Snowboarding, Skytree and Tall Buildings

I broke one of my fingers, making this post a pain in the ass to go with the pain in the phalanges. As such, it'll be shorter than normal by virtue of the fact that I'm not particularly masochistic.

It's a dogs life, being a cat in Japan.

So dad came over to Japan for a couple of weeks.  He wanted to see some big buildings (we'll get to that), some high technology (no pictures of that, but we saw an 80 inch LCD and glasses that are also entertainment centres replete with virtual 42 inch screens) and snow.

We also saw a cat tied up outside a house like a dog.  (See above)

We also went on the bullet train, which I always enjoy even if there's standing room only.  Despite my best efforts I couldn't add to my burgeoning trainspotter collection, but this picture is passable.

The crowds can be overwhelming, even for locals.

This picture was a complete surprise when I was casually flicking through my stash.  In terms of crowd photographs, it's entirely stereotyped.  One person looking back directly at the camera, an entire crowd of people heading in the opposite direction has been done to death - but at least it's one picture I now have in my portfolio.  Check that box.

This gaudy, outright disgusting building is for a company that made its name, and presumably all its money, selling beer.  The golden sides represent the sides of a glass, the top is the foam.  In Japan you'll be lucky if fifty percent of your beer is actually liquid - they love stealing an ever increasing number of millilitres from customers in the name of profit; under the guise of authenticity (it's how they do it in Europe!).

These aren't the most interestingly coloured  fortunes, but they're among the most plentiful.

During New Years celebrations, you get a fortune from one of the shrines and you tie it to one of the designated ropes that surround the shrine.  Traditionally you'd tie it to a branch, but having to clean up a million of those would get to be a chore pretty quickly I'd imagine.

There's a nice symmetry in this one.

So this is a fairly typical image in Japan, albeit usually more colourful (New Years spirit and all that).  I don't know the man who was tying the wish, but it was kind of weird taking the picture with him looking at me like I was a maniac.  I gave him a quick nod and went about my business - he didn't seem to be too miffed.  Who knows, maybe he went home and told his missus that a weird foreigner took his picture at the shrine.

No flinching!  I still wake up face down lying horizontally across my futon with the duvet hanging from the lampshade - I can't imagine how twitchy I was when I was that young.

This kid was absolutely dead to the world.  As with all these things I only had a few seconds to take the picture (we were heading into a burger king (my third fast food place in 3 months, it's becoming habitual now!) and my group wouldn't want to wait around, plus the dad was waiting to move the kids head to make it more comfortable, graciously allowing me to take the picture) but I'm happy enough with how it came out.

So let's get this out of the way.  The new bullet train looks like a penis.  You were thinking it, I was thinking it; everyone thinks it.  Now, in order to take an interesting picture I tried my best to accentuate the phallic properties, but due to a combination of lighting, placement and lack of imagination, I couldn't really get the picture I wanted.  As such, here is the shot with no real adjustment or alteration.

The grime is their glass, not mine!

So this is one of many shots taken from the top of the skytree.  I don't get vertigo - I'm not afraid of heights to a degree beyond what most would consider normal, (I'd go skydiving in a heartbeat, and I've done all manner of elevated adventure based activities) but this was really weird.  I wouldn't say frightening, but it was certainly disorientating.

Until we went up to the top of the skytree, this would have sufficed as the 'big building,' part of the trip.  Along with the other one I took in Shinjuku, this building actually looks pretty similar to this picture when viewed with the naked eye.  It's very tall!

Looking out over this river (I don't know the name) with the gaudy beer building on the left, you can see how calm the day was.  It was extremely cold, but it meant cloudless skies and blue waters; something I appreciated with the camera.  One thing I had to do in post processing was scale back the sun - it was taken in the evening and a full third of the frame was washed out whiteness.  Whether you like this artificially diminished sun style is subjective, but it lets the building outlines stand out a little more.

I'm not sure what it looks like, but I enjoy seeing it whenever I walk past.

This was the other building, remarkable for being ruddy wide to boot.  There is no end to interesting shapes within the architecture of Japan, but there is a definite lack of coherent planning among the wards.

I wanted to take a photo through the airholes looking in, but the owner was so keen to show it off that they unzipped the front, revealing a thoroughly fed-up looking creature.

This was the picture to best describe how I assume that dog felt.  We saw not one, not two, but fully three animals being taken somewhere on public transport.

The crowds at the shrines and temples were quite big, but no one was wearing traditional garb.  It was quite surprising how many people were out for what is, essentially, a Western holiday.  Chinese New Year is sometimes in February (it changes every year) and I'd imagined that to be far bigger.  More people seem to dress up, in my experience at least.

May look tired, but not shy of shouting in your face with a gigawatt megaphone from four feet.

The police lines were more akin to riot control than simple temple visitation.  The poor bastards carrying the signs and loudspeakers looked like they'd been doing it all day.  At least the Japanese are notoriously docile.  I suspect you'd have more trouble with that bored looking dog than any number of locals.

In space, no one can hear the shutter.

This is one of the pictures from the sky tree.  There really are very few pictures that don't  outright look better in black and white.  I'd like to blow your mind and say that the curvature you see is the earth - but that would require me being somewhere near space and for that river to actually be an ocean.  It's the distortion from the widest angle of my lense.

This amazing set of steel (is it steel?) tubes is but a tiny fraction of number of inter-locking parts that combine to make the sky tree.  It's all symmetrical, it all fits together nicely - except when you look at the entire structure from the side and from a long way away.  It actually leans slightly, making it quite unsettling in a kind of 'do they know it's doing that?' kind of way.

This is another of the mild telephoto shots from the top of the second tallest building in the world.  After taking this a kid ran face first into my camera.  After realising it had fucked up (it looked up, as I looked down with a glare of concentrated death planted upon my features) it ran towards the negligent human being who can, presumably, lay claim to being the father.  It then proceeded to create more noise than is right for something of that size, or for something of such insignificance.

The kid fucking up netted me being called a stupid foreigner by a group of locals, and a bloody great smudge on my lense (I know it's spelled lens by the way).  Luckily I use a UV filter for just such occasions (things outside of your control happen regularly in such confined quarters) so I wasn't particularly perturbed after a cursory inspection of the glass.  Those Japanese people, that kid, and the asshole parents who were letting a three year old run around unsupervised, waiting to be kidnapped or (hopefully) beaten up, can all die in a fire.  Tomorrow, if you'd all be so gracious.

I have no idea how, but I accidentally semi lomo'd this picture by completely messing up the colours and exposure.  Of course I have no idea how any of that works and I let my camera sort that stuff out, so I can't claim credit (hence the accidentally), but with a few more colour modifications this picture could turn out looking really crappy, which is good.  Apparently.

Yet another picture of Tokyo.  It really is a spectacular view and it shows you just how big Tokyo is.  It goes on forever in every direction.

To give you an idea of how big the tower itself is, you can see it (a hazy outline massively blown up, from a picture taken on a clear day, in a tourist pamphlet) from Nagano, where we went skiing.  That's 250km+ away.

One of the biggest shrines in Tokyo, with massive groups of people only allowed in every few minutes.  We walked in the side door, bypassing the queue entirely.

Most people here will run a chainsaw filled gauntlet in their underwear before having the pictures taken by a stranger.  On this day, people were different.  It must be the festival-like atmosphere that causes the change, but I doubt I'll ever have another opportunity to find so many people willing to be shot by a foreigner.  Some even look at you!

Some amazing colours and patterns.

We went to Harajuku which is where all the dancing Elvises (Elvi? Elivisis?) and kids dressed up like cartoon characters gather.  Alas, on this cold day, all we saw were two women wearing the traditional getup, being interviewed on camera.  They might be famous, or they might have been picked because of their clothing.  They were the only people we saw in the full regalia.

Some at 24mm, some at 105mm, none in-between.

Damn I took a lot of pictures of the cityscape.

One of the saving graces of black and white is that things don't need to be pin-sharp in order for the picture to work.  As such the low-light shots taken from the sky tree tend to work quite well.  This is one of the few pictures that was steady enough to highlight the details in colour.  There wasn't even enough room to put the camera down anywhere.

Details everywhere.

The golden stairs leading to the entrance to the waiting area for the line to buy the tickets to wait in line to get to the elevator that takes you to the midway station to get in line and wait to buy the tickets that ultimately let you in the second elevator that goes to the top.

This is a similar shot to the black and white one above, in that it's been done a thousand times before.  At least I can cross this one off too.

So apparently there aren't any snow or skiing pictures in this batch, but I'll get around to adding those at some point.  If you visit Tokyo I would definitely recommend going to the skytree.  It's best at night (I've not been during the day, but I can't imagine it being as good) so go around 4 pm, pick up a ticket to get in around 8ish and then go do something else for a few hours, to keep yourself occupied.  It's bloody expensive, but you'll only ever do it once and you can take some great pictures, so I would say it's worth going all the way to the top - even if you have to pay twice for the privilege.  

So the Lost Travel Buddy Made This:

So Naree, the Australian council sponsored companion with whom I shared a few excursions had to document her travels with a video camera.  I asked her to show me the evidence of her documentation, and she produced these:


harajuku from Naree Vachananda on Vimeo.

This is our trip to harujuku. I haven't had the chance to watch this all the way through yet, but the production quality is pretty good; and the content is pretty interesting too.

I'm still not sure why the Australian council let her have money for doing this because, frankly, it all seems like too much fun to be serious work.


ueno park from Naree Vachananda on Vimeo.

So the soundbyte at the beginning is pretty stupid, and I sound dumb but hey, they were a really fun couple of days.

She's also got a website full of these kinds of videos, check them out if you like psychadelic artsy contemporary dance stuff.

As Naree might say, 'far out...'

A Trip to Harujuku and Shibuya

So yesterday me and a couple of guys I met in the hostel went to Harujuku to see the crazy dressed up people, and to see what the part of Tokyo you see on the T.V is actually like.  It was a little too hot for all the costume people yesterday, so there weren't that many out and about; but the dedicated few who were present provided quite a show.

After one of the party members left to head to Osaka (I think) we decided to go to Shibuya, where he hit some arcades and I laughed as he got whooped repeatedly.

After another hundred mile day we got home, and after agreeing to meet up for dinner I fell asleep and woke up at 8 this morning.  Oops.

Onto the photos!

Welcome to jam packed Tokyo.  This bit is the cool section, evidenced by the macdonalds signs everywhere, and the western shops on every corner.   For the record, it was in the high twenty degrees with a whopping humidity, bear that in mind when you see some of the costumes...

These dodgy maid outfits are everywhere.  I thought they were just myth, but they actually exist.

Is this a well recognised chain?

Ok that red suit is head to toe... Hot much?  Those glasses are also awesome and so is the hat.  He even moves as if he were a robot.  I have no idea what he's selling, if he's selling anything at all.  I do want his glasses though.

Same guy again, he's worth three pictures I think.

Again, I don't know what she's selling, all I know is that it's worth 980円.  This picture has a spiderman just offscreen.  He was livid that we were taking pictures of this girl, and we presumed that was because he fancied her, and was trying to chat her up.  He was awfully friendly with her, for simply being colleagues...

We saw this guy a few times around the place, but were never able to get a good shot.  He is some kind of tron/power rangers mix, and the bicycle he walks around with kind of makes me lean towards tron more.

This guy/girl was standing in the exact spot for more than three hours, we walked past him twice!  A lot of effort went into this one, ten out of ten!

These girls went the extra mile, even putting blue contact lenses in.  Tons of effort also went into these costumes, 10/10!

Same guys again, slightly closer to show the detail that's gone into these madhat costumes.

The golden flowers mean this is some kind of imperial owned site I think.

Shinto priests.  A wedding procession went past while we were ambling around the site.  It felt kind of weird to take pictures of the procession as tourists, not knowing the couple and generally being an unwanted nuisance.  From a selfish perspective however, I'll never get  an opportunity to see that again so I took as many discreet photos as I could.

More covert photographs.

This is the procession.  Everyone doled up in their finery.

A closer look at the formalities.  I was going to use the word 'festivities,' but somehow it doesn't seem apt for this particular photo.

They had the whole thing filmed, and all the cameramen wore green armbands.  To make sure everyone knew who was holding the camera?

The woman in the green/gold/beige was running around in and out of train organising everyone and everything.

I noticed that I hadn't managed to get a photo of someone wearing the traditional dress, so I pretended to be american, and asked this woman if I could take a photo.  The exasperation was evident in her demeanour, but it was a minor victory for non american English speakers everywhere.

As you can probably see by now, these ornately constructed roof and edge parts of their shrines hold a particular fascination for me, look at how detailed and ornate they are!

Another covert photo op.

I don't know whether these guys are asian or what, but they are insane looking.

These are the guys I went around with.  Whereas Europeans try to look normal in photos, and Asians do the two finger peace thing, americans try to look like they're about to shoot you.

As they would say, 'go figure.'

Also, never follow a texan, their sense of direction is awful.

Elvis is not dead.  He has been cloned, and taught to 'bodypop,' and now performs in duplicate, in the park at harujuku.  I bet you didn't see that one coming!

Showing off is showing off in any country.

I've no idea how you spell didgerydoo.  But his has a mic and is attached to an amp...

This dog park, is in the middle of the normal park and has several zones.  The little dogs go here, and the big dogs go elsewhere.  This is quite possibly the most pointless thing ever.  For one, how do you get the dogs here without taking them through the normal park?

There were a lot of people chatting away though, so maybe it's more of a way to meet people than to do some actual dog based exercise.

The weight categories made no sense either, 3kg - 12kg?  That's mike tyson versus me.  That's plainly not fair.

One of their old olympic facilities.

This is the picture of Tokyo you see in the news, on tele generally and in the films.   This is the view from street level.

This is the same view from a few storeys up.  This is a non-crowded, average, any time of  day scenario for crossing this street.

 

There is a person inside that, waving his or her arms up and down in a slightly worried kind of way...

For all your voltage testing needs.  They had about five stalls in a row, owned by different people all trying to peddle the exact same models of these.  Strange.  And kind of utilitarian for a country that doesn't have the D.I.Y concept.

It's a real shame this photo came out badly, because these guys were good.







That's all for yesterdays trips.