Photo Highlight: Skiing Japan
I took this photo at the base of a ski lift at the Japanese resort of Hakuba Happo last March. The Buddha head sculpture was massive, about ten feet tall, and was one of the many snow sculptures that the lifties had built (others included SpongeBob and a variety of Japanese cartoon characters I didn't recognize). But what I found most interesting here was the use of the red coloring. In Japanese anime, blood dripping from the nose and mouth signifies sexual arousal—and to incorporate that kind of thing into an image of the Buddha is pretty damn sacrilegious, to say the least. My friend Dan, a U.S. expat who lives in Kyoto, was pretty surprised to see it—and to notice that no one else on the slopes seemed to be as disturbed as he was.
Check out my other photos of skiing in Japan, and download an exclusive screensaver of skiing in Japan.
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