Categories
Health

Japan and Spain rank 1st and 2nd in life expectancy

According to the last study of the OCDE Japan is the country with the highest life expectancy in the world (86.4 years) while Spain (my home country) ranks second (84.9 years). I am not an expert and most likely nobody knows for sure but I dare to say that probably two key elements in common between Spain and Japan are a healthy diet and a relatively good healthcare system (even though very different).

Life Expectancy

Categories
Photography

Lineless Horizons from Enoshima

I think I heard about Hiroshi Sugimoto for the first time when I was in Naoshima. What caught my attention the most about him were his photographs of horizons. In them, the sky and the sea unite in harmony in the horizon in one line of space.

Bono liked this photo of Sugimoto so much that U2 used it for the front cover of their album “No Line on the Horizon”:

Sugimoto

Sugimoto was quite demanding and he let them use his work of art but they were not even able to write U2 on it, they had to respect the original photo as it was.

One day she’s still, the next she swells
You can hear the universe in her sea shells
Oh yeah
Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh

No, no line on the horizon, no line

I know a girl with a hole in her heart
She said infinity is a great place to start
Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh

She said “Time is irrelevant, it’s not linear”
Then she put her tongue in my ear
Oh oh oh oh oh oh oh
No, no line on the horizon
No, no line

No, no line on the horizon
No, no line

In September I went to Enoshima equipped with a lot of different cameras. When I arrived home I found myself with a lot of photos of blurred horizons, I didn’t take them thinking in Sugimoto in a conscious way, it was most likely my subconscious that was inspired by him. I was not able to “erase” the horizon line completely in any of them like Sugimoto, but I think some of them were pretty good.

In color with Hipstamatic:

Enoshima

Enoshima

Enoshima

In black and white with the iPhone and with my Canon S90:

Enoshima

Enoshima

Enoshima

And to end up, this photo series of a kite. I was marveled by how he was flying around the horizon line, under it and above it, advancing through the sky like trying to escape from my photos.

Enoshima

Enoshima

Enoshima

Enoshima

Enoshima

Categories
Drinks

Pepsi Pink strawberry and milk flavor

I have just tried the new Pepsi Pink with strawberry and milk flavor. I can feel the strawberry flavor but I don’t really taste any milk in the drink. Reading the label it turns out that the main ingredient of the drink is… grape juice!

Pepsi Pink strawberry and milk flavor

Almost every year Pepsi launches a new “weird” drink in Japan, most likely as a strategy to try to attract attention. Up until now I think the weirdest of them all is still the Pepsi Cucumber.