Nostrum Eo

'Nother Brushfire

2008-07-29T17:59:00.000-07:00

There was another brushfire in the Griffith Park hills area, just above the LA Zoo. It was pretty small and they got it under control in a matter of hours.

Field Trip

2008-04-05T00:44:00.000-07:00

Debbie and I and some friends from our Japanese class went out to Little Tokyo tonight. We bought some brush pens, ate at a new restaurant (new to us), and then finished up at Oiwake for some booze and Karaoke.

Konnichiwa

2008-02-26T08:26:00.000-08:00

Debbie and I are now taking Japanese lessons! We've had 2 sessions so far, and we'll be meeting 2 days a week until June. Hopefully we'll be able to get around a bit easier when we take our next trip. We can already ask someone's name, give our own name, ask where someone is from, tell someone where we're from, say sorry, good day, and ask/tell what language someone speaks.

watakushi wa nihongo ga sukoshi wakarimasu!

Los Angeles Wildfires

2007-10-25T17:56:00.000-07:00

Wednesday smoke from the Lake Arrowhead fires really covered Los Angeles. It was mostly high level smoke though, and you could even see some blue sky in the picture.

Thursday however the winds died down so the smoke just settled over Los Angeles in a vast miasma that reminded me of the smog in Beijing.

Hopefull the onshore breeze will start up on Friday and blow all this stuff back east. :)

Yet more Japan...

2007-10-15T07:21:00.001-07:00

I've posted links to the remainder of my Japan pictures on Flickr. I'll endeavor to upload all of my remaining pictures to all the appropriate days on my flickr page, so that the entire record will be up there.

By the way, if you happen to be near little Tokyo, check out the Curry House. There's one in Torrance, Cypress and West LA too, so you've got no excuse. They're awesome.

Some Halo action

2007-10-05T21:30:00.000-07:00

Here's me and my buddy Blackhawk deftly avoiding a rocket shot.

Yet another update coming....

2007-09-27T08:52:00.000-07:00

It's been tough getting back to this, what with a resurgance of interest in leveling up my 'lock in WoW, D playing Second Life, a near fatal kitty-kidney problem, and of course Halo 3 coming out.

But I will endeavour to update again tonight (after Survivor of course).

All of this would be much easier if the flickr uploader DIDN'T FAIL TO UPLOAD MORE THAN 5 OR 6 IMAGES AT A TIME!!! Seriously, I've got several hundred pictures to upload to flickr. It's a right pain in the ass to have to do them in batches of 5.

FIX YOUR STUPID APP FLICKR!!!!!!!!

Alright, alright!

2007-09-11T19:39:00.000-07:00

I'm updating again. sheesh

We're back!

2007-08-28T08:42:00.001-07:00

We've made it safely back to the US but as you'll no doubt notice the trip entries aren't done. I'm working on getting them all up to date by the end of the week. At least my internet connection is faster and more stable at home than in Japan, so I should have less grief getting all the pictures uploaded.

Anyway, the next batch of pictures will no doubt be coming from our Vegas trip this weekend. We're going to see Spamalot at the Wynn!

Japan Day 26 (ni jū roku)

2007-08-23T16:43:00.000-07:00

Going Home!

Japan Day 25 (ni jū go)

2007-08-22T18:38:00.001-07:00

Final Don Quijote Trip

Japan Day 24 (ni jū yon)

2007-08-22T18:37:00.001-07:00

Penultimate Shopping Day

Today we went out to Asakusa to check out the Flame d'Or and the temple.

Here's the flickr link to our shots:
Asakusa

Japan Day 23 (ni jū san)

2007-08-22T18:35:00.000-07:00

Tsukiji Fish Market & Asakusa

Today we got up early to head over to see the famous Tsukiji Fish Market. We knew approximately where it was, but we really didn't know what to expect when we got there.

Here is the link to all our Tsukiji pictures on flickr:

Tsukiji Pictures

Japan Day 22 (ni jū ni)

2007-08-22T18:33:00.000-07:00

&mpSunshine City Mall, Aquarium, ; Zoo

Today we took the subway all the way out to Ikebukuro to go to the Sunshine City mall. It's a big shopping area. Lot's of department stores and smaller shop's along the main drag.

Movies look good...

Once we made it to the mall, Ultraman was waiting outside for us. Turns out this is an anniversary of Ultraman, so all the toy stores have tons of Ultraman figures. It seems like they changed his outfit every year because there are at least 20 of them.

Like many places in Tokyo, the mall is at the bottom of several skyscrapers. At the top of one of them is an aquarium/zoo.
Unfortunately it was dark inside so most of my fish photos came out blurry. I've put up some of the better ones.

This one had archer fish in it, which shoot a stream of water out of their mouth to knock bugs into the water where they can eat them.

My mom should remember this little guy from when we had a salt-water tank...

Turns out they also had a Spawn of Cthulhu

Outside on the roof they had a sea lion show, as well as a monkey cage, a penguin enclosure, and some walk through exhibits.

The walkthrough was populated with what I think are capybaras. They were free to wander around inside, mingling with the tourists.

And for some reason they had a lemur in a cage...

At the end of the walkthrough they had a couple of these cute little foxes:

..and also an armadillo butt...

Next to that was the penguin pool

They also had some neat pelicans. Those birds were big!

In a big tank by themselves, they had a couple of sunfish. They weren't as big as the one I saw at the Monterey Aquarium, but they were still good sized.

Debbie poses with the aquarium mascot:

After the aqaurium we went back down into the mall and over to another skyscraper to go up to its observatory level. This one even let us get on the roof, but it closed at sunset, which was about 5 minutes after we got up there.

That's Shinjuku in the distance. Tokyu Hands is near the bottom of that Chrysler Building look-alike.

After the observatory we went back down into the mall to find a restaurant where we had a good chance of being able to communicate with the staff. We wound up at a nice Chinese restaurant. The next two pictures show two places that we didn't stop at. I wonder what they serve?

After dinner we headed back out into the night, headed for the train station (with a stop at BIC camera).

Japan Day 21 (ni jū ichi)

2007-08-18T17:57:00.000-07:00

Return to Harajuku

As Juan pointed out earlier, we completely missed Yoyogi-koen, so we headed back out to check out the 50's guys and hit up the shopping area.

Here's our favorite post office, just at the top of the street, up from our apartment. We'd stop here before heading out for the day because there was a convenient ATM inside.

Post office workers don't wear latex in the states (not that I've seen at least)

We went straight to the park after getting off the subway and walked pretty far into it. We saw lots of people enjoying their Sunday in the blistering heat, but where were the 50's guys?

After walking a good ways in to the park and not seeing anything that exciting we headed back out so Debbie could wade through the throngs of people in the shopping district.

Out of the park and around the corner, the Harajuku girls were out in force.

Here's the road down to all the little shops. Debbie will have a blast. I will be hot and bored.

At least we found some maid outfits for Debbie!

Needless to say, I did not go in.

We wound up going back to the same sushi joint that we went to with Tomoko and Hide and friends.

After lunch we headed back out to the park to find the 50's guys. Of course more interesting people had shown up at the bridge. Frighteningly, not all Harajuku girls are girls.

Here are some more that really are girls.

When we entered the park this time the dancers were out in force. This group looked like something out of a Japanese 'Happy Days'. They were dancing to a mix of 50's tunes set to a kind of techno beat. Very weird. But what else would you really expect from a group of people dressed in 50's outfits dancing in the middle of the park when its blazing hot outside?

Across the hedge from them these guys were competing for boombox volume.

Check out the hair on that dude!

And I'd be remiss if I didn't include a video...

Japan Day 20 (ni jū)

2007-08-18T17:56:00.000-07:00

Daytrip to Nikko

Today we took the Shinkansen (bullet train) out to Utsunomiya and from there a rickety train to Nikko. Nikko is a resort sort of town in the vein of Solvang, a small mountain town that's very touristy and scenic.

When we got to the Nikko station it was drizzly and overcast, which actually was a relief from the Tokyo weather. It was about 10-15 degrees cooler up there.

The bus station was very confusing so we found a stewardess (information girl) and asked her what was up. She spoke passable English and gave us an English version of a map that made things much easier. We figured out what bus ticket to buy, and she told us where to wait.

After slowly slogging up the hill through some sort of traffic jam, we got dropped off at the base of the shrine area.

The first Shinto shrine contained three awesome statues that were about 30 feet high, made of wood and covered in gold flake. Of course we weren't allowed to take pictures. If there hadn't of been anyone else there I would have though. Conveniently there was a tour guide going through the same time as us, inconveniently, his commentary was in Japanese.

The next stop was a Buddhist temple. Once again, no inside pictures.

It had a nice garden next to it. Wish we had monsoonal rain here so I could have one like that.

Everything around here was gorgeous.

This is the path up to the main shrine complex.

Once through the big torii, you get to the first gate, which is dwarfed by the giant trees.

From this courtyard you can then see the big main gate. The wooden carving on it is amazing.

Once through the gate you can see the main shrine.

They've got a nice supply of sake here :)

Under a sleeping kitten, and the start of innumerable steps to get up to Tokugawa's tomb.

The step's go up, and up, and UP!

Once you're up in the clouds, you find the final resting place of Tokugawa Ieyasu, first shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate, that ruled Japan from 1600 to 1868.

After that we headed back down the mountan to check out the other shrines in the area. Here's the view looking down into the courtyard from the first gate.

We rounded a corner at the bottom and headed up towards the next shrine.

We exchanged camera shots with a nice Japanese couple.

I believe this is one of the oldest shrines in Japan:

Down a hill and around the corner, another big gate, and another big shrine.

All of these shrines are in the middle of an amazing looking forest.

We headed back to the bus stop and took the bus back to town.

Of course Debbie had to stop at the Hello Kitty store.

We hopped the rickety old train back to Utsunomiya. We had to stand because a load of Russian tourists got there ahead of us and took all the seats.

It was a relief to see the shinkansen come into the station. We got on after a small amount of confusion in the station, and finding the right track. The ride back to Tokyo was nice and smooth.

Japan Day 19 (jū kyū)

2007-08-18T17:51:00.000-07:00

Lazy Day

Sometimes you've got to just rest and hang out while on vacation.

So some impressions of Japan. First of all, I don't know how they function in the summer. I can't imagine having to be dressed up to go to work only to break out in a full sweat every time I step outside.

Related to that, what kind of magic do Japanese women possess that they can walk around dressed to the nines, and look like its 65 degrees outside? I mean, they don't seem to sweat at all. Maybe they have their sweat glands removed as children. They also seem to dress up much more often than Americans do. Dresses are very common, and heels are worn even when it would seem to us more sensible to wear sneakers.

As long as I'm on about women, I like how girls working at information booths all wear uniforms that look like stewardesses from the 50's. You don't even have to look for an 'Information' sign, just look for the gaggle of stewardesses hanging around. That goes for girls working elevators too. All the big buildings that shuffle lots of people into and out of elevators have two or three elevator handlers to manage the flow of traffic. That includes the one that stands inside the elevator facing the wall, telling everyone what amazing sights await them once they get to wherever they're going.

Money transactions are interesting too. All places that you might buy stuff have a little tray on the counter near the register where you put your money. While they are organizing and wrapping your goods (they wrap like crazy here) you can get your money arranged. You don't hand it directly to the cashier (unless you are a clueless gaijin), you place it on the tray. They also won't take it until they think you are done getting just the right bit of change on there. With a nod from you they take the money and give you change. Sometimes they put it back on the tray, more often they offer the change and receipt up with both hands like an offering.

I'm still not quite used to having shops on multiple floors of tall buildings. Maybe its the same in New York, but never having been to New York, I don't know. In LA everything is spread out into its own building. Here you might have Best Buy on one floor, Target on another, and restaurants on a third. Oh, and if a store covers multiple floors, usually you pay for stuff you get on the floor you get it on. They don't want everyone crushing the bottom floor registers so you pay on each different floor you get stuff on.

I've noticed that expensive items that are small are usually tied together with zip-tie type things to prevent theft. To me it looks like you get to steal five of the same small expensive item instead of just one, but what do I know?

Drink vending machines are literally everywhere you look. They have usually have 2 or three varieties of Coke, plus water, tea, and strange citrusey energy drinks. You'll never die of thirst here in Japan as long as you have spare change in your pockets.

Usually these vending machines have little trash cans next to them, but if not, you'll be hanging on to those empties for a bit. While in the US trashcans seem to be everywhere, here in Japan they are hard to find. The most reliable thing to do is look for a vending machine because 3 times out of 4 there'll be a recycling bin next to it. Then you have to sort based on whether you're throwing away a glass or plastic bottle, or burnable or unburnable trash. For the seeming lack of trash cans, the city seems to be remarkably clean. Granted we're staying in the equivalent of Beverly Hills, but even the other farther-flung parts of Tokyo are cleaner than LA.

Japanese TV - weird. Debbie and I have been interviewed twice for Japanese TV while we've been here. The first was about Hillary's cleavage, and the second was regarding our thoughts about Russian female athletes. Like I said, weird.

Japan Day 18 (jū hachi)

2007-08-18T17:48:00.000-07:00

Fireworks at Meiji-Jingū

Tonight we went to see the fireworks for the end of Oban at Jingū stadium. We saw the opening fireworks from our bedroom window that looked over towards Tokyo Bay. This time we couldn't see them from our apartment so we ventured forth to check them out in person.

They are serious about their fireworks. Both shows had between 10,000 and 12,000 fireworks. They both lasted about 1.5 hours. That's 1.5 hours of solid fireworks. That blows away any 4th of July I've been to in the States.

I took some stills, but my little camera doesn't do them justice. I took some movies too.

We left a couple minutes early because there were probably thousands of people there, and they all would be heading for the same subway that we wanted to take. It was a big deal for everyone. Lots of men and women were dressed in yukatas, even with the heat. We even saw one lady passed out from the heat. Oh yeah, it was still hot and humid. Not much relief even at night.

Afterwards we headed over to the Hard Rock Cafe for a real cheeseburger, and to get a Hard Rock Tokyo shirt.

Japan Day 17 (jū shichi)

2007-08-18T17:47:00.000-07:00

Akihabara in Depth

Because our first trip to Akiba was so short and we really didn't see anything, we decided to go back and check it out again.

If only I would have had access to this place when I was 10! Heck, It's pretty freakin cool 26 years later too :)

If Darth Vader had ruled feudal Japan....

The bottom floor of this building had a big area full of figurines. The Japanese love their figures. They love naughty ones too...
Not Safe for Work Pic 1
Oops, they don't want you taking pics like this:
Not Safe for Work Pic 2
This piece of artwork was in the stairwell going down into the Asobit basement. Pretty representative of what was down there :)
Not Safe for Work Pic 3

The Tamiya store was next door and had these sweet R/C tanks:

Next was the Asobit store. The entire first floor was Gundam toys. I had a vague sense that it was popular, but now having seen it in person, I can say that it is HUGE here. Any store that has any toys at all has a big Gundam section.

Here is the giant Space Battleship Yamato that I am currently lusting after. Do I really need a giant Yamato with remote controlled swiveling cannons with 'authentic' cannon firing sounds, and a light up Wave Motion gun? Nooo.....but.....

There was a floor dedicated to model trains. Here's a nice Shinkansen, or Bullet Train as we call them. Below them are models of the subway trains. A different color for each line. The orange is the Ginza Line I think. In true Japanese fashion, the stripe on the side of the real subway actually corresponds to the color of the line route on the subway maps.

This floor looks promising.....

Whoa...umm...yeah...

Is this some right-wing, militaristic recruiting den we've stumbled upon? Nope, just an Airsoft shop that errs a smidge to the right of Politically Incorrect.

I want this one. Think it will fit in my carry-on luggage?

Oh no, Debbie has discovered the Gachapons. We'll be here forever.

As we walked down the street we noticed many shirts in Engrish, like this one that says, "My smile will become mysterious chuckle"

We ducked inside this arcade to get some air conditioning. The bottom floor had those games where you move the claw to grab some goodies. The rest of them had all sorts of video games.

The arcade had more of a Vegas feel than the arcades I remember. People were smoking while sitting playing elaborate RPG type games, street fighter type games, and various guitar hero type games. Only the first and second floors had any girls on them, the rest, more Vegas-ey floors were all guys. I took a video of some girls playing a drumming game, but then got the ever popular 'crossed arms' meaning no photos!

It's Mister Donut!

and Mos Burger!

Another odd shirt. This one says "Delight, Secret Service, funny heard cleverness"

Maids are pretty popular in Akiba right now. They have Maid cafes where girls dressed up as maids will serve you in a very subservient way. They even have Maid massage parlors.

There is even a maid-Optometrist if you need glasses!

Here's a maid handing out flyers.

Don Quijote has invaded Akiba now, too.

Off the main street we found this electronics store that had a floor devoted to robots. They had every part you might need to construct your own robot.

Under the train tracks:

At the end of the day we headed back to the first store we visited to buy all the stuff we noticed the first time around. These 'Rovoltech' figures are pretty popular. They have figures from a bunch of different shows. I picked up a Giant Robo one.

On the way out we saw this girl creating a big stir. TV cameras were filming her and everyone was snapping pictures, so I figured I would too.

Japan Day 16 (jū roku)

2007-08-18T17:46:00.000-07:00

Ueno Zoo Day

Today we ventured up to Ueno to hit the park and zoo.

As usual, it was freakin hot and humid.

Coming out of the station, you wouldn't know there was a big park right next to you.

But about fifty meters down, a quick turn to the right, and there it is.

Statue at the beginning of the park.

The map showed three large ponds in the park. Well, there were but....

Now that's a lily pond! There actually is water in down in there. Lot's of signs saying not to jump in too. You couldn't pay me to.

A bit more walking and we found the lily-less pond. You can rent those swan-shaped paddle boats if you're keen on a case of heat exhaustion.

Past the ponds you can get into the Ueno Zoo. Kinda small. Maybe a bit bigger than the LA zoo. They had some interesting things I hadn't seen before, like a shoebill stork.

The meerkats were pretty popular.

I felt bad for the penguins as it was about 100 degrees warmer than it should have been for them.

They definitely are way more laid back about the animals than we would be in the States. There was a tree in the middle of the walkway with a sign that said 'Watch out for poop'. Turns out there was a sloth up in the tree. No fence or anything around it. He could have dropped a duece on an unsuspecting passerby with ease.

Hey Juan, here's your mascot.

I felt bad for the penguins, but I felt real bad for this poor polar bear. Maybe they enjoy 90 deg / 90% humidity?

The cutest animal I saw was a red panda. Much cuter than a 'normal' panda in my opinion. There was one wandering around in a nice enclosure, but I could only get a shot of this one in a little holding cell. They kind of look like a cross between a wildcat and a racoon.

Last animals of the day were the monkeys. These guys were just chillin, having some lunch.

Here's Debbie just prior to being mauled by a freakishly large panda, made into a giant by leakage from the nuclear power plant that was damaged in the earthquake.
(Godzilla eventually showed up and saved her)

Flickr Pics

Earthquake Pt. 2

2007-08-15T17:32:00.000-07:00

We continue to have little aftershocks, but the probably the only reason we feel them is we're up on the 9th floor and the building sways pretty good. Here's a list of the quakes we've had today:
Japanese Meterological Agency

This was Bren's first earthquake, by the way, so he was pretty excited.

EARTHQUAKE!!!!

2007-08-15T12:27:00.000-07:00

We had our second earthquake here in Tokyo at 4:15 am, but the first one big enough for me to feel. I think it was Debbie running from the room that woke me up more than the earthquake. We had pretty good sway up here on the 9th floor. Probably felt like a good solid 5 right underneath us. Then a smaller 4ish one a minute or so after.

Looks like there was a 5.3 in the Chiba Prefecture area.

Woohoo! surf's up.

Japan Day 15 (jū go)

2007-08-15T06:17:00.000-07:00

Today was an easy day. We decided to head over to the local Don Quijote to see what they had. It's another one of those Japanese stores that seem to have everything known to man. Sort of a mini-WalMart with an annoying theme song that is blasted into your ears as you shop.
Don Quijote

The mascot of the store is a crazy penguin-thingy that often is wearing a Santa hat. Up and down the escalator walls, there are murals of him doing interesting things related to what product is on the next floor.

I wasn't sure what Donki was until I looked up their website. Donki

Here's a taste of what it's like on the inside. MADNESS!

After a relaxing day just lounging around, Debbie and I decided to hit a Japanese restaurant in the area. We looked up some on the web that at least had an English menu so we wouldn't be totally lost. We decided on a shabu shabu place off of Roppongi Dori. If you're not familiar with shabu, its where there is a big hot bowl of either water or broth in the middle of your table, and they bring you various thinly sliced meats and vegetables to throw in the pot. You swish the meat around in the water with your chopsticks which cooks it in about 15-20 seconds. They also give you a couple sauces to dip the meat in.

It started off reasonably well, as the waiter spoke a couple words of English. What he couldn't explain very well was the little lottery that we had at the beginning. A waitress (all the waitresses were in yukatas) brought over a little tumbler filled with multicolored, twisted pieces of paper. After some gesticulating we gathered that we were each supposed to pick one of these, and they corresponded to a list of five things, which were all in Japanese of course. The waiter helped out, providing the word 'crab' which was what Debbie had picked, and then pointed at his arm, which I assumed meant crab 'legs'. When I picked though, he was at a loss for words. So was I when it arrived.

It was a little evelope which contained a tiny ziploc baggy that on a first glance looked like it contained dirt and worms. On closer inspection, it was some sort of spice(?) with maybe some nuts(?) in it. It didn't smell bad, but I had no idea what to do with it, and the waiter's vague hand waving gesture didn't help me out. So I set it aside and didn't use it. It was probably to throw into one of my sauces. Or maybe it's for the cat. I don't know.

When the meat and veggies came, we knew exactly what to do and dove into the shabinating like pros.

It was a very tastey dinner and we even got free gifts at the end. Two pairs of chopsticks and two little woven cloth tchotchkes. The hostess even followed us out of the restaurant and gave us a full-on, from-the-waist bow, which we returned in our half-hearted, embarrassed gaijin fashion.

If you're in Roppongi, try out ShabuZen.

Mo Pics

Japan Day 14 (jū yon)

2007-08-14T18:26:00.000-07:00

Today we got to see what Bren has been up to for the past couple weeks.

Along the way to the Kamiyachō subway station Jerri noticed this Suntory vending machine:

Bren's new building is the Shin-Marunouchi building right across from the Imperial Palace. Western Asset was moving into this new space from the plain old Marunouchi building across the street.

The first few floors, like almost every other building I've been in, in Tokyo, are an upscale shopping mall type area.

The lobby is very nice. The subway station gives you access to the basement floor which has many shops, eateries, and even a little grocery store.

Bren took us through some winding 'staff-only' hallways to some elevators, where we went up to the 36th floor. The view from their offices is....well, better than the view from my office in Lancaster....

That's the Shinjuku skyline in the background, with the Imperial Palace proper in the foreground.

That's the Imperial Palace grounds where we were yesterday:

And that's the perfect little pine tree park:

From the conference rooms on the north side you can see Tokyo stretching away into the distance

Oh, and did I mention the kick-ass video conferencing setup they have? That's the Pasadena office on the monitor.

We finally pulled away from nicer offices than I'll ever have and went outside to attempt to get to a department store on the other side of Tokyo station.

Looking away from the Imperial Palace side of the building is the brick Tokyo train station.

The sign says "Tokyo Station"

We walked all the way around the station and under the tracks to try to get to the other side.

Not finding anything that looked like a department store, we hit a convenience store, got a snack, and headed back into the station to get back to where we came from. This was when we discovered all the stores and restaurants underneath Tokyo Station. Intrigued, but more hot, sweaty, and tired than anything else, we headed back for our subway to ride home. We'll definitely be coming back to check the place out.

The Tokyo stop on the Marunouchi Line.

I know I took this shot before, but it looked so neat I took it again.

Finally back in our own neighborhood we stopped at 7-11 to grab some more munchies.

I got the beer at the Nissin World market. Need I mention it's the best beer in the world?

Mo Pics

Japan Day 13 (jū san)

2007-08-14T16:51:00.000-07:00

Today we deicded to visit the Imperial Palace gardens. We started at the Ote-mon gate.

This is the windy path we took through the gardens. As usual, it was hot and humid (like 80% or more) so we were thoroughly drenched and exhausted by the end of the day.

Debbie is standing right below the gate.

About a 100 samurai would hang out in this guardhouse and determine who could get access to the palace grounds from here. You can imagine hordes of vendors and such arguing with bored samurai.

This is what the walls of the grounds look like. The inner courtyard is up at the top of that wall.

There were several nice ponds in the lower gardens area.

My dad would love all the perfectly manicured Japanese pine trees.

Here's the beginning of the Shiomizaka Slope up into the inner courtyard. It doesn't look like much, but it sucks when it's hot and humid.

You get a nice view of the moat from the slope.

Once you get up you can see the remains of Edo castle. All that's left is the stone base. It was finished in 1638 and was the tallest building in Tokyo at the time. It burned down in 1657.

After the castle burned down they used Fujimi-Yagura as a temporary replacement. The Shogun could look at Mt. Fuji and also the fireworks down in Tokyo bay.

Coming back down to the bottom level, there's another guardhouse.

The outside moat has a bunch of swans, including a baby.

We walked around the outside moat after the gardens. What do you bet that the little overhang was where the toilets were?

The park outside the grounds was filled with these perfectly pruned pines. Of course no one is allowed on the grass.

I really wanted to get up to the Nijubashi bridge but they had security guards preventing the masses from intruding onto the inner palace grounds.

Around sunset we finally left the grounds and headed back for the subway.

Many more pics

Japan Day 12 (jū ni)

2007-08-11T20:41:00.000-07:00

Today we headed out for Yokohama. Tomoko and Hide live in the Yokohama area so they kindly offered to show us around. This was our first try at using a train outside of the metro subway system. It's much easier when only 1 train comes along a single track. However at a normal train station apparently, multiple trains depart on the same tracks, which makes it challenging to pick the right one. Unfortunately all the departure information was in kanji. I tried to pick out Yokohama but wasn't very successful. We finally asked a station attendant which train and he pointed us to the right one. Or at least one that went to Yokohama.

We took the limited express which makes several stops on the way. There is a commuter express that makes very few and thus gets there much faster. There is also a local which stops at every station. You definitely don't want to take that one. But we discovered all this once we got to Yokohama, and had gone one past our stop because we got on another limited express that skipped the stop we wanted. That's when we saw the nice map that showed all this in detail.

Anyway, after arriving 45 minutes late we met Tomoko and Hide and started our Yokohama adventure. Our first stop was the Anpanman museum.

All of Anpanman's buddies are food items. So of course they had a nice bakery with pastries in the shapes of all the characters.

After this we headed over to Chinatown (Chūkagai) to grab some lunch.

Here are our gracious hosts:

We ate lunch at a nice Chinese buffet that Tomoko found. It sure helps having a native speaker to grease to wheels.

All along the streets were little vendors selling food and tchotchkes. There also were a ton of roasted chestnut vendors. I tried my first ever roasted chestnut.

After Chinatown we headed over to a park on the bay. Who knew shipping containers could be art?

The area with the Landmark tower that we wanted to go to was a bit of a walk, so we decided to take a water-taxi. The 'Sea-Bass' is the one we took.

Here's a nice view of the Yokohama Bay Bridge from our boat.

Our hosts just chillin...

When we landed we went to these two Red Brick Warehouses. They were built in 1911 and 1913 as a symbol of the modernization of Yokohama port. They have businesses, shops, and cafes in them now.

From there we walked to the World Porters mall so we could walk part way in air conditioning.

We have to walk alllll the way over to that big building.

The Nippon Maru is moored right at the base of the Landmark Tower.

We zipped up to the 69th floor of the Landmark Tower in an express elevator that took about 30 seconds. From there we had spectacular views of the Yokohama area. Here's the path we took today:

Admiral Perry is an icon in Yokohama, being the first Westerner to really 'open up' Japan. He even has chocolate bars.

On our way out of the Landmark Tower we ran into...

wait for it...

another mall!

We stopped off for a Mango boba at a Hawaiian cafe, then headed outside for the metro station.

Tomoko and Hide guided us to the proper station and showed us the right train to take, then we bid them goodbye and headed back to Tokyo.

Mo Pics

Japan Day 11 (jū ichi)

2007-08-11T02:52:00.000-07:00

Today we woke up to an unusual sound. It seemed like there was some sort of march going on right outside our building. Looking out we couldn't see anything at first, and then I saw a few trucks with loudspeakers on top drive by on a nearby street. A few people from the apartment came up to fix our dryer in the morning and I asked the lady with them what the ruckus was outside. She seemed kind of embarassed and apologized if it was annoying us, but I just wanted to know what it was. She said today was the anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki (Aug 9th, 1945) and those people outside were right wingers that are pissed off about the whole thing. I think they want a return to Imperial rule, a more militaristic Japan, maybe an Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, the whole nine yards. She also said traffic was snarled down by a major intersection near us.

Well of course this just intrigued me; who doesn't like a good political protest in a foreign land? I got one in Buenos Aires, why not Tokyo?

Well, I knew something was different because when I got to the bottom of our hill there were two cops, instead of the normal one.

I should say that it's probably not usual to have cops sitting around your block on a regular basis, but we are right next to the Russian embassy, so I think that's why they're there. There are little police boxes that sit at regular intervals around the embassy area, normally with just one bored looking officer.

When I rounded the corner I saw a different kind of policeman with much cooler looking gear.

It's about 1000 yards from our corner to this busy intersection and they were placed about every 50 yards or so. They would block off access to our street whenever the loudspeaker trucks would drive by. Guess they didn't want them bugging the Ruskies.

I walked down by the entrance to the Russian embassy to see what was going on. It appeared there was a line of cops and only about 3 or 4 guys pestering the Russians. Maybe they were crank calling them on that little call box by the door.

Our main goal today (my secondary one, following getting shots of all the cops) was to take the kids to the National Children's Castle in Shibuya so they could have a little fun-time out of the apartment, and meet some Japanese friends. Here's the gang on the subway:

After a long hot walk from Shibuya Station, we finally arrived.

Doesn't she look guilty? Lucy had just knocked down this little boy's tower he was building....accidently of course.

Lucy and Charlie both had a fun time listening to the band. And Lucy even got to bang on some drums!

We made it back to Roppongi with little fuss, and then we spied the first Mos Burger we'd seen all trip! We knew what was for dinner tonight. We also stopped in a store called Don Quixote, which appears to sell everything known to man. I even found a pair of Kentaro's favorite socks:

As I said, we finished up the day with some Mos Burgers. Mmmmmmm good. That's a Mos Cheese Burger with onion rings(モスチーズバーガー in case you were wondering). It's got chili and a big ass tomato on it. Tastes vaguely like a Tommy's cheeseburger, but slightly different.

Mo Pics

Japan Day 10 (jū)

2007-08-09T08:56:00.000-07:00

Odaiba Day! And our first ride on an above ground train!

Odaiba is a manmade island in Tokyo Bay that you reach by crossing the Rainbow Bridge. If you look hard you can see the Tokyo Tower hiding in the background. This shot is looking from Odaiba back towards Tokyo proper.

We got off at a station next to a maritime museum, shaped appropriately enough like a ship.

Our goal for today was the Miraikan National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation. It's basically a giant hands-on kid's science museum. And the main attraction was to be a ten minute show with Asimo, Honda's amazing walking robot.

Here's the lobby where we purchased our tickets.

BMW had an exhibit on hydrogen, with their hydrogen powered 7-series being the star.

There were lots of neat things to look through, buttons to press, and touch screens to touch. Most of the text was also in English so we had some idea of what was going on.

This was a model Maglev train that floated along this little track to the wonderment of this kid.

A lady also gave a neat superconductor demonstration. That's a liquid nitrogen cooled hunk of superconductor hovering over the track. She then moved it up to one end of the track and let go, causing it to race down the track like a hotwheel car, go through the loop and up the other side. It went back and forth like this a couple of times, and she could even tip the track over, yet the pellet would stay right on the track. Until it finally warmed up enough to lose its superconductivity, that is.

On this floor there were also a bunch of robotics demonstrations, with the star being....Asimo!

He walks out of his little room during the demonstration. It's a little creepy to watch. He's pretty funny when he runs though. I'll post a link to a movie of it once I get it uploaded to google.

Once we finished with the museum we headed out for the next station to go back towards the Fuji TV building, the Odaiba AquaCity mall, and a certain famous statue. This neat building is the Telecom Center. The jets taking off from Haneda airport can be seen during take off right through the center.

A quick trip back to the other end of the island and we can see the very distinctive Fuji TV building. Yup, that's a giant ball in the middle of it.

This Aqua City mall was the first mall that seemed like our malls in America. They had several American stores inside, and they weren't all high-end designer stores where you pay an arm and a leg for everything.

Wait! This isn't New York!

Your humble blogger.

It was a beautiful day on Odaiba, and the ocean breeze really was nice in the gawd awful humidity.

And Fuji-san even decided to make itself visible for the first time so far in the entire trip. There's something vaguely ominous about a volcano lurking on the horizon.

I'm using this last shot as my desktop picture. (grab the original size from flickr)

Mo Pics

Japan Day 9 (kyū)

2007-08-09T08:50:00.000-07:00

PLACEHOLDER

Debbie accidently downloaded my day's worth of shots to her account and deleted them off my camera, so I have to go grab pictures from her flickr account. The normal day's post will appear once I can boot her off Second Life and grab some access time on my laptop.

This was Shibuya day by the way. And yes Juan, that's a crowd!

Japan Day 8 (hachi)

2007-08-09T08:21:00.000-07:00

Today we were taking it kind of easy. We just wanted to take a trip back to Shinjuku to go to the Tokyu Hands store. My main goal was to pick up some Nintendo plastic playing cards.

We came up out of the subway into an office building. Many subway stations merge into the sub-basements of various office buildings, shopping malls, department stores, etc.

Just one note about the walkways in Tokyo. You see these yellow tiles all over the subway stations and sidewalks. It's to guide blind people around. There are raised bumps on the yellow tile so you can make your way around by touch.

Up an escalator and across a footbridge, we see Takashimaya Times Square, the location of Tokyu Hands. That sign at the top of the stairs looks familiar....

It's true! Krispy Kreme mania is apparently sweeping Japan. The line went back and forth inside ropes like it was the opening of a Disneyland ride. And that's just the front of the line, the rest of it goes around the side of the building.

One more bridge across the Shinjuku Train Station's tracks, and we're at Tokyu Hands! If Yodobashi is where you get your electronics, this is where you get everything else.

The first floor we went into was the travel section. They had backpacks, briefcases, suitcases, and every other travel knicknack that you might ever need. I picked up a bag here because I got sick of carrying around all my gear in my pockets. The next floor was like Target, but filled with cool Japanese alternatives to the stuff that our Target's have. Lot's of kitchenware, (Debbie picked up a sweet ceramic knife, harder than steel, needs to be sharpened with diamond), household goods, that sort of thing. There was a furniture floor, a do-it-yourself floor like a mini-Home Depot, complete with lumber for those wooden projects you have around the house, a tool floor which had every type of tool known to man, from compressed air tools, to power tools, to garden knives that ninjas must trim their hedges with. Then there was the toy floor! Frankly not awe inspiring like Yodobashi, but more like the toy section at Target. A smattering of games, stuffed animals, costumes (Halloween?) This was where the fabled Nintendo cards were supposed to be. Let's see, they had every type of Bicycle card known to man, but no Nintendo cards. WTF? I wound up getting some alternate plastic cards, which actually turned out to be pretty nice.

Well, we returned home somewhat dejected by not finding Nintendo cards, but buoyed by getting a kick-ass kitchen knife and visting another very cool store.

As an addition, here's the 24 hour market that makes life tolerable for us. The crisp blast of arcticly chilled air conditioning that greets you when you step in is just the thing to revive you after a long sweaty day's journeying.

Mo Pics

Japan Day 7 (nana)

2007-08-06T07:37:00.000-07:00

SUNDAY

On our way down from the apartment I finally caught sight of one of those cicadas. They're kind of neat looking with the turquoise coloring.

Today we headed out for Harajuku to see the famed Harajuku girls. They mostly hang out on the bridge crossing the railroad tracks going into Harajuku station at the entrance to the Meiji Shrine.

When we got there at about one o'clock, most of them were just kicking it eating some lunch. Not too many were about.

Debbie and I decided to continue on to Meiji Shrine. This is the big Torii at the entrance.

It's a nice walk up to the shrine along this tree shrouded path.

About halfway up the path is where we got a nice suprise. Four college students came up to us and offered themselves as guides, with the purpose of practicing speaking English with some Americans. I tried to take a picture of them but one of them really didn't want his picture taken, so I didn't try purposefully get them. So began our first real interaction with some locals!

They explained that these sake barrels were an offering to the shrine from the different areas of Japan. Not to be outdone, France also offered up some of their own wine.

It was amusing that the two girls latched on to me, and the two boys latched onto Debbie for conversation as we moved along the path. We asked each other questions about where we were from, where we went to school, etc. They tried to remember to interject tidbits of information about the shrine, as good tour guides should. Tomoko was the more talkative of the girls, and Hide was the more talkative of the boys.

That's Hide on the right hand side with the green armband. Tomoko showed me how to get cleansed before going to the shrine. Basically you wash your hands and mouth using water that you get with the ladle.

This is the view looking up at the shrine. That's Tomoko's head down on the left hand side.

Turns out there was a wedding going on. Tomoko said they do about 300 weddings a year, so there's a good chance you'll see one whenever you visit.

Here's Debbie and I standing beneath the marriage trees. The left one is the male-tree and the right one is that female-tree, and the rope between them represents marriage.

This is the inside of the main shrine building. Those tables are offering tables. There are little grates and you throw a 5 yen coin into them as an offering. Hide explained the procedure to me. You throw the coin, then you bow twice, then you clap twice, then you silently make a wish, then you bow once more. On New Years Day about 3 million people cram into the shrine grounds. Since they can't all get to the offering tables they throw the coins up at the shrine. Up close you can see the dents in the columns outside from where coins have hit.

All those little wooden boards represent wishes. You write down your wish, hang it up there, and it comes true! hehe

Some of them were pretty amusing:

After seeing the temple, er... shrine (Tomoko explained that shrines were Shinto, and temples were buddhist) we told our guides we were looking to go grab a bite to eat and we asked if they wanted to come join us. They seemed eager to so we set back out for town. The Harajuku folks seemed to have come out of the woodwork by the time we got back to the bridge. Here's a sample:

We found a nice little sushi place that had the little conveyor belt where you take differently priced plates as they catch your eye. Hide thought it was funny that I amassed a tower of 6 plates or so. We talked about what kind of foods we liked in Japan, and which ones we didn't. Ultimately, they had to get going to meet some of their friends, so we said goodbye and exchanged email addresses with them. Tomoko offered to guide us around Yokohama if we make it down there, since that's where she's from.

After lunch we wandered around the Harajuku area. There's a very crowded street filled with vendors, but since we were already hot and sweaty from wandering around we didn't feel like jumping into the crush of people.

I'm glad we decided to circle the bustling area since we stumbled upon this little park:

It had a nice pond swarming with koi and turtles. You can see the little kids throwing bread crumbs into the water.

Mo Pics

Japan Day 6 (roku)

2007-08-05T07:18:00.001-07:00

SATURDAY

Not many pictures today. Bren, Jerri, me, Debbie, Lucy, and Charlie all ventured out to Ginza to check out the department store scene.

The basement floor of the Matsuya department store is an awesome place to grab a bite to eat. Definitely check it out some time if you're here. I'm kicking myself for not grabbing a photo of it, but I'm sure we'll be back and then I'll add the picture in.

The roof of this store was very cool in that it had a little pet department, with some doggies, some birdies, and some aquarium fish. There was a red arrowana for $20,000. Dollars, not yen. i've seen plenty of silver arrowanas in the states, and they sure don't cost that much. Maybe the red one is an endangered species or something. Heheh, I just googled it and look what I found: "The Asian Arrowana , some of which are classified as 'Endangered Species', is believed, especially among the Chinese, to bring good fortune to the owners, especially if it is a red one." Guess that settles it. I'd have taken a picture if I'd known at the time.

Much like shopping with Debbie in the states, our adventure soon devolved into me wandering along behind her in a zombie-like state as she perused oodles of jewelry, shoes, and clothes.

But after hitting every floor we finally emerged back out into the gloriously humid Japanese summer. And what should appear right in front of us, but the Ginza Apple store! It has 5 floors of appley goodness. We also got to ride an apple-vator, to take us from one floor to the next.

We found an Irish pub on one of the back streets:

And of course Scott and Debbie can't go to a foreign land without seeing a protest of some sort:

Sony has a store here that showcases all their latest techno-goodies. Didn't see anything earth shattering. A whole bunch of different walkmen. Bunch of laptops (if I was a Windows user, that Type-T would be mine!!) and HDTV's. The little handheld HD video cameras were about the neatest thing there.

After all that walking we headed back in anticipation of going to the restaurant we missed because we got there at closing time day before. Well this time we hit it when they were closed between lunch and dinner. So off to Hanamasa again. This time I wound up with some gyoza and a nice vat of kimchi that was calling out to me.

Mo Pics

Japan Day 5 (go)

2007-08-04T16:36:00.000-07:00

FRIDAY

Today we went to Mori Tower, which sits atop the Roppongi Hills mall area. We took an express elevator up to the 52nd floor to the observation deck.

From there you have a great 360 degree view of all Tokyo. I've pointed out our apartment tower in this picture.

Here's a sense of scale. These two buildings are pretty high, and we are looking down on them. Their helicopter pads seem to have grass on them. Putting greens? I don't think the residents would be very popular with those down below if they decided to break out the drivers....

That skyline is Shinjuku out in the distance. We plan on hitting up that area tonight.

Also on the observation level was a very cool aquarium. We could only take pictures of the entrance, as no photography was allowed, and they had little security girls patrolling the area.

I really wish we could have taken pictures inside. The first room was painted black, and the only light was from the aquariums. Along one side were salt water tanks, along the other, fresh water. The design of the tanks was so neat it made me want to run home and set up a fish tank again.

The salt water tanks all had amazing varieties of living coral. In addition to the fish, they had clams, anemonies, shrimp, feather dusters, and sea snails. All of the aquariums were in the 50-75 gallon range, so all the fish were small, like you would see hanging around a coral reef.

The fresh water tanks all had wonderful live plants in them. Ferns, mosses, lilly pads, the works. They had varied bottoms, sand, gravel, and rocks of different natural colors. They were all very well designed.

The remainder of the rooms were dedicated to artistically designed fish tanks. No normal rectangular tanks here. There were very long and thin tanks that would mount on a wall and maybe have one decorative goldfish in them. There was a tank built into the headboard of a bed. There was one that looked like an enormous vase that had hundreds of the big decorative goldfish in it, probably a few hundred gallons-worth. Some were lighted in a neat way; there were slim plastic tubes that rose up out of the gravel and bent over at an angle, like a bendy straw that's been bent down, each with a light underneath the tank. They acted as a light tube, directing the light out the end of the tube, like fiber optics. It looked like little street lights in the tank, a little cone of light descending to the bottom. A very neat effect.

Once we finished with the aquarium, we went to an art exibit on the next floor up. The top of this building is big! Here's yet another shot I got away with right before a security guard started after me making clucking noises, shaking his head. No pictures here either.

After the fun of the tower we went back down outside and hung out at a little pond between Mori Tower and the TV Asahi building.

Next we went inside the TV Asahi building lobby. Nothing much to see here. Lots of displays for Japanese shows that I've never watched or heard of before. There was one display that had an autographed pair of Tiger Wood's shoes. Go figure.

As we were leaving I snapped this sign. Don't know what it says, but it looks funny. The Japanese are fond of cutesy little characters.

As we were walking back to the apartment, we saw this Coldstone. It would have been wonderful to have some ice cream considering the heat, but the line went outside, and around the building, so we soldiered on.

Anyone want to stop at the Lubie Hot Yoga Salon? I didn't think so.

On the way back, we thought we'd be ugly Americans, and grab some McDonalds. In our defense, we did get something you can only get here, a Filet-O-Ebi (shrimp).

He went back to the apartment, had some cool-down time, and then headed out for Shinjuku to check out the scene.

Shinjuku has a pretty large train station, so I think it's sort of a hub of travel activity. Lots of people scurrying from place to place, lots of people standing around waiting for buses, and lots of people just standing around. We also saw our first Japanese homeless people here. This place was lined with restaurants, bars, vendors selling god knows what, karaoke bars, pachinko palaces, arcades, and lots and lots of neon.

We even found a fishing supply store. Have you been here Craig? The guys inside started laughing at me for taking this picture.

When we finally got back to our neighborhood, the restaurant we were planning on going to was closed so we went to our trusty Hanamasa 24 hour market to pick up some grub. Had some nice yakitori and snap peas.

Mo Pics

Japan Day 4 (shi)

2007-08-04T08:05:00.000-07:00

THURSDAY

We are finally sick and tired of the internet situation so Debbie and I are going to the local Office Depot to pick up a wired router. Since there is no setup other than plugging in the ethernet cables, we see this as the safest way to go.

We saw this little UPS truck on the way there. Seems like most of the delivery trucks are pretty tiny compared to american standards.

Here's another neat little truck.

From my first day I've wondered what the cicadas looked like. On our way back from Office Depot there was one laying in the parking lot of our apartment.

I stuck my hand in the next photo for a size comparison.

Thinking he was dead, I gave him a little poke and he angrily buzzed and flew over by the lobby door.

We stopped in a 7-11 on our way back for a bite for lunch. They are much better than ours in that they are stocked with yummy Japanese treats. I got this tonkatsu (pork cutlet), some sesame cucumbers, and a nice little peanut butter sandwich. The sandwich was more of a dessert, the filling was like a really sweet peanut paste. Debbie got the one filled with strawberries and whipped cream. The green bottle is tea if you were wondering.

Debbie's entre was some sort of shrimp quiche.

After a little rest, Jerri, Debbie, and I headed down to Nissin World Delicatessen.

There are pictures of Arnold Schwarzenegger on the wall. I guess he visited as Gov. of California. This is a market that sells mostly non-Japanese stuff. It also has an entire floor for booze. I picked up some Hakkaisan sake and some Andechs Doppelbock. Some of the best sake and beer in the world, respectively. I think this place could rival BevMo in their wine selection.

This is a little market on the side-street heading back up to our place. Those vending machines are literally everywhere you turn here in Japan. You will never, ever go wanting for a coke. Considering how hot and humid it is right now, that's a blessing.

This is a house off our side street that looks kind of cool. What I would expect a Japanese house to look like.

The long humid walk back to the apartment:

This delivery truck was up by the lobby on our return. I'm not sure what the company is, but they have a neat logo.

Japan Day 3 (san)

2007-08-03T17:48:00.000-07:00

WEDNESDAY

Today we ventured out to go see Tokyo Tower. It's not that far from our apartment, but its uphill, so we worked up a good sweat getting there.

It's like any major touristy place, lots of tour buses parked outside, and flocks of kids from school groups swarming about in a cacophany of unintelligble noise. On the first floor of the tower is an aquarium, so we decided to check it out. The aquarium was a bit unusual in that the tanks weren't particularly clean, and they tended to be filled to capacity with fish. No trying to make fish feel comfortable in a natural environment here. It's more like, "Can this fish physically fit in this tank? Yes? Good, let's put 5 of them in there then!"

Smile Mr Pirahna!

That's what a vicious fish should look like; black scales, big white teeth, and devilish red eyes:

Don't put your fingers in the tank!

If you have ever had a fish tank with clown loaches, you'll appreciate these. They were by far the biggest I'd ever seen, at about a foot in length.

Don't try any funny business when buying tickets for the tower, because they are on The Special Alert!

We had a nice panoramic view of the city from the observation level. In this picture looking to the north-west you can see Mori Tower on the left, and the little brown building near the swimming pool in the middle on the left hand side is our Azabu Towers apartment complex. The skyscrapers off in the distance are the Shinjuku area. I think the pyramid shaped building is a new temple, there's a nice old shrine in a wooded area behind it.

They had nice viewports in the floor that you could stand on looking down to the ground. I guess the net is in case the glass isn't quite strong enough to hold you. No worries, its tied with string to those ancient looking pieces of wood :)

Here's Charlie, Jerri & Lucy

Debbie and I had to take a picture with this giant peni....er....tower mascot:

When your dog dies in Tokyo, you cover it in epoxy resin and mount it in front of tourist attractions

After the tower, we started to to head on down to the Zojo-ji temple. There was a nice greenbelt along the road where we could really hear the ubiquitous cicadas. They seem to be in every tree in Japan. I had to take a movie so you can hear what they sound like. Turn up your speakers a bit. That undulating electric sounding noise is them. Notice how they overwhelm the traffic sounds from the street. They are loud.

Zojoji has had many trials and tribulations over the years. It was built in the year 1393, and was moved to its present location in 1598. The Sanmon, the main gate to the Zojoji Temple, was built in 1605. It's the only original building left after air raids in 1945 destroyed every other building on the grounds.

These little guys line one side of the temple grounds. Apparently, when a mother loses a baby, she can adopt one of these little statues and dress it, and give it a little windmill. They're sort of like little Buddhist angels.

This tree was planted by President George H.W. Bush in memory of his visit to Zojoji in 1982. Apparently there is also one planted by Ulysses S. Grant but I missed that one.

This is a neat bell on the grounds. I offered Debbie 1 yen if she'd go up and ring it, but she wouldn't do it.

Debbie is so overcome by the temple grounds she breaks out in a rousing rendition of YMCA.

And here's the Temple itself. I wanted to grab some shots of the interior, but there was a service(?) going on inside, and I didn't know about the propriety of "getting my tourist on" inside. Suffice it to say, there were monks, incense, chanting, and a big golden altar looking thingy.

Behind the temple was the Tokugawa cemetery. These two graves were set aside from the others and under watch by a security camera. Is it Tokugawa himself?

I'll finish up today with a nice sunset view of Mori Tower from our apartment window.

Mo Pics

Additional pictures...

2007-08-02T15:00:00.000-07:00

I'm going to be adding a Mo Pics link at the bottom of each day's entry, including the days I've already posted. I'm throwing up all my pictures on Flickr so that you can see all the pictures in their unedited glory.

I'll have a different set for each day's pics.

Japan Day 2 (ni)

2007-08-01T23:11:00.000-07:00

TUESDAY

Debbie and I set out today on our own to successfully infiltrate Akiba. It was sunnier today, but that just made it seem hotter. The temps probably haven't been over the mid 80's, but with the humidity, you break out in a sweat in just a few steps.

Parked in front of the Russian Embassy there is always a police bus. It looks like the police buses they had in
Buenos Aires to clear up protests that got out of hand. They've got wire mesh across all the windows. In fact, at most major intersections in this area there are police cars and buses with the wire mesh windows. Do people get that pissed off in traffic? Anyway, the police seem to have a very friendly mascot. I grabbed a pic of the side of the Russian Embassy bus:

Here's a view just a little further along Gaien-Higashi Dori, the main street near our apartment. You can see the nice DB-7 Astin Martin parked in front of the dealership.

There's no end to interesting police shenanigans at intersections. This is on the way to the Kamiyacho metro station. Can't imagine working a whole shift in that little metal box. Maybe he pops into the 7-11 right behind him for snacks.

Here's a neat view of Tokyo Tower on the way to our Metro station.

We made it to the Akihabara metro station, got our bearings, and headed out towards the big Japan Rail station. Before we made it to Chuo Dori, the main drag of Akihabara, we happened upon the greatest store in the history of the universe. Yodobashi.

I took this photo of the entrance seconds before a security guard rushed up and informed me in several different languages that pictures weren't allowed. Maybe he thought I was casing the joint. Of course I'd need a nine story high truck to cart away all the goodies I'd want to take. And getting that on the airplane home probably would cause some problems...

The best thing I can compare Yodobashi to is Fry's. Except you'd have to expand each of Fry's different sections into an entire separate floor, and multiply the selection of different gadgets in each section by 10. And add a giant toy section with all the cool japanese toys I drooled over as a kid. And add a floor for different restaurants. And a floor for golf, with a golf school. You get the picture.

I was suprised to see a big selection of airsoft guns in the toy section. For those of you that don't now, airsoft guns shoot little plastic BB's, and typically look very realistic. If your tot pointed one of these things at a cop, they wouldn't be around very long to talk about it. Anyway, they had lots of great guns, all my favorites from Rainbow Six: a P90, a SPAS-12, various MP5's, an AUG, and even a PSG-1 sniper rifle!
There was even a giant (about a meter long) model of the Space Battleship Yamato. This was the first anime movie I ever saw on the family film festival, back when there was a family film festival. I still remember the theme song from the TV show Star Blazers, that the movie was cobbled together from. It has a light-up WaveMotion gun. I must buy.

We walked under the train tracks and got our first glimpses of Akiba.

We wound up not getting a wireless router in Akiba after we realized that all the setup pages would be in Japanese. We didn't want to gamble that we'd just be able to plug it in and have it work with the default settings, so we went back home, empty handed, to discuss our options with Bren and Jerri.

And what better way to end the day than with some take out Indian food!

Japan Day 1 (ichi)

2007-08-01T01:49:00.000-07:00

MONDAY

We've got a nice 3 bedroom apartment in the Roppongi area of Tokyo, which is a very upscale area. On our way to the nearest subway station we pass the Russian embassy, the Tokyo American club, and an Astin-Martin dealership. Here's a few of shots of the inside of our apartment:

This became the babies' room after we had the front desk move the crib here from the slightly larger room that we now occupy.

Want to microwave something? Good luck! This is actually a combo microwave/toaster oven, pretty cool huh? The top button on the left is for the microwave, isn't that obvious?

On our first day out into the wilds of Tokyo, we decided to venture over to Akihabara to get that router that we needed. This was to be our first Tokyo Metro ride, and first attempt to take a baby, a two year old, and a big ass stroller through the throngs of Japanese going about their daily lives.

Here's a familiar movie poster down in the subway:

Oh, let me take a minute to curse the engineers that decided not to put elevators at every subway station. Carrying a baby stoller down the stairs with a baby in it is not fun. Not even in the pouring rain. Oh, and Juan, in Tokyo you go up stairs and escalators on the left hand side. Usually they even paint little arrows to let you know.

We finally made it out into the Akihabara neighborhood and stopped in at a little place to grab some lunch. The kids started getting a little cranky, as to them this still seemed like the middle of the night due to jet lag. Once it became obvious that we were going to have a 4 alarm meltdown with two cranky babies, we decided to head back home. Mission aborted for now. The pouring rain didn't help anyone's attitude either :)

Here's the view outside our apartment of the Roppongi Hills upscale mall area. The bottom 6 floors of the Mori tower (that big one in the middle) are a fancy mall.

One of our last shots for today is a view out our bedroom window of the Tokyo Tower.

An finally, too exhausted to venture out some more tonight, we ordered some sushi.

Mo Pics

Japan Day 0 (zero)

2007-07-31T00:20:00.000-07:00

SATURDAY/SUNDAY

We get to ride in a limo to LAX!

With 4 grownups and 2 kids, it's a bit of a squeeze, but we're going to JAPAN! so we don't mind

Crossing into Tomorrow!

We made it!

Mo Pics

We are experiencing technical difficulties....

2007-07-31T00:17:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the delay in getting my posts up, we are having router issues so I need to make a trip to Akihabara to grab a wireless router. Posting will commence once I get the router up and running.

Scott

The Gang

2007-07-08T16:29:00.001-07:00

The Gang, originally uploaded by Scott.

Here's the gang at Bruce's annual 4th of July blowout. As usual, there were friends, beer, food, music, and a drunk chef.

Mo Pics

The Iron Maidens

2007-07-07T10:54:00.001-07:00

The Iron Maidens.jpg, originally uploaded by Scott.

Saw the Iron Maidens for the first time last night. I didn't really know what to expect going into the show, but damn! These girls rock! It pains me to admit I had more fun at this show last night than I did at the last actual Maiden show I saw.

My pathetic camera photos don't do them justice, check out krinkle.net to see some better ones...

Or even better yet, check out their website: TheIronMaidens.com

Mo Pics

Kwik-E-Mart!

2007-07-04T14:52:00.001-07:00

Kwik-E-Mart!, originally uploaded by bahoofgaggler.

Thank you, please come again!

Mo Pics

A Moment of Zen

2007-06-30T20:56:00.000-07:00

From a recent trip to the Long Beach Aquarium

The Standard

2007-06-30T20:36:00.001-07:00

The Standard, originally uploaded by bahoofgaggler.

Thought we'd kick off our photoblog with a picture of Debbie and I taken on top of The Standard, on a balmy December night in LA.