Wednesday 30 September 2009

Interesting news!

I have a job interview wiith GEOS.  They're one of the big companies that hire english teachers over here, and the branch I'm interviewing for is the kids section.

There are lots of horror stories about the big companies like AEON, and GEOS.  I hope they're exaggerations.

Anyway, I think I'll probably keep applying for jobs in the meantime, I have a perfect zero for one track record with interviews so far...

Tuesday 29 September 2009

Yokohama The Third (or Fourth, I Forget) Day!

So today has been a mega doss day.  I ran out of money, so ended up using today to look for jobs and whatnot.  I planned on doing this yesterday, but I got an invitation to go to a CONVEYOR SUSHI RESTAURANT.  This is an invitation I couldn't refuse.

So we spend a full two hours in the restaurant eating the conveyor sushi.  I'll upload the pictures later, and the video I took.  It really is a conveyor belt with plates of sushi on it.  I'm already thinking of ways I could adapt the conveyor system to help with other things.  Maybe a conveyor beer system for long bars.  Place an order on the belt, the beer is poured and then sent back down the conveyor to the customer.  What a brilliant idea.

So after that we ended up just milling around, playing the taiko drum game (which I love so much I've not taken any photographs of it because I'm too busy playing it) and generally checking out the city.

We watched a man playing a guitar hero style dj game with expert precision; he had obviously practiced long and hard to perfect his skills.  The thing is, he had a wedding ring on...  He was quite young, so presumably newly married, but we speculated that with the amount of time he must have spent playing this game, he won't be married for much longer.  It's also interesting to note the demographic of video game players here, in that everyone plays games.  Old grandmas use mobile phones while listening to their ipod, holding a ds on standby, waiting to carry on playing something when they finish their phonecall.  It's amazing!

The work ethic here also seems to have lead to a 'play' ethic as well.  A large number of people here are unbelievably good at the games, presumably because they've practiced for so long.  This means they have to use their spare time, which is in precious short supply, to play these games until they can do them blindfolded.  It doesn't seem a particularly fun way of 'playing,' but it's kind of Japanese.

The trains here stop around midnight too, I haven't been caught out yet but I'm sure it's going to happen sooner or later.

The trick then is to hit a mangakisa I think...  Maybe I'll stay in one just so I can take pictures and put them on here...


Ok so these are squid!  They're swimming around trying to escape.  They're going to be eaten.  Yummy!

(They're actually quite tasty)


But the fresh ones like these guys here, are really expensive.  To pick your own swimming dinner is a status symbol I think.




So these guys looked awfully like some kind of grouper to me, with the always depressed looking downturned mouth.  Poor guys.  I want to say it's not so bad, cheer up!  But they're about to be eaten so... Yeah it is that bad.  Poor guys...








And finally, octopus.  I don't really like these guys raw, or sushified, but they're really good in takoyaki.

Yum yum.

This guy didn't look very happy though.  Octopi are supposed to be quite intelligent, maybe he knew what was about to happen.










So we enter the conveyor belt sushi restaurant!  This place is entirely unrelated to the fish above, we just happened upon those in our journey to the sushi place :)

So this is, apparently, quite a big conveyor sushi purveyor.  I can see why this might be so, because if I spotted something but was too slow to pick it up, it took about five minutes to come back around!  Worse than the airport!  Essentially the chefs make sushi that's running low, but they also cater for individual orders too.  now that's what I call service.

Ok so this is barracuda!

The portions of fish here are actually more reasonable than I was expecting.  The seaweed rolled sushi is much smaller, and much more delicate looking; altogether more pansy in my eyes though.  Full on, no holds barred raw fish on a sliver of rice is where it's at.  Having never tried it before, I was pleasantly surprised.  I don't think I could eat it every day, but as a healthy treat, versus pizza for example, definitely a winner in my eyes.

Ok so this particular dish is the fry of...  I forget what.  But this freaked my colleague out, she said the fish were, 'looking at her,' when she was eating them...  Oh dear...

I thought they were quite nice though.  They weren't brilliant like tuna or shrimp, but they were bad like barracuda.

ma-ma


Each colour represents a price.  White is the cheapskate one, right at the bottom there.  Pink is third leaste expensive, orange second least, blue is middle of the road.

What you can't see here is that I tried some mega expensive fatty tuna sushi, just to see what it's like.

Apparently the fattiest bits of the fish are the tastiest, but I preferred the non-fatty tuna.  I don't know why...  I obviously don't have the sushi tastebuds.






Ok so the tall signs on the actual conveyor tell the customer what fish is coming past them.

I spent ages learning the japanese names for all the fish, and my buddy painstakingly researched the name on her phone and translator.  Now I've forgotten them.  Worst.  Student.  Ever.




Ok so this amazing invention is the Japanese version of that coin game, where you put coins in a machine, it fired them onto a ledge with hundreds of other coins, and if you get lucky it forces some other coins off the edge.

Of course this is Japan, so you also sometimes get balls, which you then fire into the machine, it goes around that big long track going round loop-de-loops and all kinds of other flashy showy things, then it falls into a slot, either firing a number of free coins onto the  ledge, or going down a slot that gives nothing.  Amazingly over complicated.

Ok so here you can see the coin tray more clearly.  It is actually an incredibly simple game, but it's dressed up in such a fancy way that it took us ten minutes to figure out how to put coins in, let alone what anything else did!

Games like this are scary...











Now we enter, the twilight zone.

Most arcades, like everything else here, are divided into floors.  (Everything is vertically orientated!)

The lower floors are for children and girls, with cute arcade games (and my personal favourite drum game) and the upper floors are for the hardcore no hopers, who don't like being married or spending time at home.

So I include this picture to illustrate my point.  The guys in the ez-boy recliner chairs, are they playing a game?  It has horses on the screen so maybe they're piloting their own horse in a derby?  No.  They're betting on virtual horse races...


So half-life 2 is a pc game...  Why is it in an arcade?

Any way to make money I guess...


I only include this because I didn't take many pictures on this day...






Ok so now I'm going to include a link to you for my youtube channel.

http://www.youtube.com/user/NotAzebu

I've put some more videos up, mainly of the crazy Japanese affinity for playing games.

They have one game where you slam a number of buttons, at speeds that make my eyes glaze over, in order to strike a tune or melody.  The game in my videos is really popular here, and can be seen in practically any arcade.  The surprising thing is that the women here play games too.  They're not as good as the men, but they're an absolute tonne better than me.

I've also included a lemmings/lego hybrid game that I think it fascinating.  A group of girls were playing, and you essentially have to make the group of lemmings pick up a number of different objects on the screen, by layering lego blocks in certain ways.  The combination of the tactile element with the video game portion is really interesting, and something I've never seen done before.  I really wanted to have a go, but seeing as it was only girls playing I thought even that would be stretching my 'oh he's only a foreigner,' license a little too far...

Sunday 27 September 2009

Today is a 'down' day.

So today I'm determined to get everything up and running, and update my blog with all the information from the last four or five days.  I've been neglecting my  faithful audience!

The short version is that basically I've not had enough time, and the internet here is awful, it takes five minutes or so to upload a single photograph; cumulatively that's a lot of time spent sitting doing nothing.  However, I've managed to find an ethernet cable directly plugged into the internets which is making the process a lot faster.  Hopefully I can get it all done today!  Then I'll be up to date.

Ok so I've added these posts!  Whew!

I'm about halfways done, but I'm off to eat some sushi now so I'll do it later...

Doing everything in the order it occurred is turning out to be a pain in the backside...

がんばて

Saturday 26 September 2009

Ueno Day Two is up and Writing.

Ueno day 2 has been provisionally posted somewhere below.  Check it out!

(I'm keeping everything in order of when it happened, so this is like a diary for later use)

Sorry to be confusing!!!

Friday 25 September 2009

So English Language Maps in Japan Then...

Ok so today I had to rely on these godforsaken English language tourist maps, twice.  I got lost exactly three times.

As I've noted before the maps here are designed by small children with decidedly blunt crayons, bent on making pretty pictures rather than informative guides.  It is roughly 400 metres from my hostel to the train station with exactly five intersections between me and the station.  The map shows three.  This is how I got lost the first time.  Upon reaching the station (after a lengthy circular detour) I found that I had gone to the wrong one, because the name was mislabelled.  This is crazy, the only reason I knew it was misspelt in English was because the kanji (hieroglyphs used by the Chinese and Japanese) did not match up!  This is insanity.  In case you were wondering, some areas are called north and south xxxx, and the station I wanted was north, but I was directed to the south.

So I then headed to the correct station, only to be thwarted by another Japanese map making anomaly.  The map does not have a set scale.  At this point most logical minds would just explode.  This seriously does not compute.  A road that is five miles long can, and is, the exact same length as a road that is fifty metres long.  Come on now, the joker who designed this map is probably the same guy that designed the millenium bridge.

So I got lost again while walking along this infinitely long road.  Yokohama is the primary port town in Japan, and I was heading towards the ocean all the time thinking, by a logical process, looking at how far I travelled before, my feet, probably even up to my waist, should be wet by now.

At this point I feel I must stop and say, yes I have exclusively used tourist maps.  This is because road maps provide useful things like road names, but on a scale that could easily include Korea, China and Japan, with some of America on one A4 page.  The tourist maps don't provide road names, and then only some landmarks that the comedy map maker has deemed worthy of inclusion.  This means great swathes of the map will have nothing in them, including the roads, their names, their relative sizes/lengths or even the area, (called -cho) and some areas will have such useful things as, supermarkets that are no longer supermarkets, and apparently haven't been for five years or more, and 'sights of interest,' including fountains... that are on top of sixty storey skyscrapers that no one can see unless they happen to be on the 60th floor...

So I eventually found the venue, I met my friend, I enjoyed the day, and I promptly got lost on the way back to the hostel.

I managed to walk three full train stops past my intended destination, into an area the map thankfully did not cover (formally known as the, 'here be dragons' zone) and ended up getting the train back.  Whew, what an amazing day!

This is the first time crappy maps have really annoyed me, normally getting lost is fun and part of the adventure, I've found some really nice places while being 'lost.'  However, when I'm thirty minutes late meeting someone it really grates, and it's not fair on the person waiting, so it makes me stressed and annoyed, and probably reflects in my demeanour, at least until I calm down again.  Therefore the top tip, while in Japan, when you're going to meet someone is this, a trip that should take ten minutes will take an hour, and if you're just ambling around, chuck the map in the bin, write the name of your street and hostel down somewhere and just ask the people.  They're really rather helpful.

So I updated my ueno day 1 post, it's not finished yet but I have some downtime planned tomorrow, I'll do it then.  I might be able to get day 2 done as well.

Update:  Ueno park day 1 is finished!  Sorry for the delay...

Thursday 24 September 2009

Yokohama Day Two

So today was the fire/light festival thing, with over three thousand lights placed about the place.

I don't know whether my photographs will really do it justice, but it was really awesome.  The best thing was just sitting in the pitch black for half an hour, listening to all the people walking around, sometimes there was some music in the background, generally being quite peaceful.  Then laughing at the kids setting themselves on fire, or falling down the stairs.  That was fun as well.

One of my aimms while in Japan has been to eat a few different things.  Yakiniku, which is like indoor barbecue, takoyaki, which is octopus  in a spherical batter type thing (it's quite tasty, but only in small doses), sushi, (I've managed to not eat sushi at all, and am waiting to go to a proper sushi place to try the real stuff) and okonomiyaki.  Today I fulfilled my okonomiyaki dreams!  It's pretty nice actually.  Pictures below.

Generally larking around here is nice; especially when you have  a local guide, even if she is indecisive about most things!

Yokohama has been quite interesting so far.  It's far more expensive than the part of Tokyo I was in before, and the people seem to be a little more focused and less receptive to idle chit-chat than their tokyo counterparts.  I don't know whether this is because I'm looking in the 'wrong' places, or whether this is a general trend.  The people working in train stations and whatnot are all amazing, they're without fault.  This  adds to my feeling that most people have a well trained facade that they can produce when needed.  The service sector here is unbelievable.


Ok so these things are cooked doughy, fish shaped snacks filled with a number of different things.  Some are filled with purple potatoe, tasting vaguely fishy (or maybe that's my imagination), some are filled with a creamy cheesy thing, (the one I had) and are quite nice.  Some are filled with a purple bean paste and are distinctly average tasting.  They're a national obsession here though, you can buy them almost everywhere.  They're not always prepared in front of you like here though, as always the process is quite intricate and delicate.


Ok so onto the fire festival/bamboo candle pictures.

Each light is a piece of bamboo that's been cut at an angle, filled with water and had a candle placed inside.  The raised back reflects the light forward creating the illusion of the bamboo emitting light.

There's an old story that goes - an old man was walking in a bamboo grove when he saw one of the bamboo giving off light, so he cut it down and found a princess.  The bamboo gave off a bright light, and this festival is all about celebrating that.


I thought the bamboo looked like stars, they shimmer like stars too.  unfortunately I couldn't really get the right picture to show this off, and people, strangely, bought torches with them.  It felt kind of odd to be in darkness then have someone with a torch walk past.  They spoiled the illusion for themselves by having a torch.

And explain this, people took photographs with flash...  Why?  Why do this?  It makes no sense.


This is another one of those photographs that took bloody ages to get right.  So many attempts...

But I think this is the best one to show what it actually felt like.  Save the best to last I guess...








After the walk we sat down and I tried some warm bamboo sake.  It was foul.  I've tried a few different types of sake now, and they're  all awful.

The process of creating sake requires two steps, the first is to break the rice down into sugars that can be fermented, and the second actually creates the alcohol.  Interestingly the Japanese drink both stages of this process, and the first stage creates an extremely sweet sugary drink that's kind of like a pulpy slosh.  This is also quite horrendous.


Onto the okonomiyaki!  There's a hot plate in the middle of the table, and you choose your food from a menu, it's prepared backstage then bought out.  The substantial ingredient is cabbage, with egg and oil to hold it all together.  Luckily there's so much oil and egg that you can't taste the cabbage.  There's usually a meat or other interesting vegetable added to mask the taste of the cabbage.

It's actually really nice.







So we're both really hungry by this stage...

I don't think a word was uttered while it cooked.  It all smells amazing, and it look amazing too.

I'm getting hungry just looking at it.







So the guy comes and flips the thing over.  And we have to wait again for it to cook all over!  Bastard!


So eventually when someone deems it cooked he comes and covers it in a barbecue kind of sauce.


The sauce is really nice too.  You have the option of mayonaise if you really want it, but I think that's just crazy talk.





Expert cutting skills on display.

So they cover it in sauce and leave you be.

By this time the heat from the grill was basically cooking us as well as the cabbage, but the long wait staring at the food really prepares you to eat it!





The final artistic shot of the meal.

It was a good day, with a few new and interesting things done.

Two days worth of pictures uploaded!  Whew!

I'm off to try conveyor belt sushi now!




Ciao for now!

Wednesday 23 September 2009

The Trip from Minamisenju to Yokohama

So this particular post covers the night before I left minamisenju, to the day after I arrived in Yokohama.

It's worth noting that drawing money out here is really difficult!  If you have a visa card it's fine, but if you have a debit card like mine, it's nigh on impossible.  I have to go to the big post offices and draw money from their machines because the banks don't accept my card, and none of the normal atm's here do either.

Also, they only use cash here.  Unless you're buying a  car or some expensive tech, they use  cash.  Essentially drawing money out at atm's is important here, and I can't do it easily!  It's quite the pain in the backside.

On the plus side it means I don't tend to keep drawing money  out, and I think this helps me keep track of my finances.  I'll draw a certain amount out and say to myself, ok this has to last x number of days.  Quite handy in that respect I suppose.

So I arrived here desperately needing to pay for the rent in my new hostel, and it took me two hours to find an atm that accepted my card!  Really annoying.

So having found the atm I went and ate dinner with my university language exchange buddy, who came to hull for a month between her normal degree study, and her masters.  She's a biologist studying seaweed and algae and wahtnot.  It's all very clever stuff.

Ok so the pictures start with the night before I left minamisenju, and me and the girl who works behind the Aizuya bar in minamisenju went to eat some dinner, that took about four hours...  Taking your time is important to me apparently, I never realised this before.


Ok so we had 'western' foods tonight.  Pizza, pasta, that kind of thing.  I remarked that even the pizza is tiny and cute, then couldn't resist making a little face out of it.

Don't play with your food children!

Yeah we got some strange looks from the staff...





Then we added a nose...

I don't know why...


But it's fun I guess?








Ok so this is the Aizuya bar.  The woman working behind the bar also works in the adjoining hairdressers.

The people that work here are the best I've met so far on my trip; amazing and friendly!

I'm pretty sure the bar makes no money, it's just something to do for fun, and it shows with the way the staff talk to customers, and how easy it is to strike up a conversation with them.

Really nice people.






The woman on the right owns the hostel/bar with her husband, and they have the cutest baby ever.  It's this devious and cunning little blob thing that already knows how to break things and spend peoples money, in the coin machines they have around the place.

It's a shame about the picture really, but the lighting didn't allow for a very good photo.  If only I had a good camera!


Ok so I forced her to do the bunny rabbit ear/peace/v sign thing.  She works behind the counter in the new koyo hostel and is an amazing help.  She showed me how to get all around the place, and is just generally awesome.

She also bought me lunch!  Thank you very much!

I'll definitely head back to that hostel on the way back to the airport.


Ok so now we're in Yokohama.  My bags weighed too much to take photographs while travelling, but there really wasn't much to see anyway.

This tall, cool looking tower is on the coast of Yokohama overlooking the sea.  The cool thing is that this isn't particularly tall, there are buildings nearing 100 storeys that have obsvervation towers at the top, but this is probably only fifty or so, if that.

So many unbelievably tall buildings in Tokyo and Yokohama.




So I like this picture, even though it doesn't really have a story behind it.  All the birds are facing the same way, because the wind is blowing directly in the faces and when they want to take off, they simply hop off the edge and use the headwind to fly off.  Literally zero effort required!












Another view of the same boat.  Nothing more to say here really...












Moped modification...

You know you've taken it too far when you put a massive fin on the back of a moped to make it look like some kind of shark...

Big bikes are few and far between here, even on the motorways you'll see more harleys than sportsbikes, which again makes no sense.  Harleys work on american roads, but Japanese road are like English ones.

There are side-streets that have turns a harley would literally not fit around.  Bizarre.


Speak of the devil...

I've seen a few R1's parked around the place, and a few more 600cc bikes about the place, always parked.  Never ridden.








This cool looking structure is a hotel/apartment building overlooking the bay area.  It's gargantuan in all dimensions.  Most tall buildings are quite slender, but this thing is broad as much as tall, so you recognise it all over yokohama.

The distinctive curve reminds me of the gherkin, only this building is pleasing to the eye.









I really struggled  to get a good photo of this wheel.  It's substantially smaller than the London eye, but it's still a skyline dominating lightshow.  It's called the clock, and each spoke lights up like a second hand.  It also has a digital display in the middle showing the current 24hr time.  It's impressive.

Inside there's a log flume, as you do, and running around the area is a small roller coaster.  No I didn't go on any of them, my companion is quite timid.






Ok so now we're going to play a little game.

Guess what this shop is...

A little more will be revealed in the next picture...








Ok so there's no name yet, but the little figurines should give it away...













That's right!  It's a pokemon shop!

It's actually styled to look like a shop in the game, and has places to meet other pokemon players and trade junk!

It's a whole shop dedicated to a game franchise, frankly that's incredible and well worthy of a few pictures!


That's everything for this portion of the blog!

Blog Updated.

I've added a couple more posts in below this one, and will shortly be including a third.  I'm nearly caught up with events...


Ok so I've uploaded the videos I've taken while I've been out and about, they had to go on youtube, however I've provided a handy link on the right hand side.  For anonymous who couldn't figure out how to click the link, it says 'check out the videos from this trip,' on the right hand side, right near the top.  Below that it says 'My Youtube Channel.'  Click on this...

So you don't need to faff around with different links and windows and stuff, you can just go straight there!  Handy!

So the short summary of what I've been doing for the last few days is this;  three  days ago I went to Harujuku again, around the shrine and general area with Pascal and Naree, to see the silly costumed people and whatnot.  Then the day before yesterday I went around Ueno Park to see what was what, and generally nose around the place.  Then yesterday the three of us went around the park again, to check out all the different acts and generally relax after the several epic foot based journeys we'd all endured in the last week.


I'm going to create three separate posts to describe each day, so it makes more sense.


I'm moving out of the new koyo tomorrow and I'm heading to Yokohama 'hostel village,' I'm not really sure why it's named that...


I've also made a few minor changes to the blog to help streamline the process of generally viewing it; but hopefully you won't notice any difference!

Tuesday 22 September 2009

Ueno Park, The Second Outing!

So this is the chronicle of Ueno, day two.  On this day I went with Pascal and Naree again; it was the last such time that we went out together, I think.  To be honest I should have written this earlier, because I've forgotten a lot of things that happened!

We essentially had a nose around the park ala my first day in Ueno, (yesterday in chronological blog order).  It's always more fun to go around with good people though, so it was another good day.

Onto the pictures!


Or at least there would be pictures here, but the internet in this hostel is so bad that I can't upload any!  D'oh!


Ok so I hear the cries of, 'what the bloody hell is going on here then?!?!'  I don't know.  Prior to this she contorted  herself into the small blue bag behind her, and re-appeared with a couple of velcro eyes on her, that she proceeded to move around her body, inevitably ending up on her ass.  She then did a merry jig with this.

Everyone was so awed by her performance that all that could be heard was the occasional cough.

Still, a large number of people were gathered so maybe it's the Japanese way of showing appreciation, rapt attention with no sound might be the ultimate applause here...


Ok so this guy actually had demonstrable skill, unlike the prior 'entertainer.'  He plays the kind of music that you might here in a Chinese restaurant, the soft melody that's so relaxing.

It really is amazing how quickly he can move his hands around, and how deftly he moves around the board.










Ok so this is a random train that appeared before us in the park.

It turns out that the park has a mini railway around the edges for children and, bizarrely, couples.  Lots of couples.  Weird.

Anyway, not wanting to do anything by halves, they've stuck a big old steam loco out front.  The determination to stick out here is quite impressive.


This is another shot of the same train, this time vertically.  I don't know why I included two, I just felt like it I guess.
















Ok so now for the serious portion of my blog.

There are lots of homeless here.  I don't know, statistically speaking, whether there are more here than in London, but one thing is certain; they're more visible.

We were walking around the park and noticed that there were fewer people heading over here, so we came and checked it out.


All the people in line are queing for food, donated by a christian charity.  Charity doesn't exist in Japan; this event is extremely rare.  The mindset of the Japanese isn't one that allows for donation normally, if someone is homeless it must be through a fault of their own.  This attitude is changing however, and it's surprising to see a christian organisation actually doing something helpful, rather than just trying to hold the world back, or abusing children.


Having said that the Japanese are, frankly, harsh, they do other things extremely well.

All their trains and train stations have lifts for disabled people, and all their doors have special notches that wheelchair ramps can connect to, so when a wheelchair user gets onto the train, a conductor (quickly and efficiently) slots a ramp onto the train, and he can quickly get on and off.  The whole process takes less than thirty seconds.

It seems to me that they frown upon those who have had opportunity and failed, but cater, discreetly, for those who were born with disabilities.  I don't know enough about their tax systems and social welfare systems to see how far this goes, but to have every bus be low floor, and every train be accessible for everyone without the need to modify anything, (i.e. these considerations were built into the fabric of the system) would seem to make them quite conscientious of everyone.


It's also worth noting that unlike England, where homeless people are harassed every hour of every day, told to move on and not stop anywhere, the police do nothing of the sort here.  They don't move people or arrest them for loitering, they just let them be.

This does create areas where native Japanese don't go, because they think it's dirty or unsafe, but coming from London, I'd trust these people with my children, they're that harmless.


The difference in these areas is almost complete, between England and Japan.

The English would rather not see the homeless, despite knowing they're all about the place; out of sight out of mind.

The Japanese would rather leave them be and not go to those areas.

The English give out charitable donations, to ease their guilt over being in a better position than the homeless; thereby helping those with less than them.

The Japanese don't have that same guilt.



The people wearing the blue shirts belong to the christian church giving out the food.

They also had a band playing, which was the initial draw for me, music of any kind is worth investigating and has led me to many interesting encounters!

I don't know how much food they had, or if it was enough to feed everyone, but there were thousands of people to be fed, and the queue, as you can see from the photos above, went beyond the depth of field of my camera.  It was massive.

I wonder what the average Japanese would think of this scene?  Or what the average English person would think of this happening in hyde park or trafalgar square?  Because Ueno is essentially comparable to those places in terms of tourist importance.


Ok so back to the lighthearted stuff.

If you've seen my videos section, (on the right hand side, it says youtube!) you will have seen TIM (the incredible machine) here!

It's amazing.  To see the amazing thing in action watch the video.  The movement makes this much more incredible to watch in full flow.



This giant pizza oven is some kind of shrine to some kind of god.  The pizza deity he shall now be known as.











More to come soon!

Ok, let's do this thang!


Check out my youtube videos for this guys crazy one man band contraption thing.  He made all the equipment himself, and custo designed it to fit into the bags on his bike.  He essentially travels around (thanks to his sponsor, seen on his bike and shirt etc) raising money for charity.  He goes all around the world, and he listed the countries he's been to; most of which I can't now remember.

He was the only performer who made an attempt to communicate with the big scary foreigners in English, which makes him a favourite of ours!





So we crashed on a bench looking over this lake, (the park is massive, so we needed a rest).  We just ended up sitting here, making fun of the people in the boats, (really big fat men sitting next to small women made the boats lean and end up going round in circles) and generally chatting.  We did this for two hours somehow...



Before


So this bird went around fishing the waters, having an amazing success rate.  It was walking around being terrorised by the carp in the lake, as well as us for a long time before getting bored and flying off, straight into one of the boats.









Click on the image to see the little tiny fish it caught, and I managed to catch it catching!  There was a lot of catching apparently.















This is one of the most time consuming photographs I've ever taken.  It took about 20 attempts, using a huge number of different settings.

I don't know if I even like it :/

Anyway, for those who are interested:
Night time settings, 1 second exposure, resting on a fence around the lake!


So when it got dark we headed to this crazy loud noise, that turned out to be a free concert!  Amazing!

Unfortunately we only arrived for the last few acts, but these guys to the left here were definitely my favourites.

They have a man playing an electric ghost instrument on the left there, that's just awesome.  Check out my youtube videos for the video of their performance.


This is a better photo, and is another case of being extremely annoyed by the process of trying to take it.  So much effort went into this...










We liked this band for two reasons.  Firstly, and most importantly, the guy in the pink A: had the stones to wear a pink shell suit and B: He did a rock out thing at the end of their first song, where he stood  at the front of the stage pretending he was metallica or something.  Awesome.

Secondly and least importantly, the guy in  white had a pretty good voice.




It's a dark picture, but they're still posing like the cool dudes they are.  The guy in black was the bass guitarist, and seems to be fulfilling the bass guitarist stereotypes here.









And has become customary in my posts, we end today with a comedy picture.

Suntory is a beverage/snacks company here in Japan, and they make everything from beer to packed lunches.

Their best product however, is this; BOSS coffee.  It has an old 50's style american dad with a pipe, and the face they put to this?  The sidekick to will smith in 'men in black.'  Tommy Lee Jones himself.  Wearing the men in black suit and everything...  Epic.