To ward off boredom (Location: Tokyo, Japan)

Japanese roads

2012-03-10T14:56:00.000+09:00

If you've read my other posts, then you know I do a tid bit of biking around. Usually it's the same routes day to day but sometimes I find myself with a day off and wanting to explore a bit.
I had such a chance two weeks ago while I was at the girl friends apartment. I had never really checked out her area all that much so away I went.

I found whatever that cool Russian ish looking building is and then went for a coffee. Going and finding my way back anywhere is annoying even if you have a proper smartphone with GPS. The picture below is what Google maps calls a major highway. Here is a usual description of me trying to go to a specific place in an unknown area.

1. Look at GPS find next turn. "Cool"
2. Wonder how close I am to said turn.
3. Look at GPS to discover I overshot it by half a kilometer. "crap"
4. Go back and overshoot by 0.2 kilometers. "Gah!"
5. Turn around and miss again by 0.1 kilometers. "#&@&$&#&%"
6. Turn left.
Its extremely annoying, then add taxis that cut you off and other

Guarana in Tokyo

2012-03-10T14:53:00.004+09:00

I've taken a couple trips to Brazil in my earlier days and there was one thing I loved to have every time. Guarana. Guarana is a popular soda in Brazil and I've heard rumors of such a mythical drink up in Hokkaido. Back at home the only place I could find it was in Seattle at pikes place market for ridiculously high prices.

So what surprised me this week was I was perusing around the stores near eifukucho station and stumbled into a place called kaldi, its a small import store that has some stuff you generally can't find in your usual supermarket here. (Tortillas for some reason are hard to find) Either way I wander around and to my delight there is a bunch of cans of guarana sitting in the corner.
Oh the sweet sweet gods of soda have blessed me so! I shall forever now spend a good bit of money on my nostalgic taste of travels from long ago.
Awww yeah we be on a sugar high tonight. I'll see y'all in my after sugar crash state later.
Cheers

Tokyo Disney Land!

2011-12-15T21:25:00.001+09:00

I went on a quick trip to Disney Land last week for the girlfriends birthday, so here's what the land of dreams is like in the land of the rising sun! My camera was unfortunately dead at the time (always at the most needed time), anyway the pictures are taken with a (somewhat) okay smartphone camera so please forgive the quality.

There are two places that Disney will sell you overpriced tickets to enter. One being Disney Land, the other is Disney Sea. My wallet can only afford one every half year so Disneyland was the choice. I have never been to any Disney theme park in the states so this is coming from a state of not knowing what it is like in it's original form.

A quick pic of the birthday girl in the main merchandise depository. The whole place is ridiculously over sculpted, this may just come from living in Tokyo for a whole year so far but still everything is so detailed. Most of the plants are real, the buildings aren't just painted cardboard, to just walk around and look around can keep you interested for hours.

Of course there are an extremely large amount of gift shops selling all your crazed mickey fanatic will ever need. I found this Tigger hat/scarf/gloves combo most fitting for myself if I had any more moola to get it with.

Just hanging out in the fantastic weather. Tokyo during the winter is quite nice as far as the view goes, a lot of clear days like this, but that also means it's pretty friggin cold and Japan's odd dislike for central heating makes it feel colder then it really is, but more on that later.

Of course I had to find the odd English sign obviously made by a Japanese person (or a wonderfully innocent English speaking person). I didn't get a hot dog but I'm sure I would have had a Wiener-ful time! On another not I got a churro here which I haven't seen anywhere else in Tokyo so it was a nice treat that tasted like home, sweet sweet deep fried dough dipped in cinnamon sugar.

After every classic Disney parade it was always sponsored by some random Japanese company, and they would always have a big float at the end to tell you so. Docomo being the finale of this one.

The sun started to set as we were in line for Big Thunder Mountain. Around this time we were starting to get really hungry and getting the craving for steak in a big way. Trying to look up the restaurant menu on the Disney sight didn't really work out very well, because... well they didn't put them anywhere conceivably easy to get to on a smartphone.

Something Tom Sawyer themed steaming by, again crafted to an amazing degree.

Food!!! Finally found a place that had some sort of steak. I can't really put down the chefs at this place, they do good work, om nom nom.

See look how happy I am!

Finally with a grainy night photo with a cellphone camera, the night ends. We completely flumuxed the Japanese lady we got to take the picture. She apparently had never used a touch screen smartphone before so her pecks with her long nails didn't exactly work until she used her actual finger.

I'll have another post about Disney Sea later as I have a back stock of photos of my trip there during the summer.

As always till next time folks.

Working at an english chat cafe.

2011-12-11T13:28:00.001+09:00

My longest held job here in japan is an english chat cafe. There are a couple of these places around where people just come to practice their english in a more casual non class like setting.

This is the easiest job friggin ever. I come, I sit, I drink some coffee and then, talk. What's easier than that? Either way Ive been doing this for a good nine months now, and am still not tired of it. You meet all sorts of people. Truck drivers, doctors, scientists, college students, chefs, anybody you can think of.
For people just coming over to Japan and you speak english, I'd totally recommend looking around for a simmilar gig. The pay isnt all that great, but you're not really working all that much for the pay.

Well then people till next time.

Learn Japanese Playing Video Games

2011-06-11T22:36:00.001+09:00

This isn’t some post touting some crappy game that has been made to make you learn Japanese and then ultimately turn out to be a horrible waste of money, time, and attention. I’m actually talking about getting some of your old favorite video games in Japanese and playing them.

This I have found is a great way to tackle learning kanji and common sentence structures even. RPGs of course work the best for this method of learning because of their large amounts of dialog and story driven gameplay.

For this I bought a nice old Sega Dreamcast in Akihabara a couple months ago, just 1400 yen (like $15). A bunch of games you can find for 100 yen around at places like Bookoff, and other game store in the district.

I chose a classy RPG from my childhood “Grandia II”. Since I still sort of know the story it makes translating and understanding some parts of the dialog a lot easier I would really recommend picking a game you knew in the past just for this reason. Makes looking things up much easier knowing the general subject they’re about, also a lot faster.

I waited to write this post because well, I just got this fancy monitor yesterday to be able to play on. Having the computer open of course to the side is for looking things up quickly.

The only thing about using an older system is when a complicated kanji comes up with a lot of strokes in it, it’s really hard to tell them apart because of the resolution. This would be fixed by using newer games with higher resolution (but that would involve getting a new system). I have a PS3 back in the good ole US of A, I just haven’t gotten around to getting it shipped over here.

I also do the same thing with a PSP I got for cheap used in Akihabara as well. The cheap game is called “Last Ranker”, everyone who asks what I’m playing never have heard of the game, so I guess it’s not that popular. I got it because it was cheap, I guess there is a reason for it.

So I’m gunna go play some more (learn maybe), bye bye!

Finally a complete Room in Japan

2011-06-07T18:38:00.001+09:00

Since moving out of the dorm I have been living with a lack of furniture and basic things I’ve always been used to living at home, but now I Think I’ve got all the basic furniture, utilities, appliances and such.

Just today I got my nice computer chair delivered. As you can see from my post a month ago the room is a lot less barren.

These past couple weeks I have had a real hard time trying to find the best place to park my bike. The truth is that there just isn’t one. So I gave up and now the bike comes up to the 7th floor with me, this is not all that uncommon in japan if you live in central Tokyo. Be it paranoid people thinking it’s going to get stolen, or people who are fed up with switching spots everyday to avoid getting your bike towed off.

These things will appear on your handle bars every week. It doesn’t matter if your bike is out of the way and parked in a place that doesn’t bother anyone say like under the stairs of a pedestrian overpass (This is where I usually kept mine). The rules vary from city to city, in mine the first give you this orange warning, then a red one, then after that they take your bike off to the city lock up till you go and give them 2000 yen to get it back. Either way it’s annoying so I’ll do as the Japanese do and bring it on inside.

This is the desk I ordered off Rakuten.co.jp it’s kinda like a poorly designed Japanese amazon. Amazon does have a Japanese sight but in this case Rakuten was cheaper so I went with them. This is my basic setup for now. Me liking gadgets, there is plenty to use here.

First off my Sony Vaio Laptop, which usually stays on the desk at home unless I need some real power for some school work.

The ipad (1st generation), yes I got an ipad. It works well for the daily school stuff and keeping me awake during some god awful lectures.

The HTC Desire HD, it is the first android phone I’ve ever owned and I friggin love the thing. If you are to come to Japan get yourself an android Smartphone, it will save you countless times.

And of course a Sony PSP to get my small gaming fix every now and then.

Of course a small white board to remember to pay bills and pay back my roommate for some cinnamon toast crunch he got me from the army base.

A nice thick comfy futon thanks to Amazon this time, so now I’m able to finally sleep comfortably.

My home built book shelf came with me from the dorm. It’s the only furniture I had and I didn’t want to give it up. It’s made from the box my bike came in and packing tape.

This is the result of boredom and a large amount of 1 yen coins. They are the equivalent of about 1 cent and you will build up a collection of them really fast because most people still use cash over here. They’re really weird feeling, like they are made of plastic, almost feels like they come from a board game.

Anyhow, I’ve been avoiding homework by writing this post and need to get to it.

Till next time friends.

The PS Vita at E3

2011-06-07T17:41:00.001+09:00

I have a huge love for all things gadgets and new shiny silicon clad computers. So this week is just an extremely happy time for me with E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo) and Apple’s WWDC (World Wide Developers Conference) all going on at the same time. I know this isn’t exactly all that Japan related but who really cares.

I am a big Sony fan so with the news that is most relative to me is the NGP or now newly dubbed PSVita.

This is it, it’s just oozing with tech. A 5 inch OLED touch screen, rear touch pad, 4 core processor, and dual joy sticks. They put this thing at $250 for Wifi only and $300 for a 3G model. So finally Sony is putting the price point on the same line as the gameboy. As far as what the graphics look like, beautiful. Just no other word for it, a mini PS3 right here and I’ll be one of the first to pick one up when it goes on sale this year. aww yeah son.

They are going to be getting rid of that silly UMD disk format (about time), and go with their own SD card like format. You can also download games from the PS Store, as for how much internal memory it will have to store those games is not yet confirmed Probably 8 or 16 GB.

It will have to ability to play online with PS3 users depending on the game which is pretty cool. I saw a video of this working with Wipeout and it seemed to work flawlessly.

Launch Titles I know of are as follows.

-Uncharted: Golden Abyss (action, Adventure)

-Hot Shots Golf (Sports, Golf)

-Wipeout (Racing, Arcade)

-Sound Shapes (Music, Strategy, Platformer)

-Little Deviants (Action, Compilation)

-Gravity (Action, Adventure)

-Hustle Kings (Sports, Strategy)

-Little Big Planet (Action, Strategy, Platformer)

-ModNation Racers (Racing)

-Reality Fighters (Fighting)

-Super Stardust Delta (Action, Arcade)

-Ruin (Action RPG)

Photo credit goes to Kotaku.com and us.playstation.com

Night Shots Looking Towards Ikebukuro

2011-05-11T02:17:00.001+09:00

I just got done fiddling with some long exposures from the view at my apartment. Thought they were nifty enough to put up on here. This is what happens at 2 AM and can’t sleep (T-T)

If you follow the road under the expressway It’ll lead you straight to Ikebukuro. Everyone seems to want to go hang out in Shibuya all the time so I still end up biking at least 10Km down there. It was raining today on the way back so I got soaked.

Behind these two buildings and the school on the right is Gokokuji Temple/Shrine. I was once told how to tell the difference by the entrance to say if it was either a shrine or temple, something about the gate at the front? I don’t know. I’ll wander in there sometime later and give you guys a look see.

It’s supposedly really expensive to use the raised expressway here. I hired a van guy last week to help move a fridge and washer and we took the long way round so he wouldn’t have to pay 1000 yen (about $12.50) for the toll. Who would pay such a thing unless going on a long trip?

So that was the last good picture, all the rest turned out fuzzy because I still have neglected to buy a tripod. I don’t suppose I’ll ever buy one, hmmm. Okay time for zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Renting A New Apartment!

2011-05-09T22:20:00.002+09:00

Howdy Folks I’ve been busy with all my finals and moving and so now I finally get to show you my new place! Thankfully it’s much cleaner than the school dorms.

Yes sir! That there is my door that like a lot of doors in this country is too small. We have a mail slot for some reason (mail boxes are down stairs)

Right next to the door is the un-sturdy shoe box that I have already tipped over (more than once). and that room your peeking into is my humble sleeping chamber.

Here’s just when moving in my first couple things. Again the doorway low, as well as the light in the middle of the room. This place has Japanese style tatami mat rooms, smells grassy, more comfortable than hardwood but also they kind of shed grass a little bit which is annoying when I’m folding laundry.

This be the rather large closet that at first I was planning to sleep in as to give me a darker place. I did the first couple nights and even without a bed I slept till 2 or 3 every time. So as to actually get stuff done that idea was nixed.

Here is my roommates room (He shall be known as Mr. T for the sake of his privacy). It’s smaller then my room but he gets the balcony so he can go out to smoke when he wants, a win win for all really. Again there is a problem with the door (I’m noticing a trend here)

Our majestic 7th floor Expressway view. Outside on the balcony there is supposed to be a washer, but when I took this picture we sadly did not have such a thing.

This is in this country a wide and spacious kitchen, honestly we were lucky it came with that stove. Those few utensils you see on the counter are the extent of out kitchen tools.

Of course there has to be a bathroom shot. You may notice a that it’s not a super cool robot toilet. Yes that is true, but being able to pay rent overcomes the need for such technological fantasy. Another thing you may notice, where’s the friggin shower?!

Oh here it is! In japan it’s very common to have the toilet and shower in separate rooms. Also in this place they don’t use regular water heaters but electric ones. More efficient that way, also you never run out of hot water! I knew this place would have something better than my old apartment.

I’ll post the updated apartment with furniture and everything in a day or two. Until then stay happy people!

Getting sarted with mobile updates

2011-05-09T14:38:00.001+09:00

I find myself not updating at all recently and am going to fix this through the wonders of mobile updates! I've got this fancy new android phone so I might as well use it. I keep wanting to post something while away from the computer and out at a coffee shop or something. So for now I'm testing out some of the apps for doing just that.

So far this post is being made using googles own made app. It's alright, but it dosen't give me the ability to post pictures where I want or resize them to my usual resolution. I'll try out some others and also write a couple large posts about finding an apartment in japan and just what you have to suffer though to rent it.

Here is a picture of my overly chocolatey iced mocha. Mmmmmmm 400 calories.

Help Japan, Kans head wishes it

2011-04-08T23:24:00.001+09:00

This is a picture from when I went down to Osaka (more on that later). That is a giant version of Prime Minister Naoto Kans head looking for people to donate money. On all streets with a good amount of foot traffic, and you will see people collecting money for the disaster stricken up north.

Here is a link to the red cross so you can help out too.

Whatever way you want to help is great. Have a good night.

Japanese Learning Tool: Read The kanji

2011-04-08T23:02:00.001+09:00

This is a tool I’ve been using for quite awhile and have found it extremely useful so I thought I would share it.

Read the kanji is a basic kanji reading driller. It is by far the best one out there, with it’s only draw back being that it is still separated in the old 4 level JLPT system but who really cares about that. It keeps track of your progress kind of like the flashcard program Anki but instead of you selecting how much you think you know a certain word, it’s all done in the background. Keeping track of your progress as you learn words and introducing new words when your ready and have a solid grasp on the old ones.

This is the interface you work with, the big characters on the top are the reading your supposed to type. Another great thing about this certain tool is you don’t have to mess with changing your keyboard settings to type Japanese characters, it will switch your romaji into Hiragana automatically.

Then after making some progress you can keep track of your progress. as you learn characters they will change color from red to green. Following things like this is almost addicting, like leveling up in a video game you want to get better and it’s exciting to see your progress. This chart has the 1945 joyo characters on it.

The whole tool has an extraordinary amount of words in it’s catalog and to master them all then you can pretty much pass the kanji section of the JLPT 1 with flying colors.

As you see in this screenshot you can also learn all your hiragana and katakana through this too. I must voice a word of advice though, this does not help at all for writing, and learning to write correctly the hiragana and katakana just do some drills along with this and you’ll have it all down.

The same advice goes for writing kanji as well, even though through writing with computers and smartphones are making having to know how to write kanji less of a need. I still think true learners of Japanese should learn how to write a majority of the kanji too.

And there it is one of many great tools for getting your Japanese up and going.

Going out for some Monjyayaki

2011-04-03T02:38:00.002+09:00

Got invited out for some monjyayaki by a couple friends from TUJ, so here’s what happened.
Monjyayaki is sort of like okonomiyaki but the batter isn’t as thick. It is a specialty around Kanto, and said to have originated from the Tsukishima district in Tokyo (which is where we went on this occasion.) Twas an exciting time, have a look.

First time making monjyayaki.

In the video I tried to do it exactly the same way other people had done it before me but apparently I did something unusual because as you could hear in the the video “oooh! Seattle Style!”

This is what it looks like when its ready to eat, pretty delicious stuff. You could get all different types of mixes for the ingredients, even a Mexican style one that was mighty tasty! I choose the salmon one as coming from the northwest I miss the stuff and haven’t had it in awhile.

Credit goes to this girl Lindsey for the video. Thanks Lindsey!

A Ride Down To Yokohama

2011-03-30T01:24:00.004+09:00

Since I found myself having a good amount of free time lately (school has been canceled for the time being for reasons that are pretty obvious.) I decided a bike trip down to Yokohama was in order. From the TUJ dorm in Ontakesan it’s about a 50km trip there and back. Now on to the pictures.

Just the first shot of the day taken on highway 1.

The major river crossing, if your follow this river all the way down to the ocean you reach Haneda Airport which I found out on a day I decided just to keep biking along it.

More wide open spaces by the river, where ever I move to when I’m kicked out the dorms I really hope that I’m near a river. So much space to fool around on!

A driving range on the other side of the river, from the amount of golf stores around here it seems to be really popular. I have yet to see one legitimate golf course yet though.

A lonely set of tracks

Yet another river going on down to Yokohama

Seen a good amount of rowing teams here.

A cartoon Big Bird character advertising some pachinko parlor, I have yet to know how it’s played and don’t really get the point. In time I guess I’ll find out.

Putting to rest that Japan is uber clean all the time. Graffiti can still be seen basically everywhere around with few exceptions.
Some of that old mixing with new stuff. I like being able to see cool old Japanese architecture on most streets.

A little shrine just sitting on the side of the road. Wherever you are in Tokyo the chances of you being 400 meters from a shrine is basically 100%

The second Ducati dealer that has made me extremely jealous every time I pass by.

Almost every neighborhood has a nice street on which all the shops are on, I enjoy the amount of mom and pop shops around it feels nice and homey.

Proof! I made it to Yokohama station. that’s about it for this picture.

There are a bunch of shopping centers around the station, feels a bit too rich for my tastes but if you’re a shopper here ya go.

Really wanted to join in a game of soccer but I was really tired from the ride, also didn’t want to intrude. This little court is on top of a big shopping center.

Another part of the “park” on top of the shopping center. The sun was out so I took a nice nap just like that dude there.

Yokohama near the port is a beautiful place that’s really modern feeling and clean.

Of course, we needed a picture of the iconic Farris wheel. Good place for a nice cheesy date.

A lot of intersections here have bridge crossings for pedestrians, often the go unused because waiting for the cross walk is usually faster anyway. Although not all of them are as cool as this one.

Down near the docks is this cool skating rink, I’m not sure how long they have it here, but it’s a cool little spot.

This place I believe is called the red brick warehouse, it’s full of cool little shops and places to get stuff to eat.

This one on the left is used as an art gallery. I didn’t go inside as I’m not very interested in that kind of thing.

From the warehouse you could see this giant structure. Turns out it’s the international terminal for boats, so if you take a boat over from Hawaii or something you might end up there.

Cool little restaurant on the way walking over to the international terminal.

A shot of Yokohama from the docks.

Again with the old (possibly abandoned) right along with the new.

More of the Yokohama skyline.

Here’s what you see as you approach the terminal.

Here’s how I found out what the place was. The sign reads 横浜港 (Yokohama minato= Yokohama port) 大さん橋 (Oosan bashi= big bridge [something along those lines]) 国際客船 (kokusai kyakusen= international boat passenger) ターミナル (taaminaru= terminal)

A layout of the terminal, I wonder if customs here is as annoying as at the airport.

There’s a lot of grass along the whole place, even though it’s brown and crispy now the rainy season is coming.

A scope of how the place looks.

This reminds me of the tiff Japan had with china over that boat ramming where a Chinese boat rammed the Japanese coast guard off the coast of some disputed islands.

Sign telling you not to climb around on the steeper parts of the terminal.

Place where I ate riding home. I order a nice big bowl of ramen and a coke, they thought I ordered gyoza when I said cola for coke, so I just got it all. Made the rest of the ride harder on such a full stomach.

And finally almost home and a good sunset to end the day. It was good timing too because its illegal to ride your bike at night without a light on the front and I had left mine at home.
Till next time friends.

The day of the quake (March 11th)

2011-03-27T02:08:00.003+09:00

Now that day had started like any other, getting up early grab a banana because I was out of milk for cereal again then off riding to school. Classes were normal I believe I bombed a math test pretty hard then things went ape shit.
Twas around 2:30 or so and the classroom on the 6th floor of the school building began to shake very slightly. It was like any other little tremor, if you were standing you wouldn’t even notice it. Then it just kept continuing to get bigger and lasting longer than your average quake. In all honesty it didn’t feel that big, it only had enough shaking ability to maybe knock a can of soda over and rustle some books off the shelves.
During this time most of the students and the teacher went for the door, while a select few and myself stayed and did the get under the table and away from the window thing. When the quake was over my teacher about 10 seconds later peeked his head in the room and upon seeing the few of us in the room standing and wondering what to do said “wow! you guys are brave!”
This is when everyone was ushered outside by school staff and were told to stay put for a little bit. Then told it was safe to go back inside only to be ushered right back out 5 minuets later by an aftershock. At this point I just decided to bike back to the dorm.
On my way home this is what I saw.

People standing and waiting, and waiting at every train station. The trains had stopped for good reason and would not start for the rest of the day. leaving an extreme amount of people stuck in the middle of Tokyo when their homes are all too far away to walk to.

Either way I bring this up as another great reason to use a bike going to school, the only way I couldn’t use it is if a building landed on it, and if that were to happen I don’t think the dorm would be standing anyway so what would be the point of going home.
As I was riding back home I was oblivious to how big the earthquake really was. It didn’t damage Tokyo at all because it was a good distance away. Then I got to the dorm where the manager Aki had the news on in the entrance.
I just sat there and watched.

Immigration in Shinagawa, Getting a work permit

2011-03-22T23:33:00.003+09:00

So I haven’t posted In awhile, things will all make sense I’ve just been loading up on pictures and stuff and will go in chronological order.

Seeing as I am a poor college student and am running out of money, one thing I have to do is get a job and if you’re a student in Japan, that means getting a work permit. So this is the first picture along my ride to Shinagawa where the immigration office is.

I believe this is the outside of Shinagawa station, it’s been awhile and a lot has happened since I took these photos to be honest.

Entrance to the station being all modern and space shippy.

My humble steed, which has been increasingly the best purchase I’ve made since coming to Japan.

More showing off of the Shinagawa money going on over here. Shinagawa is home to some pretty giant companies Japan Airlines, Bandai, Acura, and Adobe to name a few. Sony’s headquarters used to be here but they moved over to Minato-ku.

Stone block with the name of the bridge on it. With my small knowledge of kanji I couldn’t tell you the translation and am too lazy to look it up.

The office is located in a shipping yard which feels…inviting?

More shipping containers

And here is the office in question. If your going to be taking a train be ready for a walk because it’s a fair distance away from Shinagawa station.
Going and getting a workers permit is really very easy.
Things you will need
-Passport
-Alien Registration Card
-Time

Go into the office and you get the form from the desk on the first floor, after you’ve filled out the form you go up to the second floor and submit it to the correct desk. I can’t remember which one but just ask anyone and they will tell you which color line to follow on the floor. Now submitting the form will take time, it’s a take a ticket with a number type deal. On the random Tuesday afternoon I showed up it took two hours. All you have to do is give them the form with your passport and Alien card and then they fiddle around with it for 15 minuets and then tell you to leave.
The process of getting approved for the work permit is supposed to take up to two weeks, although I got approved in about two business days, not sure if that’s normal or not. Either way they send you a postcard in the mail in which you take back to the immigration office with your passport. You get inline again (although for much shorter this time), you give them the postcard and passport and they put a sticker in your passport, and all is done.
So have fun getting those permits kids!

Snow in Tokyo!

2011-03-02T01:01:00.003+09:00

This was like two weeks ago but I didn’t unload all the pictures off my camera til today so posts shall be written!

This is what it looked like outside my dorm around 12PM. It was so nice and quiet I always love it when a bunch of snow buffers the usual sounds going on around town.

I thought since it was 12 anyway, I would go out and get myself some Melon Pan from the konbini (convenience store).

This is what the tiny little park looked like. Really all it is, is a small open space with a couple bushes the neighborhood cats are sometimes lounging around in it.

Again I still don’t own a tripod so I found a dry spot to put the camera down to take a different type of shot.

The train tracks lightly dusted, I had to take the pic through a chain link fence which is why those black lines are there.
It must be annoying to live this close to the train tracks, they are lowered in a trench like thing which takes care of the sound if you’re a block away but for these people it’s gotta be loud!
Another pic around the shinkansen tracks.

Some people were being super brave and still driving their scooters home, albeit at the speed of smell.

An empty parking lot, looks like people are having a tid bit of a hard time getting home.

At this point on my journey to the konbini it was really starting to pile up.

A mamachari (housewife bike) left in favor of going home on foot.

Some worker having to do some maintenance on the tracks at night, in the snow, I felt kinda sorry for the guy.

Looking at jusco the local large grocery store.

So close to the konbini! the goal is almost attained!

This is what happens when you accidentally breath on your camera lense, oops.

The problem of having the massive amounts of power lines above all the streets around here is that they collect snow one them and start to bomb you when they get to a certain point. I was hit a total of six times on my way back.

I was glad I brought my hiking boots from home, thought they would be useless basically the whole time. These things need to last me forever, they don’t really make the equivalent of US size 13 shoes over here. Well I got back to the dorm soaked, sat in front of the space heater and went nom nom all over that melon pan. Totally worth it.

Akihabara to get a PSP

2011-02-21T05:03:00.002+09:00

So since I’ve gotten to Tokyo I have been seeing people with PSPs all over! It was making me sooo jealous because I’m a big RPG player and there are so many more RPGs to play over here! Seeing as I didn’t want to blow a lot of cash on the thing if I was to get one, I of course went to Akihabara. This won’t be a full blow out post on Akihabara as I was on a mission this time and wasn’t really concentrating on getting any good pictures. I only took out my camera once to get a pic of the Gundam café.

So here it is right outside the station I didn’t go in or anything because you just know that there’s going to be a 300% markup on everything! Either way like I said I’ll make a post about Akihabara later.

And there it is! a used PSP 1000 for 12,000円 (yen). Which is decent bit less than buying new from amazon so I feel the trip was worth it. The game I got is Last Ranker made by Capcom. Since everything is in Japanese and it’s an RPG it’s super hard to follow. I have never hated kanji more in my life, but I feel it’s worth it in that it forces me to look stuff up and learn. Either the game is pretty good (I think?). Anyway I feel it’s a great way to improve your reading in a short amount of time.
These last two posts are making me look a bit Otaku ish. hmmmmm
Oh well till next time people!

A quick walk to Roppongi for some Gundam

2011-02-19T01:23:00.002+09:00

One day after school I was invited to join in on trying the Gundam Pod game that some arcades around here have. In this case we walked up to Roppongi a short 20 minutes away from school.

It’s extremely cool you get a card that tracks your rank, money, Gundam parts and such. Every time you play you increase your rank and can get more weapons and other things. To be completely truthful I could only read like 20% of the menus because of the almost excessive looking amount of kanji.

In this picture the thing on the right is where you buy your pilots card and can buy weapons and such after a battle, it also shows you how much you’ve progressed with the experience gained from said battle.
The thing on the right is the extremely cool pod where you actually play the game.

You control everything just like a real Gundam pilot would with two joy sticks with a fun amount of buttons and two foot pedals. The screen you see here is REALLY wide, it takes up your whole view, which is another reason why this thing is so cool.
As for when you finally get playing and hacking up some baddies. It is really awkward to control at first but when you get to your second play the movements start to become a lot more fluid and natural.
The only thing about this is that it’s really expensive to keep this kind of thing up. It is 500 yen for two couple minute plays, and something like 300 yen for a single play. Not the kind of thing a poor college student can keep up, but it’s worth checking out for the experience if you ever get the chance.
While I was checking out the game a salary man was wailing on the controls going mad with the game, to the point of looking like he was going to break it. Either way he was really good. I like being in a city where a man in a suit coming out of an Gundam cockpit is a common occurrence.
Till next time friends.

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Night Time Photo Walk

2011-02-07T01:13:00.005+09:00

You know what happens when you have a night owl sleep schedule in a rather sleepy part of town.
you get bored.
So I took the camera out for a photo walk around the dorm to test out the night capabilities of the S95. I’ll let you guys be the judge of how they turned out.
This was when I first started to mess around with the settings, the auto focus kept focusing on the ground. This is the only messing around with the settings photo that I kept I kinda liked this one for some reason.

At first I tried to use the in camera HDR function to get more light in the photos but it wasn’t doing very well and making all the photos really grainy, so I opted to use the classic long exposure method.

This is the main shopping district of Ontakesan a nice small place where you can get just about everything you need ever. Until you want some sweet nifty gadget, then Akihabara is the place to be.

Has anyone noticed a trend with these pictures? Yeah I don’t own a tripod of any sort, I needed a stable surface for all these long exposure shots. So the ground it is.

The train tracks crossing of the shopping arcade.

More of that lovely low shot stuff, sometimes good pictures come from the lack of equipment.

The wall on the right is Ontakesan station, every morning this street is usually covered with people and parked bikes along the wall.

That big building with Jusco written on it is the big grocery store in town, as well as smallish department store kinda thing. It’s a little weird to have in town because everything around it is so tiny and homey.

Our local shrine which I haven’t really been in, not really one for all that shrine and temple stuff. It is nice to go take a look every once in awhile though.

Here we have the best shot I could get from setting the camera on top of a vending machine. This is the closest park to the dorm and it’s well... dinky. This is how many of the parks around are but they get bigger and with more space depending on the neighborhood.

Lastly this is me trying to see how many stars I could get on film in the city with all it’s light pollution and such. My S95 will only keep the shutter open for 15sec and this is what I got before the camera died. A lot of light pollution and a ghostly look at my face in the top right corner.
That’s what’s going on around here at 1:30 AM. Till next time everyone.

A tid bit of studying by the river.

2011-02-06T23:18:00.003+09:00

When using the GPS to go to school the first week I noticed I live quite close to a river. So I left on my trusty steed to go the opposite direction of school. After about heading 1000 meters through Ontakesan I found this lovely place.

The colors in these pictures are really popping because I changed a few settings on the Canon S95. I like this more vivid touch so don’t be surprised to see more vibrant colors in my pictures.

There are all kinds of sports fields down here mostly baseball but there were a few soccer fields, even a driving range. I plan to grab a couple people to come down here to kick a ball around some time.

Of course my ride needed a shot in this post. I recently got a rack for the back, still need to get a basket for it so I’m not always showing up at school with a sweaty back from wearing a backpack.

A picture of the driving range, just took a quick pic on the ride back.

To get to the river from the dorm you have to go though a couple neighborhoods and across two sets of train tracks.

It may surprise some but the dorm is in a pretty hoity toity area, if you couldn’t tell by the presence of one of my all time favorite cars, the new Nissan GTR.

In most neighborhoods they don’t have stop signs they choose to paint the ground with 止まれ (tomare), which of course means stop.

Once again people I bid you adieu.

Getting down to work.

2011-01-31T03:05:00.002+09:00

As I've been in Japan for a couple weeks now I've noticed my life style has been a bit... touristy. There's this weird thing called school I have to go to in order to stay here so I guess I'll have a crack at putting some time into it.

So this is just a new nice pic of Ontakesan on my way to school in the morning.

After school I finally went to open up a Japanese bank account and saw these guys on my way back. They were banging some small drums and walking in single file. I don't really know the reason but hey, that's pretty cool.

Mori Tower, Roppongi

2011-01-31T02:55:00.002+09:00

Went On a little trip up to Mori Tower Last weekend in Roppongi. One of my friends in the dorm said it had a better view of Tokyo than Tokyo tower so we went off to see if it was true.

This is coming out of Roppongi station, these escalators go up to the base of Mori tower.

Some nice little water treatments around at the bottom.

This is the view right from the patio place, this is the first time I've gotten to really test out my Canon S95 in low light with the HDR function, not bad for not having a tripod.

More of the base of the tower here.

This is the tower itself its something like 54 floors.

In the top of the tower they have an art exhibit and a planetarium. I only got a few of the planetarium and none of the art exhibit, before official looking people told me to put my camera away. Either way this was a cool little laser show over a small model of Tokyo. (Don't worry I turned off the flash, I try not to be an ass).

More Little laser show stuff.

This is the part where they told me to put my camera away, so here's the one star chart I got a picture of.

This is the best picture I got. We couldn't go all the way up to the roof because it was closed for some odd reason. So I had to take this picture through some extremely smudged, extremely thick glass. I had to put the Camera lens right up to the window so I wouldn't get some annoying reflections. So this is taken on the 52nd floor of the building, pretty good view if I don't say so my self.

And of course a picture of the crew that went along, doing the required gesture for pictures (If you don't they deport you from the country).

Biking to save money

2011-01-31T02:30:00.002+09:00


My new Bike

So I recently got myself a nifty new bike off the old Amazon.co.jp. Riding the trains everywhere after awhile can get expensive, just going to Shibuya or somewhere takes a good 600 yen. That my friends will build up over time. So a bike it is! Of course I had to go for the flashy red one, there's just no other way.

So these past two weeks I've gone to Gotanda, Shibuya, Harajuku, Shinjuku, Tamachi, and a couple places in between all on the bike. I've got to say I have enjoyed every minute. I'm not shoved like a sardine into the train every morning going to school. At first it was kinda interesting and fun (like wow I've never felt closer to some people) but it got old pretty quick. Another plus is, it's faster then taking the train. To get to school by train 50 min, by bike 35 min. There's just no downside (apart from the cold, it was snowing today on my way back from Shibuya).

As for now this is sadly the only picture I've got as I neglect to take my camera often and when I do I forget to put the memory card back in it. So till next time my friends.

friggin trees bro! in japan

2011-01-21T23:01:00.005+09:00

So on tuesday I wanted to go to Shinjuku. So i got on my bike, turned on the GPS on my phone and rode away. Turns out shinjuku is really far away, like 20 kilometers. On the way i saw something I havent seen for the entire time ive been here. TREES!!! And friggin WIDE SPACES! I found it worth noting.

By the way i finally got a bike and phone, other posts on that later.

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