Japantown, San Francisco with Holga

There's something alluring about the square format of 6X6 images. Add in the Holga's unpredictability - the blurred edges, the often hyper-sharp centers and the occasional tendency toward light leak - and you have a recipe for some delicious results.

Here, I took the Holga out to San Francisco's Japantown on an early fall day, shooting Ektar 120.

Often overlooked for the more popular Chinatown, Japantown is a small clutch of bookstores, kitchenware shops, tea houses and noodle joints in San Francisco's Western Addition district. Unlike Chinatown, J-Town is not overly touristy, and you're more likely to meet authentic locals there.

 It's home to my second favorite bookstore on the West Coast, the Kinokuniya Bookstore, a multi-level shop with Manga downstairs and titles in both English and Japanese upstairs. (My absolute favorite is, no surprise, City Lights Books down on Columbus Ave.)

I've spent countless hours wandering the aisles of Kinokuniya, filled with crazy notions that maybe I, too, could learn Kanji and settle into the rough-and-tumble life of a rogue Samurai traveling the land without a master. Would I just as soon cut you down as look at you? Perhaps. Alas, in the end, I usually settle on a book of Haruki Murakami's work or a Buddhist text. But hey, a guy can dream.

The top shot is from a Japantown store front selling umbrellas. Below, a street sign outside the Japan Center Mall followed by a self-portrait of my shadow in Peace Plaza. At bottom is the Peace Pagoda outside the mall.