Category Archives: photography

Nighttime in the Hood

It's been a while since I've posted some nighttime shots, so here are a few I took whilst walking around The Hood over the weekend. A quiet intersection... Near the neighborhood temple... View from my balcony... One more shot after the jump, as well as links to other entries with night shots....

Wednesday Night...

Nothing special. Just a random Wednesday night in the hood... My sundappled kitchen, in all its messy glory. The hood... I have no idea who painted this building, but......

Painting with Light

Thank you all for your kind wishes in the last post. I really appreciate it! ...So I took the LSAT on Sunday. In short, I don't think I did as well as I did on the practice exams, but all is not lost. I was scoring quite high on the practice exams so even if the score I get on the actual test is a few points lower than what I'm used to, it should...

Tokyo Blue Skies II (Sky Worship IV)

Damn, that title could have used some work, huh? *laughs* At first I was going to call it something like "tokyo upshots" but decided against it because that might bring in exactly the wrong kind of intarnets traffic... (see, 'upshots' can apparently also be used to describe (especially in Japan) the phenomenon of taking a picture up a woman's skirt... which, needless to say, is not what today's post is about.) (sorry to disappoint...) Lacking...

Akihabara Wideangle

First shots from the wide angle Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM. Sorry for the lack of interesting subject matter, this was kind of an off-the-cuff series of snaps as I walked around Akihabara. Pedestrians headed home after a long days work... The weather has been getting warm and damp recently, reminding me that the incredibly humid and uncomfortable rainy season is just around the corner. Which, when added to the daily grind of a life...

More Zoo Pictures

I should probably start a category just for closeup pictures of animals making funny faces, because there are few things as amusing to me as animals staring into cameras. I don't know why. Is that weird? There is not much to this post besides just more pictures from the zoo (hence the title - I am nothing if not creative). I have been too busy lately with work and study to have much of any...

Mistar Parrot

I spent all weekend studying for the LSAT, translating documents for work, mirroring my blog and production server onto my local machine (with varying degrees of success) and taking pictures of animals. Since only the last one is of any visual interest (unless you have an unhealthy obsession with the OS X terminal window), here are a few pictures of parrots for your enjoyment. Something that was kind of odd about these parrots was that...

Vietnamese Chicken Panda

So I wasn't going to post any more food pictures, but this was just too delicious to pass up. Last Sunday I woke up with the strange urge to buy the (Product)RED version of the iPod shuffle for some reason. (I wake up with the strangest urges at time...) Anyway, the only place they are sold in Japan is at the Apple store in Ginza (or over the internets, but I demand instant gratification and...

What a panda eats

Did you ever wonder what pandas eat in a day? Okay, probably not. But I haven't updated in about 10 days, and the only pictures I've taken recently are of food, so I guess that's today's post topic. Breakfast Kiwi and Blue Cheese Bruschetta on Vanilla Sponge I wish I could take credit for this recipe, but this incredibly tasty and delicious meal comes courteously of Bron Marshall and her gorgeously photographed blog. This was...

Nighttime Sakura

Nighttime sakura on a rainy, drenched sunday evening in Tokyo. Can you believe this is the only shot of the cherry blossoms I got all weekend? The irony of it is, last weekend was the last opportunity to see the cherry blossoms in prime bloom here in Tokyo (northern parts of Japan bloom later). Saturday was an absolutely gorgeous day, so I thought about going to see them then, but decided in the end to...

Top of the Morning

It seems like such a shame to spend 30 minutes dressing up nice and getting ready for work in the morning just to head out the door and have it all ruined by the combination of wind, rain and heat which conspires to turn one into a wet, tussled, sweaty mess in a matter of moments. Even if one does miraculously manage to avoid all three of the above and make it to work unscathed,...

Snow Panda

Haha, in all the years I've kept this blog, I don't think I've posted as many photos of myself as I have in this entry (and the previous one). Is the panda blog turning into a venue for indulging my inner narcissisist panda? Oh my goodness, look, I can never spell that word. Narcissist. Ha. That's it. Thank goodness for spell check. Clearly the thing to do when surrounded by snow is to make a...

Vainpanda

So the lovely Miss YJ sent me this equally lovely cashmere scarf out of the blue last month and I promised I would send her a picture of myself vamping deliciously for the camera with it. And now, since I haven't finished processing the pictures from last few weeks' worth of adventures, I am going to post it and pretend it counts as a blog update. Oh deliciously vain sun-dappled panda. What a silly way...

Castles and Sunsets

I happened to have my camera with me as I was walking home yesterday, so I decided to snap a few pictures of that perfect time in day when the sky rapidly changes from the brightness of afternoon to the duskiness of evening in the span of like a half-hour. There's only photographs in this entry (and they're all HDR images, in case you're wondering why some might seem a little "surreal"), but I just...

Panda Strap

Alas, it's been a busy week so I've not had a chance to write a post yet. Maybe this weekend? That is, after I decide whether or not to apply to law school next year. A deadline that is literally penciled into my planner for Saturday: "-take out recyclables -decide about law school -buy windex*". *(my bathroom mirrors are kinda grungy) Bethann's mother, of all people, randomly made this supar dupar supar cuet beaded panda...

Blue Skies over Tokyo (Sky Worship III)

Blue skies over Tokyo Yesterday was a brilliant blue day in Tokyo so I went for a walk with a friend to Harajuku to attend to some Hatsumode-ing, about 2 weeks too late. After we were done praying for happiness, wealth, or in my case, a real live baby panda, a box of new Legos and admittance into Columbia Law school (roughly in that order), we decided to go for a walk around town to...

Happy New Year 2008

Happy New Year 2008 everyone! It's the year of the Mouse, for whatever that's worth, so umm, I hope you all have a great mouse-themed year and don't get too sloshed with the bubbly tonight ;) I'm in a good mood at the moment - it's the goyo osame end of the work year period so I'm off until next week. I'm trying to use the time to study, redesign the website and just generally...

Farmlife

I actually have been slacking a little bit when it comes to posting, not because I have a dearth of things to write about (quite the opposite, actually) but because a) I had a big test to study for earlier this month and b) after I finished that I became incredibly lazy and sloth-like because 1) it is the holidays and 2) it is cold as heck at the moment and this being Japan, my...

Nekobukuro Kitty Kats

There have actually been some very disturbing things happening here in Japan land (not to me personally, but at the political/civil liberties level) that have put me in a severely depressed mood recently and are making me seriously - like, seriously - think about leaving next year, or possibly sooner. Shit, to put it nicely, is about to get a lot more oppressive is you're unfortunate enough to have the wrong skin colour and you...

Tatami Nap Panda

Mmmmm.... I could nap in this spot of sun forever. I'm going to Nekobukuro later on today for the hell of it, so I figured I might as well get my practice in cat-napping before I depart. What a beautiful Autumn day! And here's what's currently playing, if you want to recreate this incredibly lazy and relaxing Sunday in your own home: Neutral Milk Hotel - Holland, 1945 (03'14" :: 160kbp vbr .mp3)...

The Time Travelers Panda

Thank you all for the supar kind birthday wishes! :) An update is coming soon, just as soon as I finish up this busy week. And by "busy week" I mean watching nonstop zombie and/or vampire movies (seriously, I've watched 6 this week and it's only Wednesday). The thing about zombie/vampire movies is that they have so much promise as a genre, but more often than not, the end Hollywood result is mind numbingly stupid....

That's why I jump...

We'll get back to the Great Tohoku Road Trip 2007 in just a second, but first a brief interlude of some jumping pictures from Bart-in-Japan's final hurrah in, errr, Japan. Click to embiggen. Hey, what about trying it front-lit? Click to embiggen....

The Great Tohoku Road Trip - Part I

If there is one thing that KC and I have learned from our past adventures, it's that neither of us are much of "planners" when it comes to travel. Our general philosophy is to tack down the intended time of departure and a meeting spot, then show up and hope that someone remembered to bring a car (and if it has sufficient fuel for the journey, then so much the better). Since this approach has...

The Great 2007 Tohoku Road Trip

As mentioned in my last entry, after expedia "you haven't got prayer of making your flight" dot com decided to (yoghurt) poop all over our carefully planned Mongolia expedition, my friend and I decided to make the best of a bad situation and go on a week long road trip to Northern Japan instead. The first shots from the 2007 Tohoku Road Trip We just got back a couple of days ago, so I'm still...

Public Drunkenness at 50mm f1.8

Whatever I thought it would be like, I'm pretty sure I didn't think it would turn out like it did - my mind going over the laundry list of things I had to do to get ready for work tomorrow, my heart heavy with the thought of having to walk to work in a wool suit in the hot sweaty mugginess of the Japanese rainy season, my eyes just moments prior flicking over train schedules to find the fastest route home after getting off at Tokyo so as to avoid time consuming transfers and giving myself a chance to catch a few precious hours of sleep before having to get up the next day. Here it was, my little moment which I had dreamed of long ago, and rather than feeling euphoric, or overjoyed with hope or optimism as I had expected, it instead felt oh so very... real...! But not real in that way that excitement tinges your tongue with feathery touches of alkali, or real in the way that hope swells your heart such that you think it will burst from your chest, but rather real as in the damp, sweaty, somewhat downtrodden leaden-ness of the everyday grind. Maybe not as real as waking up one day to find yourself a lonely bald fat low-level manager of a box plant and suddenly realising your youth is gone, but definitely real in the way that you realise you are now, at this very second and this very age of 27, engaged in a day to day struggle not to end up that way. It wasn't a sad feeling, the lack of euphoria, but just surprising that achieving one's dream - no matter how small - would feel so completely run of the mill. After all, what I was doing at that moment wasn't particularly unusual, and now that I thought of it, I had done this very same thing - eat an eki bento on a bullet train late at night - quite often in the past few years. I began to wonder: was this all there was to life? (silly I know, but I thought that). Were we lied to when told that achieving our goals was to rewarded with feelings of accomplishment, when in fact all it felt like was more of the same? Or perhaps, more disturbingly, had I set my dreams and sights too low?

Still alive... and at the beach

Yeah, I know it's been 15 days without an update. I am still alive. I just had an intensely fun but seriously sleep deprived weekend (3 hours in 3 days or so). I need to sleep now. More pictures and stuffs later on this week ("yeah right, we've heard that before!!"). But for now, enjoy panda surveying all the territory over which he rules supreme. Update soon, I promise folks....

Morning Tea

A bit too busy to write a full length post today, but one will be forthcoming soon. In the interim, a picture of some creepy half-naked Kewpie Mayo Babies that suddenly appeared on my breakfast table the other day. And of course, I would be remiss if I didn't post a random picture of my less-than-healthy breakfast of champions earlier this week. Speaking of which, it's like 7:40 am on Saturday morning and I have...

Lindsay, the Telemarket-stalker

What is this book, you might be asking yourself? Well, let's look at the cover: The Complete Fake History of a Bunch of People Who Don't Actually Exist I'd like to think of it as the first entry in a series of books entitled "Hey, so I heard you've got a stalker - the Michaelpanda Stalker Prevention Series". What am I going on about? Allow me to explain. You see, while it may be hard...

More Monorail Love

New post coming soon, as in tomorrow, hopefully. But for now, here's another picture of a monorail to tide you over. I really should make a category called "monorail worship" over on the side ;)

Picture Poast

Thus dear readers, I am afraid I shall have to tempt you with the tease shot of the mystery book above: The Complete Fake History of a Bunch of People Who Don't Actually Exist, and then segue into the rest of this post, which I am afraid will consist solely of pictures that have nothing to do with the one directly above or below. But as soon as I get back from this meeting - provided I survive - I promise I will tell you all about my telemarketer stalker, touch on my real-estate stalker (sigh) and expound in great detail about my almost pathological inability to say no to people to their faces that lands me in these convoluted situations in the first place.

Crayon Post, the Time Lapse Video

Somebody asked me how long it took to make the Crayon Post I put up the other day - well as it happens, I was wondering the same thing at the outset, so I had set up my camera to record a time lapse video of the process, which you can view below. This pretty (HDR) picture of Shibuya, Tokyo is a sneak peek of the next upcoming post... The video itself is a 4.5...

Dining Table, what what!

Table cloths, placemats and varnish - these things are artificial filters that barricade the connection between us and the immediacy of the moment. Naught but the trappings of pretension, they defy the purpose of buying furniture in the first place - to use it and to let it serve its purpose. I don't want to stop to think to put down a coaster, or spend hours trying to lay down the perfect streak-free coat of varnish and stain - I just want to kick off my shoes, set down a plain white ceramic bowl filled with a simple food on the table, open my computer, or tear off a sheet of paper and just be. When the future is uncertain - when my future is uncertain - it is comforting to have this reminder of the my connection to the solace of an immediacy of moments spent in comfortable surroundings, in my little house right here in my little corner of my little city in this little chunk of this little island floating all along and bobbling in the wide vast swath green blue oceans of the uncertain scary world...

Night Photos and Naughty E-mails

Which brings us back to the present, and this gigantic very explicit pornographic image plastered on my screen, right smack dab in the middle of a crowded Japanese office...!

"EERGLPPPFFFHHH!!!!!" I squeak out an incomprehensible sound as my mind begins to register what the frick is happening. "OH MY CHRIST!!!"

"OMIGODOMIGODOMIGOD!!!" I stammer-yell to myself as I realise I'm on a Mac and that shortcut doesn't work. Instinctively I move to hit "window" plus "l" which on a PC will blank your screen and bring you back to the security log on. Guess what it does on a Mac in Entourage. It "refreshes the message list", which means it has just refreshed this gigantic set of pornographic boobies displayed in my e-mail screen.

Hakone

So the weather here in Kanto has been slowly sputtering and lurching towards balmier conditions week by week. The fact that it has been an unusually warm winter - it didn't snow even once! - means that we can enjoy spring traveling a little earlier than usual. With that in mind, the lovely Kazumi - making her first appearance here on the pandablog - and I headed over to nearby Hakone for a day long...

Setsubun - the face smashing festival

Are you imagining that phrase? Now while keeping that image in your head, slowly replace those words until it becomes "like hurling heavy beanbags at immobile foreigners trapped in a crowd about 25 feet away from you from an elevated wooden platform." And then add "oh and you're a gigantic muscular sumo wrestler." It was, as they say, all fun and games until someone got hurt, and that someone would have been the random old lady who took one to the dome with a rather sharp and alarming plastick-y "srrrMMMMGAAAACCCKKK!" as the beanbag caught her with a glancing blow to the temple. She stumbled back for a second, dazed and shell shocked, then bumped up against the chest of a larger guy behind her trapped by the surging crowd and could retreat no further. I watched as she valiantly tried to struggle to her feet only to catch another round straight in the forehead, chin snapped straight back from the force of the impact as she slowly sank into the murky darkness of the trampled ground below the crowd line, one hand upstretched piteously, palm splayed, grasping uselessly at the heavens, mouth echoing out its last plaintive gasp: "Damn you ..... beeeeaaaannnnnsss........."

A Panda in London (France Pt. II)

As you may recall from my last entry, the French have somewhat of a laissez-faire attitude towards things like immigration or knowing who's in their country at any given time. In their opinion, procedures such as "passport control" or "customs" are really nothing more than minor irritants impinging upon their cigar-smoking, cheese-consuming time, not to be taken seriously, or perhaps even done away with all together if the fancy strikes. The British, on the other hand, regard the question of knowing who's entering their country as a matter of utmost import and accordingly, the immigrations queue for the train heading to London from France wound halfway down the terminal as at the head, friendly, but quite severe looking English inspectors dutifully examined, stamped and returned passports and papers all the while chatting to themselves in that delightfully undulating British accent that made the gate area sound very much like the opening scene from any Guy Ritchie film

France Adventure Pt. I

Okay. So I should probably just change the name of this blog to "Watch Panda take pictures of shit at night", because once again this poast is sporting a bunch of night pictures - and it won't be the last one, je promise' (ooh, look at my two words of French!) So yeah, speaking of French, I got back from my Great France Adventure 2007 last Monday. Now rather than jamming everything into one massive...

Narita-san Temple

Wow, so the first post of 2007, huh? I suppose it's a bit cheap that it's gonna be primarily a photo entry, but as previously mentioned I'm heading off to Paris this Thursday - Thursday people - and I've not done any packing yet. In fact, I should probably try and figure out where all my underwear seem to have disappeared off to over the past two weeks. I'll need them for my trip and...

No Chicken, No Life

Sign spotted outside a downtown Izakaya (Japanese-style bar). Hard to argue with this sentiment I suppose! Speaking of chickens everlasting - (actually, this has nothing to do with eterna chickans, that was a horrible transition) - I am planning on taking my new pretty baby out and about this weekend to take some pictures. Originally, I had planned to head over to Narita-san temple in Narita (town next to the international airport) to get some...

Early Morning Photography

Off to Tokyo for some random adventures today. But first, some equally random early morning photos. Cufflinks and collar stays... God damn I love tiny furniture... This picture looked better uncropped. (Click here for uncropped version at different angle) Sigh... I need to get a Tilt-Shift Lens......

Delphinium Days (Skyworship II)

I imagine he may have been thinking of days like this past weekend, when it seems like all you can see when you look up are endless expanses of blue - blue for which there are no boundaries - seas of soaring topaz, vast swaths of azure splashed with milk clouds, indigo pigments ground up and soaking into the parchment of the sky. Such blue skies are like a perfect backdrop for the sharp intercut of the earthy relief of jagged man made constructs daring to jab upwards into the heavens with their razor sharp borders. Blues so encompassing, I couldn't but help to put something concrete in each shot as if to remind myself I am still of this terrestrial life, as if pointing the camera straight up into the very middle of the blueness and pushing that shutter might be to lose yourself into the profundity of blues so deep they saturate the very silicon of the camera sensor and reach out with their siren calls to embrace you in their greedy swallow.

Sky Worship

People sometimes ask why I like tall buildings. This picture from the Mori Tower pretty much sums it all up. More sky worship after the jump...

Sky Monkah!

Monkah and I scope out the view from the top of the mountain. Look at all that beautiful sunlight pouring down! It might not seem like much at first, but three weeks into the rainy season with nothing but gray skies and thunderstorms night and day, it's quite possibly one of the most beautiful things you'll ever see.

Sunny Road Trip!

On the way back we passed by this random 35 foot tall statue of a Tyrannosaurs Rex growling fearsomely at a curve in the road, apparently as an enticement to come visit the nearby dinosaur museum. What is mildly amusing about this picture is the sign beneath the T-Rex's feet. It reads: "Are you driving safely?" And all I could think was "No, man, a goddamn dinosaur that just scared the shit out of me when I rounded the blind curve here! What do you expect!!?"

Great Takayama Road Trip II

After our adventures frolicking in the "downtown" area of Takayama (population like 200) and running away in screaming terror from the stuffed knife wielding animatronic denzins of the "Eco TeddyBear Village", we looked at our cheesy tourist map and realized we still hadn't been to the "Hida Folk Village". The "Hida Folk Village" is basically a small enclave of old traditional Japanese houses which have been carefully preserved in their (more or less) original state. They are gathered together to form a village which is supposed to recreate how Japanese lived hundreds of years ago.

Yokohama Chinatown

....until I saw these. Oh my god!! This was the first of what would soon spin into an incredibly propitious string of Yokohama Chinatown panda spottings! These are steamed dumplings with are stamped in the shape of cute little panda faces! I squealed like a school girl when I saw them and ran over to purchase one. They were pretty steep (like $3USD each) but I was all set to plop down for them, when I saw to my disappointment that they were filled with chocolate and bean paste instead of delicious steamed meat. (Actually there were ones filled with meat - the one in the topmost poster for example - but they weren't so cute so I didn't buy them). My disappointment was soon alleviated, however, when just around the corner I spied... Oh my goodness, an entire store devoted JUST TO SELLING PANDA GOODS!! I was in heaven!! I rushed over to the store, brusquely pushing aside a small 12 year old girl and two old women who were in my way (pandas are endangered, old women and little girls are not so it's all good in my book). Had I found my mecca? I think I had!!

Great Takayama Road Trip Part I

It's spring break! With no big plans in the works, my ever faithful travel companion and I decided that a quickie road trip up to Takayama in nearby Gifu Prefecture would be the perfect way to spend a Saturday. What's there to do over in Takayama? Well... Historic Japan Much of Japan is rebuilt and artificial - concrete slab box buildings and shiny glass paneled convenience stores blending into a modern ugly mess. But this...

Sun and Rain...

It was simultaneously beautifully sunny and gloomily rainy one day earlier in the week. How crazy! Since I'm suffering from massive writers block lately, I'm afraid you're just going to have to settle for a picture post! The day started out wonderfully, with sun beating down gently through cool early spring breezes onto tiled rooftops outside my apartment. You can see the "downtown" in the distance. When I first got here, I really disliked the...

Kyoto Road Trip

This picture was taken atop the mountain at Iwatayama Monkey Park (see below) by a man carrying a broom and a slingshot. We were actually just looking at the monkeys when he snatched the camera from our hands and shoved us over towards the couple of fanged screaming simians you see on the branch behind us. "You stand there. I take picture." "...b...but, those monkeys have fangs...!" we protest feebly. "You stand there. I take picture." he repeats, gesturing wildly with his slingshot. Our gaze flips back and forth between the fanged death monkeys and the almost too ethusiastic looking japanese man with a slingshot and a well worn looking broom. Monkey death? Or slingshot to the dome?

Random Photos

It was worth it though, to see everything bathed in amber sunlight on the way back down. I've gone up and down this road a hundred times before, and each time thought it was ugly and filled with concrete. But like so many things in Japan, sometimes the beauty is hidden deep down inside of it, and you just have to catch it at the right angle to see it, I suppose.

Eiheiji and the Depressed Panda

Monk central command. As mentioned above, taking pictures of the monks was strictly off limits, but we just couldn't resist a single furtive shot as we headed out the door of the "front office", one of the most surreal scenes I have seen since coming to Japan. Behind the counter lay a fully equipped business office with one major exception - it was staffed entirely by Zen Buddhist monks dressed in flowing black robes from head to toe. As we walked by, Yasu started giggling uncontrollably as one of the monks appeared to be having trouble with his computer and turned to another monk who was making photocopies for help. Together, the two of them hunched over the computer screen trying to sort out whatever it was that was going wrong ("no, try clicking there"), while all around them other monks answered phones ("Eieheij Temple, how can I help you?"), filed papers and rolled around on wheeled office chairs.

Himeji-jo and Acclimatization

What starts as a simple comparison of differences between cultures quickly spins out of control into a series of increasingly disconnected judgments, finally culminating in a bizarre tangent about the supposed submissive role of women in Japanese society! In the process a fully painted - yet completely falsified - picture of moral drama unfolds, complete with villains (Japanese teachers, "repressive Japanese system"), heroes ("I'm not going to sit down and do nothing"), treacherous deeds ("brainwashing"), and the archetypal damsel in distress ("this frail young girl"/ "timid and erased Japanese girl with no will to fight"/ "a good and submissive housewife").

Autumn Thursday

It was a beautiful autumn Thursday yesterday and due to a fortuitous coincidence in my schedule, I happened to be free for most of it. Somewhat on the road to recovering from the horrible cold that laid me out for a full week, I decided to make the most of the unexpectedly pleasant weather and go for a drive, camera in tote, and explore some of the lesser frequented areas of town stretching far...

Panda Tripping in Tokyo...

I headed over to Tokyo for a couple days on business, then stayed an extra day with a fellow Panda loving friend to go to the zoo and look at the pandas. Not much to write about, so instead you can just enjoy some pictures and perhaps a couple of movies (^_^)v. Those of you who have been following the panda blog know that the last few months have been rough here in the House...

Pandas at play...

Work has been piling up at a frantic rate, but I decided I really needed to do something to relax. Tennis in tow, I headed up north to visit my good friend KC (yeah, I just threw you a myspace link. Sorry. Normally I'd never do that, but hey, it's a friend so...). Arriving in the deep inaka, we watched a bit of Kids in the Hall (ahh, the things you start to miss...

Monkah's latest Tokyo Trip

An update is coming soon, I swear. I'm trying to hold myself up to a higher standard when it comes to posting (i.e. I'm going to spell check it this time and try and make sure things sorta' make sense), but that takes time and makes things a bit harder since I have to stop and think about what I'm writing. It's like being back in university. (^_^)v In the meantime, here's some pictures from...

A Day in the Life of Panda - Part II

Having relaxed and destressed a little bit, I realized I was supposed to meet a friend in a little while, so I hopped back on the trusty panda peddlar and headed over to one of the local Starbucks. Yes - the Evil S. Way Out West - Stealth (Quivver Remix) Paul Oakenfold - El Nino (Matt Darey 12" mix) Now, we all know the standard rallying cry of the fair-trade, living wage leftists out...

A Day in the Life of Panda - Part I

Having encountered a major case of writers block recently, I decided to do a couple of entries showing what I do on a typical day. Actually, the day in question happens to be Sunday, since if I showed you what I do Monday through Friday, you'd all probably die from boredom (ahh, I see, he's still working on that excel worksheet. Interesting.) Voyeuristic narcissism? Probably. But until this writers block goes away, I've got nothing...

Pictures from Tokyo RCA 2005

As promised, a random smatter of pictures from the Tokyo Conference last week. Click on the thumbnails for a larger picture. Sorry if the clearing div screws things up on IE, I dun have time to mess with it. . Now listening to: "Clazziquai - Come to me (Z-Bam Remix)" thanks to anna for hooking me up!...

Chayamachi

Winter in the hood is dark and depressing - moreover the constant see-sawing between dry, harsh blowing winter winds and incessant torrential downpours is anything but nice to my hair. In a moment that made me seriously question my sexuality, I found myself looking up the Japanese phrase for "split ends" ("枝毛" - "edage" for those of you who care) the other day so I could go somewhere and have them trimmed - the big...

Bunka no hi

Today was "Cultural Day" so no school. I didn't actually do anything exciting today, however, on Saturday I went over to Kenrokuen park. As some of you may recall, my initial impression of Kenrokuen was somewhat less than spectacular (I do believe I referred to it as being "akin to a golf course"), nevertheless, as fall approaches, even golf-course like national gardens become awash in a veritable artist's pallet of autumnal colors. I'm too lazy...

Pictars

too sleepy to write anything clever, so I`m just gonna throw up some random pictures from the school undokai and my enkai later on that evening. A fellow member of team Midori - we won a complete sweep, by the way... Vicious high school girls duke it out in the rope pull. One of my students acknowledges the overwhelming superiority of Team Midori BEFORE: Listless teachers stare glumly into space at my enkai Sensing a...

Pictures...!

Sorry for the rather depressive quality of the last few posts - things were much brighter yesterday as I taught a couple of very enjoyable adult classes (they actually want to learn english!) and some of the third year students (who, while still not much more active than lumps of rotting eggplant, at least weren`t playing on their cell phones in class, and did, on occasion, answer when spoken to). Anyway, to make up for...

Friday morning Ryoko Hirosue montage

Nothing starts Friday off better than gratuitous shots of Ryoko Hirosue... (I swear every japanese 'idol' has done at least a million pictures with this pose.) And, as long as we're posting up (sexy?) pictures, Bill wasn't feeling the love and insisted i put his big pasty white ass (mercifully concealed by some baggy jeans) up for the whole world to see. So here you go, Billy. Hmm... let's see. Gratuitous cheesy pics of...