The strange case of a man, a doll and a straw...

I've been mulling over this image for about a week as I've at a loss as to best describe the image at hand. The oddity of this man, and the images unclear subject lacks my words as my thoughts are muddled.

Last week as I walked the beach in Waikiki I encountered a strange yet compelling subject(s)...

I found a small float like raft, anchored in in the man made tide pool roughly in front of the Hyatt.



The raft, which I thought belonged to a child, carried several dolls and small toys. A black doll, white doll, and a few figurines of different sizes and shapes. My initial thoughts were how cute..a young girl brought her toys out to the beach. But strangely enough, I see a older male of Japanese decent walking towards the raft. He wore a life preserver, a red swim cap, chin strap pulled tightly under his pudgy neck, a rash guard swim shirt and tight swim trunks. After living in Hawaii and spending loads of time in Japan, Japanese never seem to surprise me as odd behavior go hand in hand with many otaku and I figured this old guy was being Japanese.

He was sitting with a normal looking older Japanese lady wearing a nondescript suit but had a cheap green inflatable inner tube around her waist. I overheard her referring to him as Otosan which means father/dad in Japanese but also carries the same connotation of a husband/wife refering to each other as mom/dad.

They perched on a spot on the sand with towels, ice box, and what not so I knew they were out for the afternoon. I did keep scanning for their granddaughter or kids who were playing with that raft.

Oddly enough, Otosan waded into the water, went for a brief swim then walked over to the raft with the dolls and began to take each one out and wash them as if they were animate and were hot from sitting in the sun. He delicately took each doll out and cupped water into his hands and gently washed the dolls off. Hmmm...I though for sure he was autistic or had some type of mental condition. I was surprised to see him do this action yet he seemed to be functioning as he wandered around the water, spoke to other bathers on the beach (I didn't hear if he was speaking English but the bathers were clearly non-Japanese) so this again threw me off.

So after washing the dolls off, he walked back to his lady friend sat down and enjoyed a few moments drinking from a large Arizona tea can. I took a break from the sun and went and sat under a tree keeping my eyes open at this strange raft and whatnot.

After a bit, I noticed Otosan poured his drink into a mug with a straw and start to walk back into the ocean towards the raft and his dolls. I then knew what was coming.



I really was taken back by this. He took each individual doll and gave them all a sip from his straw. He lovingly took each figurine and gave them each a moment to drink from his mug so they might also enjoy themselves on the beach. Otosan was treating each figure as if they were real. I wasn't sure I was doing the right thing by firing away at this guy and I did feel a bit guilty as I was spying on someone. But as I am a photographer, I sometimes have to pry into peoples lives in order to understand what and who we are.

So after rattling off a few frame, Otosan, who never noticed me, but I think his lady friend did, wandered back to his spot, grabbed a tackle box and rod and went fishing off the rocks. Either he was completely functioning with some type of condition or he was nuts. I mean I could dive deep into an analysis about this guy (maybe kids died...etc...) but its too much. My wife did point out immediately that a pregnant bather wandered into the frame behind him. Did I see her? No...and my initial thoughts after editing my film were she messed up the shot as she walked into my frame. But the psychology of having her in there....well...it means something, don't it?

I got bored waiting for him to return so I kept wandering and found tidbits here and there but eventually wandered back to my spot with Otosan. I observed him wading back from the rocks and over to Okasan (Mom) and it seemed she ordered him to go change and they were leaving. Sadly my parking meter was almost up and it was taking him forever to return from the changing room so I had to leave the site leaving the mystery of the dolls to the wind.

I really have nothing more to say about Otosan and this image. I might re-write some of this at some point but I'll leave it at that.


A note about the film...Kodak's Ektar 100 held up nicely though I wasn't very happy how the reds were over saturated in the scan from my Nikon 8000 but I couldn't seem to control that either in the scanning software or Photoshop. I tried to pull down the saturation in both but all it would do would muddy up the color. I might get a drum scan of this image at some point.