04.12.12 Christmas Photos
Today we went to take pictures of the children to use as
x-mas/new year cards. That is, we went
to one of those places where they dress them up and then the professional
photographer takes your picture. You
know the type, Dad in cowboy hat Mom in full dress, children clad in similar period
costumes, the photograph taken next to a wagon, or on the porch which is specially
constructed inside the photo studio. To
me the horror is barely imaginable, but to each his own.
We did do this once before when Saskia was around a year old
in Mountain View. I remember the results to be mixed. All of the shots in which R and I appeared
were positively dreadful; the composition so completely unnatural that our best
attempt to smile sincerely could not save the picture. The shots with Saskia were quite nice really
mostly due to the fact that Saskia at the age of one could not have been cuter,
blond curls, beautiful little teeth, pretty little dress. However, I thought that our firm joint
assessment was that a repeat of this circus was unnecessary.
But R thought that doing the same thing in Tokyo would be nice
and a great chance to get dressed up in kimono by professionals as we could
never accomplish this feat by ourselves (if we had kimonos that is). Feeling sick and weak I did not object. She assured me furthermore that this was a
great deal (Musuko-san said so). So we
biked to the studio near Shibuya. The
studio had every semblance of being the photographer family’s home, we had to
walk through the kitchen to get to a room that was transformed into a costume
dressing room. There the girls were
dressed up in Kimonos and made up by two very kind Japanese ladies. The whole process took several hours. They had to put on layer upon layer of
clothing which was held together by long Obis which were wrapped so tightly
around their chest that they complained they had trouble breathing, then
beautifully tied in huge bows on their back.
Lukas was a little impatient to have to wait so long, but then he got the
same treatment; he got to wear some four layers of clothes with the final layer
being a black Samurai jacket and a beautiful belt in which they stuck a small
sword (which, to his dismay and the relief of everyone else, he never got to take
out of its case).
When they are finally all done the children were all looking
terrific. Very Japanese except for the
rather obvious fact that they are not. It
was late by now and completely dark outside and they still had to start taking
pictures. Unfortunately, the children
are no longer one year old. Whereas a
one-year old can only act naturally and all the photograher has to do is wait
for the right moment to take a cute photograph our children are a little bit
too aware that they should pose but lack all ability to do so naturally. Leave alone that you can get them all three
to do so at the same time. Saskia can
pull her mouth into a smile, but never her eyes making her look as if she needs
to pass gas; Lukas pulls the corners of his mouth up as far as his ears, but does
not actually smile, making him look very odd, dopey; and Pascale who has the
most natural smile of the three cannot help actually laughing and then bends
over and/or moves around. Invariably,
the women who put them into their appropriate positions would tell them to hold
a certain position, then just at the moment they actually took the picture one
of the three would loose their composure and the staff’s voice would go all
“Oooh!” in disappointment. Nevermind, let’s turn slightly to the left
now, girls feet together, boy feet apart and hands stiff to the side. One of the ladies models what a samurai
actually looks like, two stiff arms straight down the side, hands made into a
fist. Perhaps this was a bit of
unnecessary encouragement, for the next few pictures Lukas looks pretty much
like a robot. Of course we could not
help coaching the kids as well, as we could not handle the unnatural smiles and
felt that they would listen better to us than to the Japanese encouragements. Understandably, this must have been maddening
to the staff, especially after the number of failed photographs started
mounting, the photographer turned to us after a few more failed photographs and
spoke some Japanese, which I took to stand for “Please just leave us alone,
okay?”.
Although it was fun for the kids to get dressed up and it
was undoubtedly a terrific deal for Tokyo standards at some 500 odd dollars (when
they calculated the price they did a lot of work on the abacus and reduced the
price to that from well over $700 smiling often and saying ‘service, service’) for
4 pictures, I think we may revert back to our traditional new years card
(usually mailed out in early spring) routine of dressing the kids up in some
funky clothes and taking a picture of them ourselves.
Below some shots from the event.
  
9:46:14 PM 
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