The Wedding

So we had to get up extremely early in order to go to this wedding.

We were up at around 10 AM!

Unbelievable right?

When we arrived the bride was waiting in a small room.  She was already doled up and looking rather nervous.

On a side-note, the venue we were in consisted of four separate wedding areas.  Are they chapels?  I don't know.

Each area had two weddings, totaling eight.  I don't know how much each wedding cost, but I think it's a fair assumption that they make an awful lot of money!

On a personal note, I rather like this picture.  This is the groom (is that how you spell it?  I've never read about, willingly listened to or thought  about a wedding before, so I've not a single clue about wedding terminologies.) amid the sea of chaos that is his wedding.

I'd never met either of them before, but they're awesome.  (I went with Amanda, who knew the bride from her previous job.)

I don't know what the groom is looking at *ahem*.

The man in the picture is the official photographer.

I was the unofficial photographer.

I wanted to show you the camera he was holding, and at some stage link the camera I was using.  Serious penis envy.

I wanted to get in close for this picture, but then you miss the psychadelic background and their literally perfect attire.

I know people go to all kinds of trouble to get the perfect look for their wedding, but jees, this must have taken hours to put on.

Not the hair though, Koreans love making their hair look like this every day.  (It's the same with the Japanese!)

There were some obligatory cutesy photographs.

Interestingly they both work with foreigners, I believe teaching English (don't quote me on that) so their views are quite progressive.

Therefore this display of Asian cute was rather embarrassing for all involved, but I guess the real photographers picture was good enough.

If I had access to a computer with some kahoonas I would edit the following orange images, levelling the colour balance and making them substantially less orange.

On the flip side, I enjoy these pictures because of the way in which their standing, and general composition.

I took a few different shots at different zoom levels to try and find what worked best.

The further out you go with the zoom, the more distorted things look.  This is obvious (look at the crazy toppling buildings you see with small numbers on your own cameras!) in theory, but leads to some complicated effects in practice.  I guess the difficulty comes in knowing when to use these different properties and when not to.

Another shot with Amanda and the bride.

I probably should have placed them both central - something I could do in post using any photo editing software.

If only I had a computer!

Now this is the real reason I agreed to take photographs!

Korean hanbok (sp?) is the traditional clothing in Korea.  Unlike Japan however, you rarely, if at all, see people wearing them.  Just like Japan they're extremely expensive; unlike Japan they're somewhat plainer albeit more frilly.  To clarify, I mean plainer colour wise.)

After talking to the bride for a few minutes, I realised what this recessed cave actually was.

It's a picture frame!

This would work a little better if your eye wasn't immediately pulled through the illusion to whomever is sitting inside; as the frame requires a wider perspective.

Nice idea though!

Being forced to sit for hours on end must be tedious; but there were no shortage of people on hand to ensure not a single strand of hair was misplaced.

I'm serious.  It was immaculate.  Perfect.  Whenever a hair fell out of place, three people jumped up to correct it.

Having never been to a wedding myself, this was the first time I'd seen the procession.  (Is it called that?  I honestly don't know)

I'm not entirely sure what was happening, but someone (presumably her dad?) walked with the bride to the altar, a lot of talking was done, and then everyone left.  (There were a number of photographs taken not including the man and wife.)  (I assume they're man and wife at this point, and not simply bride and groom?)

This was the best part!

The food was pretty nice, but I was forbidden from taking the free beer that was on offer home.  It was three PM, and I simply couldn't stomach the thought of drinking then; so I wanted to take a few bottles (that no one else was drinking either) home.  I was told off.

I wasn't told off by staff or bouncers or anyone official - but by my date.  How very galling.

In a random segway, here is a woman on the wii fit.

We went Christmas shopping after the wedding, and they were advertising the wii fit.

I've seen this thing in four different countries now, and the buxom wenches always wear the same thing.

I wonder if they ship the clothes around the world to save buying new ones for all the people who do displays for them.

She wasn't exactly enthralled by her positions as head performer of monotonous tasks, but she was good.

Really good.

How good?

See if you can do the 'stand on one leg while bringing your other leg up to your chest and holding it there for five seconds,' routine and get a score this good.

I defy anyone to.

Above:  A random building that looked cool, lit up like that.

This is a random picture I took of Amanda looking out of the window on the bus.  The  bus ride was looooooooong, so there was tons of time to mess around taking pictures and generally annoying the Koreans - who think it's a national crime for a Korean person to date a foreigner.

Interestingly, she's not Korean.  The dumbass Korean folk can't see outside of their little country though, and assume everyone who looks asian is Korean.  Statistically speaking, they're more likely to be chinese.

Learn some maths please, Korea.

This is the disfigured cake that was eaten afterwards.

There should be an extra ear and paw, but I got hungry and started eating.

I was rather enamored with this particular cake, hence the multitude of pictures.

The pink tasted like strawberries!

 

And finally a picture of the happy couple and an intruding presence.  They changed from their wedding garb to these matching, traditional  hanbok in record time.  I'm told that some weddings can necessitate four or five clothing changes, depending on which religion(s) they're choosing to observe.  I suppose your best bet is to always appease as many gods as possible; especially with divorce rates being what they are now.

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.