted up by the water being pumped into the lock. The new owners have done some work this summer to sand the woodwork and give it a new coat of varnish, but they still have a lot to do.
This is the larger of the two locks, with two commercial vessels about to leave the lock and go on to Lake Union.
Hey! There’s a harbor seal that had just caught a salmon.
So even though the salmon runs for the season are over and done with, there are still a few of them in the water. I wonder if the fish are fatigued (from their swim upstream), and easy to catch.
A great blue heron (Ardea herodias) on the edge of the canal’s water is patiently waiting its turn for an opportunity to pounce.
The O-fish-al count (get it? official count) for 2025.
So there are distinct times for the peaks of the runs of the different species of salmon.
Q. And how do they count the fish?
A. Fish are counted at the Ballard Locks through daily visual counts by Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) and Muckleshoot Indian Tribe staff using the fish ladder itself. Fish are observed passing through the ladder during specific periods, and these visual counts are converted into daily and weekly totals to estimate the overall fish run for the year.
[Google AI Overview]
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Friday/ a beautiful fall day ☀️

Happy Friday.
It was a beautiful fall day here in Seattle (the high 70°F/ 21°C).
I walked to Volunteer Park late in the afternoon, and took a few pictures of the Black Sun.

Black Sun is a work of art by Isamu Noguchi (1969) made of Brazilian granite and 9 ft in diameter.

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Thursday/ the shutdown 🛑

At this point there are no signs of an imminent resolution of the partial US government shutdown.

The BBC reports on its website that “some, but not all, US government services are temporarily suspended, and 40% of the federal workforce – about 750,000 people – are expected to be put on unpaid leave”.

From the Washington Post:
How concerned are Americans about the partial shutdown of the federal government and whom do they blame for causing it? The Washington Post texted a nationally representative sample of 1,010 people on Wednesday to ask.

The Post’s poll finds significantly more Americans blame President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans for the shutdown than Democrats, though many say they are not sure. People express moderate concern about the shutdown’s impact at this early stage, with “somewhat concerned” the most common answer. A large majority support Democrats’ call to extend federal health insurance subsidies in general, though just under half support the party demanding this if it extends the government shutdown.

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Wednesday/ a Japanese lantern 🏮

Here’s my Japanese lantern that I got at the Ozeki Tokyo Gallery.
The packaging says ‘Gifu* Lantern Project 001’, designed by Yuka Noritake, and ‘Made in Japan’.

*A reference to the city of Gifu in Gifu Prefecture, Japan.

The frame with handle (inside the paper and wire sphere) is just cardboard paper.
The paper is Mino paper, made from the paper mulberry plant that grows in the city of Mino. There is a little LED bulb inside with a switch, that is mounted on a coin cell battery (so the lantern has no cord).
There were at least a dozen more lanterns to choose from in this size and shape, but with artwork such as cherry blossoms, trees or Mt Fuji.
I liked this plain one with no images on, best.
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Tuesday/ Takara Tomy animals 🦁

September is a wrap.
We had rain yesterday and today here in the city of Seattle.
The Republican Party is shutting down the United States government at midnight.

This afternoon I opened my remaining Takara Tomy animal figures that I bought at Yodobashi Camera’s toy department in Tokyo.

Gorilla (model AS-36) with movable arms
There are actually two species of gorillas: the eastern gorilla (Gorilla beringei) and the western gorilla (Gorilla gorilla). And yes, wild gorillas eat pineapples, skin and all.
Nile crocodile (model AS-08) with movable jaw
The Nile crocodile (Crocodylus niloticus) is native to freshwater habitats in Africa, where it is present in 26 countries (including South Africa and Botswana).
Chameleon (model AS-28) with pliable tongue😝
Chameleons (or chamaeleons) are a distinctive and highly specialized clade* of Old World lizards with 200 species described as of June 2015.
The members of this family are best known for their distinct range of colors, being capable of color-shifting camouflage.
*Clade: a group of organisms believed to have evolved from a common ancestor
[Source: Wikipedia]

Lion (model AS-01) with movable head, and meerkat
The lion (Panthera leo) is a large cat native to Sub-Saharan Africa and India. It has a muscular, broad-chested body; a short, rounded head; round ears; and a dark, hairy tuft at the tip of its tail. Adult male lions are larger than females and have a prominent mane.
The meerkat (Suricata suricatta) or suricate is a small mongoose found in southern Africa. It is characterised by a broad head, large eyes, a pointed snout, long legs, a thin tapering tail, and a brindled coat pattern.
[Source: Wikipedia]
Cheetah (model AS-13) with movable head and legs
The cheetah  (Acinonyx jubatus) is a large cat and the fastest land animal.
It has a tawny to creamy white or pale buff fur that is marked with evenly spaced, solid black spots. The head is small and rounded, with a short snout and black tear-like facial streaks.
[Source: Wikipedia]

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Monday/ postcard from Seoul 🇰🇷

Hey! The postcard I had mailed to Seattle from the top of Seoul tower made it into my mailbox.

Gyeongbok Palace
Situated at No. 1 Sejong Road in the Jongno District of Seoul, the palace was originally built in 1395 as the palace of the King of Choson. It was listed as a cultural property on Jan. 1, 1963.
Mailed on Sat. Sept. 13, and processed on Mon. Sep. 15 at Seoul Yongsan Post Office, a stone’s throw from Seoul Tower.
2021 Republic of Korea Definitives
Issued Dec. 17, 2021
Perf. 13½ |Design: Ryu Ji-Hyeong |Engraving: Korea Minting and Security Printing Corporation |Litho. |No watermark
#3555 500₩ Multicolored |Fruit cluster of bunge (Crataegus pinnatifida)
This tree is also called Chinese hawthorn and is known for its bright red fruit that is used in traditional East Asian medicine and foods (like candies and teas).
500₩ = US$ 0.36
[Source: stampworld.com]
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Sunday/ clouds at sunset 🌥

Golds, silvers and grays in Elliott Bay in Puget Sound at 5.56 pm tonight— an hour before sunset (at 6.54 pm).
This is a view from the top of the pedestrian bridge in Myrtle Edwards Park, near the Queen Anne beer hall.

Sony a7CR w. Tamron E 28-200mm F2.8-5.6 A071 lens at f/5.6 | 1/1250 sec. | ISO-160 | 96 mm
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Thursday/ at the Japan Open 🇯🇵🎾

I should have stayed on in Tokyo for another week so that I could catch some of the action at the Japan Open ATP 500 men’s tennis tournament there.

World No. 1 Carlos Alcaraz (🇪🇸, 22) made his debut in Japan there, today.
He scared everybody with an ankle injury in the first set of his match, but recovered to beat Argentinian Sebastian Baez (🇦🇷, 24) by 6-4, 6-2 in the second round.

Here is my picture from last Friday on the elevated Yurikamome Line.
The structures on the left of the track are in Ariake Tennis no Mori Park with its center court Ariake Coliseum.

The tennis park opened in 1983 with 32 hard courts. It was extensively renovated to serve as the tennis venue for the 2020 Summer Olympics and today houses a total of 49 tennis courts (33 hard courts and 16 artificial grass courts with sand infill).
Look for the elevated Yurikamome Line on the left of the picture. The Ariake Tennis no Mori Park train station is towards the top right of the picture. 
[Graphic from Olympic and Paralympic Games TOKYO2020 website]
Here’s Carlos at the start of his match against Sebastian Baez— his buzz cut from the US Open now grown out a little (and bleached silver, not blond, he says).
Carlos is doing a Japanese bow as he greets the representative from Kinoshita Group (I couldn’t get his name). The man in the middle is the umpire of the match, Fergus Murphy from Dublin, Ireland.
[Still from TennisTV coverage of the match]

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Wednesday/ landfall 🌀

HONG KONG, Sept 25 (Reuters) – Hong Kong resumed flights out of its international airport on Thursday after a 36-hour suspension, reopening businesses, transportation services and some schools after the world’s most powerful tropical cyclone this year lashed the financial hub.
Ragasa brought the densely populated city to a standstill from Tuesday afternoon, after sweeping through the northern Philippines and Taiwan where it killed 14, before making landfall on the southern Chinese city of Yangjiang on Wednesday.
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Tuesday/ autumn card 🍂

I deployed my 2 ½ -dimensional card that I had bought at a Japan Post Office in Tokyo, on my dining room table.

The cut-outs on the card was done with a laser.
Here is an explainer from Google AI Overview:
Lasers are very effective for cutting paper, offering high precision for intricate designs on various paper types, including cardstock and corrugated board. The laser beam vaporizes the paper along the path of the design, resulting in a clean, distortion-free edge without mechanical contact. While the laser’s heat can cause slight browning or charring on the edges, this can be minimized by using appropriate power and speed settings for the specific paper.
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Monday/ a typhoon at autumn equinox 🌏

Happy autumn equinox (spring equinox south of the equator).
There is a very strong typhoon brewing in the South China Sea— Super Typhoon Ragasa. (Ragasa is Tagalog for scramble.)

The water level in Hong Kong is forecast to rise about 2 meters (6.5 feet), and the maximum water level in some areas could hit 4 to 5 meters (13.1 to 16.4 feet) above the typical lowest sea level.

HONG KONG (AP) — Southern Chinese cities scaled back many aspects of daily life on Tuesday with school and business closures and flight cancellations as the region braced for one of the strongest typhoons in years that has already killed three people and led to the displacement of thousands of others in the Philippines.

Hong Kong’ s observatory said Super Typhoon Ragasa, which was packing maximum sustained winds near the center of about 143 mph (230 kph), is expected to move west-northwest at about 14 mph (22 kph) across the northern part of the South China Sea and edge closer to the coast of Guangdong province, the southern Chinese economic powerhouse.
– Kanis Leung writing for Associated Press

A typhoon and a hurricane are the same type of storm—a powerful tropical cyclone—but they are given different names based on their geographical location. A hurricane is the term used for these storms in the North Atlantic, Central North Pacific, and Eastern North Pacific, while a typhoon refers to a storm of the same intensity and structure that forms in the Northwest Pacific Ocean.
[Sources: Google AI Overview; Hong Kong Observatory]
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Sunday/ out goes summer 🌞

That was it .. the last day of the summer of 2025, here in the North.
There was rain last night here in the city, and into the morning— about a half inch.

The sun came out this afternoon, and I put my new Sony Sonnar T* FE 55mm f/1.8 ZA Lens on my camera and took the first pictures with it. I bought the lens at Yodobashi Camera in Tokyo.

Here is what the Space Needle looked like at about 6 pm, looking through the 55m lens from Thomas St & 13th Avenue E.
Out-of-camera .jpg downscaled to 2400×1800 pixels.
I used Adobe Photoshop Express to bump up the exposure of the shadows by 40% and to decreased the exposure of the highlights by 20%.
If you can walk right up to your subject, you have control of what goes into the frame, of course.
Out-of-camera .jpg downscaled to 2400×1800 pixels.
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Saturday/ out of my luggage 🧳

My clothes are out of my suitcases, and through the washing machine.
My refrigerator has milk and eggs again.
And I have started to open up my ‘acquisitions’ that I have made on my trip.
I have several more of the animal figures from Yodobashi Camera’s toy department and will post more tomorrow.

Fire Salamander (Schleich #14870).
The fire salamander (Salamandra salamandra) is a common species of salamander found in Europe.
Indian peafowl (Takara Tomy Ania #AS-16).
The Indian peacock or Indian blue peafowl (Pavo cristatus), is the national bird of India and is native to the Indian subcontinent and Sri Lanka
The peacock’s feathers can be made to spread.
Emperor penguin (Schleich #14841).
The emperor penguin (Aptenodytes forsteri) is the tallest and heaviest of all living penguin species and is endemic to Antarctica.
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Friday night/ arrival in Seattle ⛰️

It’s Friday night in Seattle.
The flight on All Nippon Airlines out to Seattle went without incident (8h 33m total travel time).
In Seattle I picked up my checked bag, and made a quick stop at the Global Entry kiosks for a facial recognition check. (The check takes 5 seconds flat.)
I even told the immigration officer I had brought back items to declare in my bags, but he waved me through.

Looking out the window as we are getting pushed back from the gate at Terminal 3 at Tokyo’s Haneda International airport. I am sitting in a Boeing 787 Dreamliner like the one in the picture.
About two hours to go here, flying east across the Pacific Ocean and the International Dateline. I left Tokyo at 9 pm on Friday night, and arrived in Seattle at 2 pm on Friday afternoon ☺️ (Pacific Time Friday afternoon, of course).
A clear day, albeit with wildfire smoke hanging in the still air.
Majestic Mt Rainier seems to float above it all.
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Friday/ the Yurikamome Line 🚆

It’s Friday night in Tokyo and I am at the airport.
I had time today to squeeze in one more train ride, on the Yurikamome Line.
The train on this line runs on an elevated, fully automated track (so no driver) that connects Shimbashi Station to Toyosu Station via the popular Odaiba area.

Here’s the Yurikamome route. The loop in the line is a ramp to get the train onto the Rainbow Bridge.
This is towards the end of the line on the way out, at Odaiba Marine Park, with a nice view of the Rainbow Bridge. In the distance is the top of Tokyo Tower and look what’s near the right frame of the picture: a mini Statue of Liberty.
One station on the line is named Tokyo International Cruise Terminal. I did not spot any cruise ships, but the building on the left is the cruise ship terminal building.
Here’s the Tokyo Big Sight International Exhibition Center. The red handle in the foreground is part of a giant wood saw stuck into the ground by the entrance.
On the Rainbow Bridge. The train cars actually use rubber tires on the concrete guideway, providing an excellent grip for navigating the sharp curves and steep slopes on the track.
Another view of the Rainbow Bridge.
Here is what the train looks like. It has five cars.
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Thursday/ Shibuya at night 🌃

Thursday was my last full day here in Tokyo.

In the morning, I ran out to Uniqlo in Ginza to change my size M shirts that I had bought Wednesday night, for size L. (The line at the fitting room was too long yesterday and I took a chance with the size M).

Then I went out to a gallery called Ozeki with beautiful Japanese lantern lamp shades that a YouTuber had recommended. I bought a little round one that is folded flat for packing into a suitcase. (At this point in any overseas trip it is always a question if all the stuff I had bought, would fit in my suitcases.)

And for the evening I made a run out to the Mandarake store (books, cards, collectibles) in Shibyua. At 5.30 ish, it was almost too late. You don’t want to get crushed on the train by the commuters that go home.
At Shibuya Scramble Crossing: lots of crazy people and definitely too many foreigners taking selfies and annoying the locals, I’m sure.
Get out of my way!