... I have put away childish things. Remember when you were small and the whole world still seemed so big, wonderful and mysterious? If only I could have known what a precious gift I had back then.

"Put out the light. Years stand outside on the street / looking up to an open window, black as our mouth / which utters its tuneless song. The ghosts of ourselves, / behind and before us, throng in a mirror, blind, / laughing and weeping. They know who we are."

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I don't usually listen to music whilst shooting photos, but for some reason I happened to have my iPod on when I took this the other day. What was Method Man's contribution to this delicate interplay of photographic negative space, you ask?

"Lewis Fritz, Hot Nikks, n***a what's happenin'? / Ain't shit, holdin' my dick, smokin' a clip, thanks for askin' / Mashin', the latest fashion / Dance floor packed with whites, blacks and Latins"

I can honestly say that I've never uttered the phrase "ain't shit, holding my dick" in my entire life. Oh Method Man. Why must you be so uncouth?

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The problem with taking photographs of ducks (well, other than the fact that you're wasting time taking a photograph of a duck when you could well be doing other more constructive things) is that they don't stand around waiting for you to get your shot set up. They run around, quacking and ducking and twitching and just generally being a pain in the ass. And then, when you finally DO manage to get a shot of the duck, then, my friends, all you're left with is a photo of a duck. Which probably isn't as interesting as you imagined it would be when you first started down this unfortunate series of duck-photographing events. From start to finish, including time spent chasing this goddamn duck around the yard to copying the images to my computer, to sorting through them and choosing one, to post-processing the candidates in LR/Photoshop and finally uploading one to the blog, this little image probably took 45 minutes of my life to produce. Think about it. 45 minutes. 45 minutes closer to my inevitable death, 45 minutes I could have spent gazing at sunsets, talking with loved ones, eating something delicious, learning something new, anything - ANYTHING but taking a bleeping photo of a bleeping duck. What I wouldn't give to get those 45 irreplaceable minutes of my youth back! But I can't. Was this duck picture worth it? I'd have to say "no." Everybody makes bad choices in life, and I'd have to say that for me, this damn duck was one of them.

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Passersby reacting in a rather dramatic fashion to a rather underwhelming midget pony on display at the Saitama Children's Zoological Park last weekend. The only real reason to visit (in my admittedly biased opinion) is to see the Capybara onsen, but as long as you've plunked down your hard-earned yen for admission, you might as well give the rest of the sights a quick once-through. The midget pony was pretty sad looking, but the rest of the park was surprisingly nice to stroll through, and if you're into marmots and guinea pigs, they have the most adorable guinea pig show I've ever seen as well. (Full disclosure: I've only ever seen 3 guinea pig shows in my entire life, so um, take that for what it's worth)

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Prologue

This next series of posts is a little specific and I fear it might not be of interest to most of my general readers. But still, I know that some of you read this blog because you are either living in Japan, or interested in it in some way. It is my hope that the following might be of use to you. For the rest of you, fear not, we'll return to our regularly scheduled posting shortly :)

Introduction

The results for the Japanese Proficiency Exam (JLPT) Level 1 (the highest level) for last December were announced earlier this month, and I was delighted to see that I passed. I passed both the JLPT 1 and the JLPT 2 (which I sat back in 2008) each on my first try. I'm not particularly great at Japanese (I famously confused the words for "poop" and "bean jam" once, causing great consternation to the old woman staffing the bakery counter), but still passing both on your first try doesn't seem to be a super common feat, especially for test-takers whose native language is English. When I was studying for the test, I remember googling for study strategies which others might have used. There are a few good resources out there, but I thought I would write up my take on it as well, for what it's worth.

Notes

If you are thinking of sitting the JLPT 1 (now to be called the N1), there are a few things you should know first.

1. Starting from June 2010, the structure of the JLPT has changed. What used to be called the JLPT 1 (JLPT 1級) has now become the "N1". Since the first administration of this test will be from this year, nobody really knows what it's going to be like. It is probably safe to assume that it will be very similar to the JLPT 1, but keep in mind that I sat the JLPT 1, so a few of my strategies might be slightly different. There is scant information about the N1 on the internet (obviously, since no one has taken it yet) but you can find some sample problems on the official site and some threads on it over on the JLPT study forum.
2. While nobody will mistake me for a native speaker of Japanese, I have lived in Japan for several years at this point, work in an all-Japanese environment, and have no problems with daily life/conversation. If this description doesn't apply to you - or if you live overseas and have no daily exposure to Japanese, you will likely have to study even harder than I did if you wish to pass the JLPT 1.
3. If you're thinking of sitting the JLPT 1, I highly recommend you sit the JLPT 2 first (or at the very least, make sure you can easily pass a JLPT 2 mock test). The JLPT 1 builds upon what you need to know for the JLPT 2 and if you don't know the material for the latter (especially the grammar and kanji), it is unlikely you will be able to pass the former. (Unless you're awesome. In which case, you probably can safely ignore this guide.) From a purely practical perspective as well, the materials you will study for the JLPT 2 are probably some of the most useful Japanese you will ever learn (particularly the grammar). I hardly encounter any of the JLPT 1 grammar in my everyday life, but not a day goes by that I'm not using at least a few of the things I learned for the JLPT 2.
4. Passing the JLPT 1 requires a lot of effort. If you're not willing to put in the time to bust your butt and study, you probably shouldn't bother signing up for the test and wasting all the money on application fees and study materials. Japanese is a hard language and the JLPT 1 is a really hard test. For me, it took 2 months of straight studying to learn everything I needed to know to pass the test. This means that every weekend and every other weeknight after work I headed to the library or coffee shop with books in hand, while others were out having a good time. Being able to speak Japanese relatively well is not an automatic guarantee of being able to pass the JLPT 1 if you don't also spend the time to study in an organized and effect manner, so it's best to make your peace with that ahead of time.
5. Passing the test also requires money. The test application fee is about $50 USD, but on top of that you will need to add the cost of study materials, mock/practice tests, and an electronic dictionary (at least if you do it the way I did). This comes up to not an insignificant chunk of change, though overall, it still came out cheaper than some other popular tests I have taken in the past (the LSAT, for example). In my estimation, I probably spent about $350 on this test: $200 for the electronic dictionary, about $70 on textbooks and practice tests, $50 on the test application fee, $15 on a Lego set I bought to reward myself after sitting it, and the remainder in coffee and the annualized cost to my sanity :). Is it possible to pass the test using only free study materials and a paper dictionary? Perhaps, but you'd have to be a certain kind of persistent masochist to try to do that. I'd recommend saving your pennies and spending them on what you need to study effectively. It's money well spent, and if you're sitting the JLPT 1, I can only assume that you intend to use Japanese in the future, in which case the electronic dictionary will be one of the best investments you've ever made (that is, assuming you don't have one already).

Keep reading after the jump.

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A gigantic Capybara doll for sale at the supar cuet capybara gift shop in the Saitama Children's Animal Nature Park. It must be a testament to how long I've been in Japan (and become inured to its high prices) that upon seeing this my first thought was "wow, that's such a great bargain for only 20,000 yen!" Though I desperately wanted to purchase it, I refrained from doing so, in the end settling for a few smaller (and cheaper) souvenirs. Though if we're being honest here, the real reason I didn't buy it wasn't due to a suddenly developed sense of financial prudence, but rather because my bed has so many other stuffed animals on it, there wouldn't be any space for something this big. :/

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I've had a lot on my mind recently so it was nice to take a break from my worries to visit the incredibly popular capybara onsen in the Saitama Children's Animal Nature Park (yeah, the Japanese name is just as unwieldy) yesterday and forget about it all. I'll do a full post on it later, but for now, you will just have to accept my ripping myself off thematically, because I'm too tired to think of anything clever to post.

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On the road in Shikoku's Iya Valley two years ago. This is one of the most beautiful places I have seen thus far in Japan and I highly recommend you visit if you've never been. In particular, the clouds put on a dramatic knock-out show all the time we were there.

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I've loved before... I've lived in a lot of different apartments during the course of my life, but of all of them, the "bamboo grove" as it's affectionately known (by errm, me and umm... my stuffed animals) has got to be my favourite. Is there anything better than laying half-in the futon, half-in that warm sunny spot on the tatami on a lazy Saturday morning and just watching the world slowly drift by? Me thinks not. Incidentally, if you ever wondered why people splash out considerable sums of money for ultra-wide angle lens, well, you're looking at a prime example. It's not every lens that lets you literally stand in the corner of a room and still manage to photograph the entire thing.

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One of my resolutions for the new year is to always take the time to make a proper breakfast, no matter how "rushed" I might be. It's hard to always find time to cook in the mornings, so when I prepare things for my bento (box lunch) the night before, I usually make a little extra and eat it for breakfast the next day. This morning I had cabbage itame, delicious fruit tomatoes (I'm so glad they're back in season!), a salad with daizu beans for proten, spinach soup, and okayu (rice porridge) with a bit of egg swirled in. It's a pretty sizable breakfast, but all told the entire thing only clocks in at 280 calories - 100 for the okayu, about 100 for the cabbage stir fry, 30 for the soup and the remainder distributed between the salad, beans and tomatoes. The capybaras are not for eating of course - they helped with the preparation last night, so I thought it only fair they should be in the shot ;)

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It was beautiful weather last weekend (rare, given how freezing it's been this winter) and to take advantage of the opportunity mother nature had seen fit to bless us with, a friend and I grabbed our cameras and headed over to the Tamachi neighborhood of Tokyo to snap a few shops of some skater boys doing their thing at the local skateboard park.

The park was smaller than we expected (I was thinking there was going to be like a half-pipe or something) and at first we were a little disappointed. But we decided to talk to them and ask them if we could take a few pictures anyway, and they kindly obliged us, showing off some cool jumps, flips and grinds.

I had brought my external flash, anticipating the need to illuminate them in mid-jump, but I didn't have my settings right (I'm still pretty crap at flash-photography) so a lot of my photos didn't turn out as I wanted.

Towards the end I noticed that things weren't looking as they should, so I just turned off the flash and took things the old fashioned way that nature intended - nothing but sunlight for illumination and a fast shutter. Most of the skating was done by that point, so I'm afraid there's not so much to post. However, they did kindly invite us back so I might pop over one of these coming weekends (sans flash) and see if I can get a few more shots done right.

One more shot after the jump.

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People often think of Tokyo as a futuristic city. I don't know if that's true or not (one would think that in the future people would have discovered how to build insulated walls instead of the paper thin ones that do nothing to stop one from freezing to death in the winter), but this particular scene is sort of how I imagined Tokyo would be before I actually came here - monorails, urban greenery, towering apartment complexes next to business blocks and meandering city waterways.

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Some friendly skateboarders we ran into at a skatepark in Tamachi over the weekend who were kind enough to demonstrate a few tricks for us on camera. We almost didn't make it to the skatepark - after getting lost for nearly an hour and wandering the mean streets of upper-middle-class Tokyo we finally found it a mere block away from a convenience store where not but 45 minutes prior a very flustered clerk had pointed us in exactly the opposite direction.

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A towering new high rise being built somewhere in the danchi-infested suburban sprawl that rings Tokyo.

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Tearing down the Go-Kart track in Yomiuriland last summer. We're actually headed to Toshimaen Amusement park in Tokyo this weekend for some nice, freezing winter roller coastering (and go-karting, perhaps). In case you're wondering about the title, it's because I always play Princess Peach in Mario Kart. Peachie go!

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On my way home through Yokohama's Chinatown district. I'm kind of irked at the stupid satellite dish jutting out of the upper-right hand corner, ruining what would otherwise be a beautiful series of straight lines. I was tempted to photoshop it out, but that would be cheating. (Translation: it's cold, I'm tired and I'm too lazy to futz with the file. Satellite dish stays in, I curl up in front of the heater, blogs are updated, naps are taken. All is well with the world.)

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This thing was going to haunt my nightmares no matter which way I chose to develop the photo.

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One of the things that has grown on me over time is Japanese women and their handbags. I spotted this woman exiting the crowded Takeshita-dori in Harajuku last summer, and while not normally my style, I couldn't resist a surreptitious shot as she passed. She's carrying a Gucci "Jolicoeur" tote bag and obviously had somewhere to be in a hurry because she wasn't wasting any time being cutesy by hanging it off the crook of her elbow as J-girls normally do - she had the full on in-hand grip (note the pink sun parasol as well) with the bag held firmly in front so as to most efficiently navigate the teeming sea of humanity before her. I quite like this particular tote bag (especially in beige - the black variation is just so-so) and wish more girls would carry it as opposed to the brown leather Louis Vuitton monstrosities that were so much in vogue a few years back (it's gotten better recently).

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The view from the Yurikamome Line in Tokyo leading away from Odaiba - one of my favourite train lines to shoot from due to the wide variety of interesting scenery along its path. The clouds were being pretty amazing this day, but my limited photographic abilities left me unable to capture but a smidgen of their full splendor. Oh but that I could be 1/10th as good as Ansel Adams - never have I seen clouds captured as masterfully as within his work. *sigh* Perhaps the first step in my journey might be to try to avoid catching the reflection of the train air conditioner in the window the next time around.

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Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, / Enwrought with golden and silver light, / The blue and the dim and the dark cloths / Of night and light and the half light, / I would spread the cloths under your feet: / But I, being poor, have only my dreams; / I have spread my dreams under your feet; / Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

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Few things make me happier than lazy, beautiful sunny Sundays spent in a clean room, looking out the window whilst doodling whatever comes into my mind. As loyal readers know, I have something of a stationary (and Lego!) fetish, and this picture is like a laundry list of sad stereotypes (to say nothing of its serving as evidence of why I'm perpetually broke): an A3-sized Moleskine sketch notebook ($45...!), a complement of warm grey Copics, pigma markers, (expensive) metal drafting pencil, Apple computer ... even my mobile phone is from Amadana... Up top we have legos and nanoblocks, and off to the side, my army of capybaras sunning themselves on my pillow. Everything sits atop a cute Muji desk, a Muji shelf and a Muji bed. I may not be able to afford food, but sitting here surrounded by cute stuffs I like staring out the window at a gorgeous sun dappled scene... man, I couldn't be happier :)

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When you say "roller coasters," most people don't usually think of Japan. And you'd be forgiven if you fall into this category because the truth is, the best coasters in the world are still probably in America. But for such a small country, Japan really gives American a run for its money in the coastering department. Setting aside the utterly lame (but inexplicably popular amongst the young-Japanese-girl set) Tokyo Disneyland, Disney Sea and Universal Studios Japan (the rides in all of which are considerably less entertaining than any late night train in Tokyo), Japan still sports an impressive array of roller coaster parks: the awesome Thunder Dolphin in Tokyo Dome Aqua City, the entertaining Yokohama Cosmo World, the old stalwart of Yomiuriland, and a host of others I haven't yet been to.

But the big daddy of them all has got to be Fuji-Q Highlands, located just out west of Tokyo in Yamanashi Prefecture, nestled at the base of beautiful (provided you're not foolish enough to climb it) Mt. Fuji. Fuji-Q is hands down the best roller coaster park in Japan for roller-coaster enthusiasts (If you're one of those people who goes to amusement parks to look at silly people dressed up as Mickey Mouse and watch lame parades, go away, this post is not for you). It features Japan's top three most famous roller coasters (the awesome Eiijyanaika, the rocking Fujiyama and the stupidly fast Dodonpa), and believe me, they are as good or better than anything you can find in your nearest Six Flags.

The problem with being Japan's most awesome roller coaster park is that in general, Fuji-Q is expensive and crowded. I've actually been once before (for some reason, I appear not to have blogged about that trip!?), and for our rather steep $50 admission ticket, we got to ride a grand total of 3 rides (plus a crappy kiddie coaster which we did just to get our "money's worth") due to the crazy lines. So you know, that kind of sucks. The thing about that though, is this is Japan. And people like to do things according to the "seasons." "Roller coaster season" is usually considered to be summer for some reason which means that if you're us and just wanna ride coasters whenever you damn well feel like it, current season not withstanding, things can work out very nicely indeed. Or, to put it another way, Fuji-Q in the summer = crowded and expensive. Fuji-Q in the winter, however, = empty and cheap. (admission is discounted in the winter). Guess what season we're currently in?

Oh yeah. Buckle your seatbelts.

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Lunch at the delicious Spoonbread Cafe in Jiyugaoka. Starbucks girl hates carrots (which I find amusing, give how much I love them). Normally when we go out to eat I'll pick out her carrots, however on this particular day I was quite full so I couldn't. Feeling guilty, she left a note for the server. It reads "Thank you very much for the meal. Sorry about the carrots."

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It may not quite be Jean Racine's "sleep of the just", but there are few things more satisfying in this world than the deep slumber that occurs on the express train home after a long, exhausting day of roller coastering. It was all we could do to make it to the train before collapsing into the chairs... We weren't the only ones who were exhausted however - moments after I took this shot, this old man walking by stopped, looked straight at us, and literally collapsed in an unconscious heap on the floor in front of us! It was quite a frightening moment because we thought he had had a heart attack! Fortunately, his friends rushed over to help him and within a minute or so he regained consciousness and seemed to be okay. Judging from their attire, they seemed to be a senior citizens hiking group and the poor guy had probably just exerted himself too hard on the mountain earlier that day. Might I suggest a more leisurely day at the coaster park next time, sir? :)

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After polishing off a deliciously greasy Mosburger and Pizza-La lunch (my diet took a break for the day, apparently), we decided we needed something to ease us back into the swing of things (no pun intended) before hitting up the rollercoasters for round two. This ride seemed gentle enough - we had tackled a similar one back at Yomiuriland last summer and Bethann even commented something to the effect of "this seems really low, doesn't it?" as we walked up to it (ah, famous last words). Little did we know that this particular set of swinging chairs actually hurtles you hundreds of feet into the air before hurling you around in a plastic bucket that twists and creaks ominously, reminding you that a) you're secured to the seat solely by a single thin lap belt, b) the chain attaching your chair to the pole are attached solely by one single bolt and c) that if either (a) or (b) fail, you will be hurled at full-speed like a little human shotput hundreds of feet to the frozen concrete below. It may not have been as violent as a rollercoaster, but I daresay it was thrice as terrifying, all things considered.

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I was actually thinking of fronting this image in the lead-in for my next full blog entry, so I was hesitant to use it as a Picture of the Day, but it seems a shame to wait until then ;). As mentioned yesterday, we spent a fantastic day at Fuji-Q Highlands last Sunday - in between rides we decided to stop to take a jumping picture in the middle of the park. I was worried about how this shot would turn out - I really wanted Mt. Fuji in the background, but that meant everyone was going to be strongly backlit and I didn't bring my speedlite along for fill flash. Fortunately, the built-in flash sufficed (well enough to at least enable me to get the shot) though it's obviously being outclassed by what appears to be a miniature supernova exploding out of peoples' armpits :)

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It was a fantastically beautiful winter day yesterday, with perfectly clear blue skies and gorgeous rays of sun cascading down all around Kanto. What better way to take advantage of such weather than by taking a trip to Fuji-Q Highlands in nearby Yamanashi prefecture? Fuji-Q Highlands is (in my humble opinion) the best roller coaster park in all of Japan and sports three "feature" roller coasters, a bunch of other fun smaller rides, and what is probably the world's scariest haunted house. (Just ask Bethann's head from where she ran into the door frame as we ran through the dark screaming in terror.) Normally the park is quite expensive and crowded, but in the winter season admission is discounted AND there are practically no lines - we literally rode coaster after coaster all day from open to close. It was a great time, but I certainly had trouble getting up for work this morning!

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My friend got me this incredibly cute postcard of a panda getting suited up and ready for work. Even though it's quite darling, at the same time, the poor little panda looks so tired, staring up at the towering skyscrapers, his back hunched over, attache case laying heavily against his side, slumped over on a wall. Kind of how I feel every Monday morning that I'd much rather be out playing around and taking pictures instead of working. I put the postcard on the corner of my desk to remind me that sometimes, even we pandas have to do things we don't want do in order to pay the bill.s

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My mind ended up turning to thoughts about my blog, life and future these days (not necessarily in that order, mind you). It's been almost 7 years since I moved to Japan and I thought that by now I'd know what I want to do with my life. Sadly, this does not appear to be the case. I think the core issue is that I'm a fickle panda: this is a blessing in that I have many and multi-varied interests, but also a curse because I tire of things quickly. Every time I think I have found something I want to do with my life, three weeks later I decide it's not really for me and I stop working towards it.

The main problem is that once you commit to something in your life, it means you can't devote equal resources to other interests you might have. Opening and deciding to go through one door, then, necessitates that you shut other doors to other paths that your life could take. If you're not really sure the door you're going through is the one for you, then it's a pretty horrible feeling to shut all those other ones, you know? What about if you figure out a few years down the line that your current path isn't the one for you?

But how do you know? I envy people who (seem) to know what they want to do with their lives. Me? I have devoted countless (undoubtedly emo-angsty-esque) hours to trying to figure out what it is that I want to do, and I'm still no closer than I was was when I was 18 and pretty much freaking out over the same thing. Whither progress, I suppose. It's tempting to simply resign yourself to the idea that at some point you need to just pick something and decide that's the way your life is gonna go, but the idealist in me resists this idea: it's like giving up, isn't it?

Of course, making no choice is like making a bad choice in and of itself, so one needs to get a move on, you know? It's like marriage: if you never find Ms. Right, do you either: a) just give up and marry some girl who you know isn't the "best one" for you anyway, or b) not marry anyone at all and just resign yourself to being alone (or at least unmarried), since it's preferable to settling for second best? The proverbial "rock and a hard place," I guess.

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Shinagawa station at night. I have really conflicted feelings about night time photos. On the one hand, I like them because they are usually visually rich, with intense colouration. On the other hand, I dislike them because they're a lazy way out - there's no real skill in making a (superficially) visually engaging night shot - just whack your shutter speed to bulb, dial down your ISO to cut the noise and expose for a few seconds. Voila. Everything looks more interesting at night, man, even fluorescent bulbs with their eerie (normally ghastly) pale green tint. Meh. Lazy. lazy lazy.

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The flagship Burberry Blue Label store on Meiji Dori in Shibuya. A cheaper, more fashion forward offspring of the traditional Burberry London, Burberry Blue Label is a special line sold only within Japan. I am actually quite partial to some of their designs for women - in particular, while I never thought I would approve of Burberry shorts (the traditional tan Burberry tartan looks hideous on anything save bags or accessories), I have to admit that I've seen more than a few girls walking around in some stellarly cute Blue Label shorts this past year. Sadly, the selection of clothing for men, is quite anemic and uninspired, but that's be expected I suppose. Fashion forward fellows need not despair however - the newly introduced men's line Burberry Black Label has recently come to our rescue... but that's another post :)

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The massive glass walls of this store building never cease to catch my attention when I walk by - there's something about about the way they tend to merge the reflections of the clouds with the lights and bustle inside the complex that makes me shiver (in a good way).

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A lame title for a lame picture (not to mention one that thematically rips off my photo from yesterday). I've been experimenting with hooking my picture of the day into my facebook feed - a seemingly trivial task that eventually necessitated my writing a complete custom blog engine and rss feed generator from scratch. Everything seems to working now, but I was too exhausted to come up with a clever picture after all of that. Sorry. :P

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First up are some random photos from the area between Ochanomizu and Akihabara. I think that when a lot of people visit Akihabara, they tend to stick to the main streets in the areas immediately surrounding the 電気街 ("Electronics Town") exit of the JR station, or (increasingly, these days), just plop straight out the station and over into the massive Yodabashi Camera store that dominates the landscape outside the 昭和道り ("Showa Street") exit.

And as for poor little Ochanomizu - I'm not sure that anybody (or at least foreigners) who doesn't have a specific purpose for being there actually ever bothers to stop by this particular part of Tokyo. It's a shame, really, because there are lots of great used book stores and musical instrument shops in this area, as well as the stunning glass and steel facade of the towering Meiji University in this neighborhood. But when you're sandwiched between Akihabara and the home of Thunder Dolphin, it's hard to compete, you know?

And while I have been to both places quite a few times (the former because I have an obsession with cameras (like this one, for example), and the latter for business), I had actually never walked between them - which seems a shame, given that they are located right next to each other. Plus, in most big cities, the most interesting spots are not necessarily those right in front of the major train stations (since that landscape tends to be dominated by the same homogenous chain stores that can afford the pricey real estate), but rather in the areas just outside or between the "station zones."

And so, when I found myself with some time to kill last summer (seems so long ago, given that I'm currently sitting in my apartment freezing and unable to feel my fingers) I decided to randomly walk between the two stations to see what I could see. Nothing too fancy, but here's some pictures.

(More pictures after the jump)

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Museum goers checking out the Ai Weiwei exhibit in the Mori Museum at the top of Roppongi Hills last year. Some of his stuff was interesting, but other stuff (like the gigantic block of compressed tea, or the bowl of glass beads) made you stop and say "...really? This is worthy of an exhibit?"

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A lot of good memories from the seat of this car. Sadly, this car got totaled in an accident (which I had nothing to do with, I'll have you know) and was sent to the great scrapyard in the sky late last year. Its legacy, however, will live on in pictures from countless roadtrips past.

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I did all my best to smile / til your singing eyes and fingers / drew me loving into your eyes. / And you sang: Sail to me, sail to me, / Let me enfold you.

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Another shot from my hatsumode visit to Imado Jinja last week. I shot this after more than 2 hours of standing in line to get to the front of the temple to give my little prayer - my fingers were so frozen I just wanted to take the shot and be done with it - hence the half a woman's shoulder interrupting the frame on the left :)

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Every year on January 7th, Japanese traditionally eat a meal called "Nanakusagayu" - a rice porridge containing "nanakusa", the so-called "7 herbs of spring." When I first came to Japan, I wasn't a huge fan of rice porridge, but as the years passed, it came to grow on me. And now I'm to the point where I, too, enjoy a nice big ol' bowl of nanakusagayu every January 7th - this year, I even stopped by Muji on my way home and picked up a cute placemat to go with it!

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2009 was a pretty great year (well for me personally. For the world and the economy, err, not so much) and it was hard to choose just a few pictures as my "favourites" from the thousands that I snapped over the past 12 months. On top of that, there's the question of how to sort them? While all the pictures could be classified dozens of different ways, in the end I decided to go with the four basic themes below. (if you need more granularity than that, head over to the photos section of the site and play around with the search options!)

So, without further ado, let's start off with the first theme:

Blue Skies

It should come as no surprise that one of the major themes for 2009 was blue, blue skies. If you've been reading the panda blog for any amount of time, you know that there are few things I love as much as sky worship. 2009 had some great skies too - especially in the summer, which marks the first time in memory that I can recall actually enjoying the blazing heat!

More pictures in the full entry below...

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The Gregory athletic store in Harajuku on a particularly bright and sunny winter day.

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I walked along the back streets of Harajuku towards Shibuya on New Years and was struck at how empty the normally crowded streets were. With all the shops closed for New Years, things were remarkably peaceful and quiet. It was refreshing to be able to slowly stroll around and take pictures at my leisure without worrying about people getting in the frame.

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I visited Imado Shrine in Asakusa yesterday for Hatsumode - the first shrine visit of the year. Earlier that morning I had visited Meiji Jingu in Harajuku (the most popular shrine for Hatsumode in Japan) along with (literally) 3 million other people. I was surprised that I ended up waiting nearly thrice as long to get into Imado, despite the fact that it's nowhere near as famous as Meiji Jingu. Imado is dedicated to the god of marriage, and so is quite popular amongst young women looking for love, as was clearly reflected in the messages left on the various ema (devotional plaques) hung across the grounds. Some of the girls there were quite cute - if only they'd left their phone numbers along with their supplications!! :)

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The descriptively named Sweets Forest in Jiyugaoka. Besides being located in one of my favourite neighborhoods out past Shibuya, it is also a magical place filled with more deserts and sweets than you can possibly imagine. (the inside is also decorated like a forest). There's also a wonderful cafe there as well, which I'll blog about more at a later date.

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And so I assume it was going for the little city of Obama Japan - jobs were being lost, young people were leaving town, shops were being shuttered, places were being run down. Kind of the same story you see in towns all over the Japanese countryside, nothing special, right? And then, sometime around late 2006, something happened that changed (at least for the moment) the town's fortunes.

During an interview with a Japanese news network, then-senator (now-president) Obama mentioned that upon seeing his name, the official who checked him in through customs mentioned that he was from - you guessed it - Obama, Japan. The mayor of the city, in turn, heard this anecdote and sent Senator Obama a few little souvenirs from the city (chopsticks, I believe) and a good luck letter. It didn't take long before some enterprising citizens latched on to what admittedly has turned into a pretty good idea, and ran with it, forming a "We Love Obama" support group to cheer him on through his presidential campaign.

As we all know, now-President Obama's campaign turned out pretty well for him and as he drew closer and closer to victory, the town's "Obama-mania" (as they called it) grew - not only did the number of members in the support group swell into something quite remarkable, they even printed up T-shirts (I know, because I wrote them to try and procure one for my friend Sabine, perhaps one of the most ardent Obama supporters around), played up the connection on their town's tourism website, and started enjoying a lot of publicity both on domestic and international news programs (probably due in some part to the "Go Obama" hula-dancing squad they formed to cheer him on (seriously)).

Now, in all fairness, around the same time, some morning soap aired here in Japan that featured Obama city as a backdrop (it was about some girl who wanted to become a rakugo comic, I believe), so it's not like the whole President-Obama-connection was their only claim to fame. But I think it'd be fair to say that it was in great part responsible for bringing knowledge of the city's existence to a far larger audience than one would expect. Certainly it's how I found out about it (and I lived for three years in a place literally only a couple hours drive from there!), and how it would up making its way into our road trip itinerary. That, and after failing to procure a "We Love Obama" T-shirt from the Obama city tourism organisation by mail (I was informed I would have to show up in person and buy one), I vowed I wasn't going to let my friend down - I would roll into the middle of town and buy up all their Obama goods if I had to.

And so we return to our adventuresome duo where we had last left them - slowly making their way through the meandering, twisting seaside roads that link Amanohashidate to Obama city.

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Wendys Japan wound up being another victim of the economy, announcing that it would officially shutter its doors once and for all on December 31st, 2009. Since I've been a good panda this year in terms of my diet, I decided to reward myself by stopping by the local branch for a farewell meal: a classic double cheeseburger, french fries and oolong tea. (how very all-American, save the tea part). I wasn't the only one with this idea however - I had to queue for nearly an hour before I could get in the door!

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One more shot from the drive home earlier this month. One of the nice things about living in Kanto is that it rarely snows in the winter - instead all you get is clear skies, brisk but bearable temps, and these fantastic sunsets. A photographer's dream, in other words.

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The evening clouds were out in full force earlier this month during the drive back from Nikko. The sheer amount of things going on overhead kept my eyes so fascinated I forgot I was stuck in traffic!

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Depending on which circles you run in, a moleskine notebook is either a prized tool to be treasured and fetishized or a pretentious affectation to be mocked. There is no shortage of websites both singing its praises or ridiculing its connotations.

Despite having a bit of a stationary fetish - silly as it may sound, this is one of the reasons why I enjoy life in Japan so much - they have the best stationary in the world, bar none - I never really got into moleskine notebooks until recently. My main issue was the paper - it was too thin, too yellow and had lines on it. For the record, I prefer my paper thick as hell, as white as humanly (paperly?) possible, and blank. (I'm the kind of guy who will search out and order special printer paper at $10 a ream because I can't stand using the cheap shit you get at the local office supply store for a buck) So you know, the moleskine and I were essentially polar opposites.

But then something happened, and somewhere along the way moleskine started making plain (i..e non-ruled) notebooks, and more importantly, plain "sketch notebooks", with sturdier paper that could take ink well without buckling. Things still aren't perfect - while both are non-ruled (thank god), the plain notebooks have a whiter paper which I like, but it's still too thin, and the sketch notebooks have a thicker paper which I like, but it still has a yellow/beige tint to it.

But the important this is, they're getting closer. They added one more sweetener to the mix which finally tipped me over the edge when they started introducing notebooks with red covers - along with my fetish for stationary, I love the colour red in products like no one's business (I swear that whole product R.E.D. campaign a few years back was basically designed to drain my pockets - I'm not sure if it did any good for kids with AIDs in Africa, but I know that I must have bought half the shit they offered), and a plain non-ruled moleskine notebook with a red cover? Oh my god! And so in short order, I went from having zero moleskines to having more than I care to admit to the internets (though not as many as some people) at large. And with the exception of being forced to choose between having too thin, but white paper or thicker, but too yellow paper, life was good in Panda moleskine world. After all, how could they top a red moleskine notebook with non-ruled paper?

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Walking along the streets of Shibuya on a fine Autumn day earlier this year. While I didn't get to go on an Autumn roadtrip this year, 2009 still had some really beautiful Autumn days to share with us. :)

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I had a few idle moments to spare in Nikko last week. This was the result :)

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One of the more sought-after product mashups in certain circles: a limited edition red Helvetica Moleskine notebook. I missed out on a chance to get one during the Helvetica exhibit in the La Foret museum in Harajuku a couple of years ago, but some of the bigger Loft stores in Tokyo recently got a few in stock, and I received this one as an early Christmas present from a friend last week. I can't bring myself to unwrap it yet, so my pens and markers (a Pilot High-Tec C .25 mm plus a couple of Copics in 0 and 20% warm grey) wait patiently off to the side. In case you can't tell, I have something of a stationary fetish. :P

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I went (back) to Nikko yesterday, a mere two weeks after my previous visit this month. But what a difference a few days makes! This time, not only was there no fall foliage, but everything was covered in snow - and FREEZING. Despite being raised in the frozen climes of Wisconsin, eventually even I had to admit defeat and wound up stuffing a few hot pads in my gloves and shoes to keep from dying. These jizo statues, alas, were not quite so lucky, and had to endure the cold with naught but a red bib and knit cap.

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Starbucks girl intently drawing in her new moleskine notebook as we sit recovering from a pecan-caramel-ice-cream-waffle-binge at Sweets Forest in Jiyugaoka.

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I guess there's always next year, though. I did manage to work in a quick trip to Nikko as a sort of consolation prize, which was nice. By the time we made it to Nikko (in the first week of December), most of the Autumn leaves had already fallen, which was kind of sad. Nikko is really beautiful in the Autumn, if you can survive the jaw dropping crowds, so I kind of regret that we didn't make it there during the prime viewing season.

All was not completely lost, however. There were still a few isolated spots of colour here and there, and when we first arrived the sky was a brilliant blue and the sun was shining down from up on high, making for a perfect akibare ("clear autumn weather") type of day. So at least we got a small dose of those oranges and reds I do love so.

By the time we made it over to the temple areas, however, the sun had retreated behind a cold, dark cloud cover and a quiet grayness descended over the entire region. This was especially true once we were deep within the tall trees that surrounded the various temples - at times it almost felt spooky (the lack of people around, and the fact that the sun sets around 4pm these days only contributed to the atmosphere).

On the other hand, Nikko definitely possess a somber charm all its own once the sky darkens and you start wandering amongst the silent grey rocks edifices of the unusually decorated temples (some of which are quite intimidating in size, especially the stairs). It's a nice place to come and contemplate the quieter aspects of Autumn - and about as far away from the brilliant orange hues of other popular Autumn sightseeing spots (like Miyajima, for example) as one can get.

Speaking of Miyajima, this reminds me that I still need to finish up the last installment of the Great 2008 Cross-Japan Autumn Road Trip series. I'll get on that in the next week or so, just as soon as I finish up adding a couple of long-delayed features to the Photo of the Day. So stay tuned.

More pictures after the keep reading link below.

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Nightshot taken whilst looking out over the streets behind Shibuya station.

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Some of the hues of Autumn laying in a thick carpet alongside a road in Nikko. I'm sorry updates have been so sparse recently - with my test finished, I've been busy updating some of the behind-the-scenes code that powers the picture of the day, as well as adding some new, sorely-delayed functionality. Stay tuned.

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I've been grooving to Tritonal's "Piercing Quiet" (the original mix, featuring Christina Sota) tonight as I'm trying to avoid stressing out over this exam I have tomorrow morning for which I have failed to adequately prepare. I took a break from studying to update my blog and this picture - taken in Nikko last week - seems to fit the music so perfectly.

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Sorry for the 10 day gap in posting. I've had a conference to put on at work, a speech I had to give in another prefecture, had to pretend to study for the JLPT 1 (which I sit in 4 days! *sigh*) and work in a couple of days to see the wonderful fall colours of Japan I love so much. Since all save the latter don't particularly lend themselves well to photographic capture, here instead is a picture of me posing rather j-boy (or j-girl?) -like in beautiful Nikko, about 2 hours north of Tokyo. My apologies for the rather constrasty-nature of this picture - my flesh is so washed out it almost appear as if I've been lifted from a page in Ageha (小悪魔 Ageha, a popular "ero-kawaii" fashion magazine in Japan and home to some of the most ridiculous photoshopping this side of the Pacific). Unfortunately I'm too tired to fix it, so let's all just pretend my skin really is blindly white like that.

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If I looked, I'm pretty sure that at least 1/3rd of my pictures contain some or all of the following: over-saturated deep blue skies, convoluted masses of power cables and/or angled upshots of otherwise nondescript buildings jutting up into the sky. This particular one has (or is guilty of having?) all three. What can I say? Know your theme and stick with it. :)

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So it goes with maps of Japan - when we were plotting out of great cross-country exodus, I went to the book store to purchase a big poster-sized map of the country to hang on my wall. I had also entertained thoughts of purchasing a plexiglass overly for it with some china markers and a compass and protractor so I could re-enact scenes from naval movies (you know, where they calculate courses and fleet movements by drawing circles and vectors and stuff on plexiglass map tables located in battleship control rooms, all the while shouting things like "I need you to plot a firing solution STAT!"), but that's neither here nor there and is probably just further evidence that I'm a dorky little kid inside. The point is, I have this gigantic map of Japan hanging on my wall and when you look at it, you're like "damn, Japan is huge."

This, in turn, initially caused us some consternation when plotting the segment of our great cross-japan autumn adventure that involved driving from Hiroshima in the evening and making it all the way to Amanohashidate at the tippy top of Kyoto-prefecture by the next morning with time for sleep along the way. You look at the map and you're like "woah. That's quite a haul."

In reality, however, it turns out that we made the entire journey in something like 4 hours - which for reference, is about how long it took me to drive to Chicago back when I lived in the states, and that was a journey I made several times a month, and it was no big deal. It seems strange, then, that this is roughly equivalent to just under half the length Japan (well, half of Honshu anyway). It's times like these that you realise how small Japan really is, at least if you're an American.

Anyway, so there was this really insane white foggy mist that absolutely blanketed our route, making it seem like you were driving through clouds, and when we settled down for the night in the last parking area right before Amanohashidate, it hung thickly around us in a most unsettling way, reducing visibility to zero - a thick white soupy miasma pressed and roiled suffocatingly against the glass windows of the car, making us quite afraid of venturing outside into the mist. Said my lovely traveling companion: "I need to use the restroom, but on the other hand, I don't want to get eaten by whatever's lurking outside. So umm, I'm going to hold it." If you had seen Stephen King's The Mist, then you'd understand.

We woke up the next morning, apparently undevoured by ethereal beasts, to find the terrifying mists from the previous evening gone, and in their stead, a few gorgeous rays of sun lighting up the dawn skies. Ah yes - it was going to be a fantastic day.

(You can read about our day in the full entry below.)

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The massive Francfranc store in Shibuya. I love their furniture but am too destitute to afford much of it!

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I've just had a big backlog of black and white pics to get through and the next installment of the Great 2008 Cross-Japan Autumn Road trip is going to take a few more days to finish up, so here's something to keep you entertained in the meantime.

It was gorgeous autumn weather out last Tuesday, and there are few better places to take advantage of it than the myriad of cafes lining the winding streets between Shibuya and Daikanyama.

Thus my spiffy new $14 puffar vest and I headed over to see how much caffeine I could cram down my throat. I managed 8 cups of espresso in various forms over the course of 12 hours, though I stopped being able to hold the camera steady long before that.

It was, in every way, a wonderful day.

More pictures after the jump.

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Powercables stretching between buildings on a rainy day in Akihabara.

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Stairs leading up to what I think was an anime shop in Akihabara. I felt really awkward because I was standing in front of the shop for a long time with my camera in hand waiting for people to move out of the way so I could get a clear shot, but it looked like I was stalking the place taking photos of people coming down from the stairs.

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Fooling around in a nearly empty shopping mall with some friends. Who needs entertainment when you make your own fun? (and have a powerful external flash unit)

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A wall in the back streets of Shibuya, enroute to a restaurant that turned out to be closed.

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It was a fine autumn day today, so I went to Daikanyama, one of my favourite neighborhoods in Tokyo, for a little cafe and (window) shopping. The sky was so beautiful that it seems odd that I would go with a black and white photo, but I can't get enough of the wonderful textures and shapes that this shopping centre/apartment complex provides when you look at it without the distraction of colour.

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Getting off the tram at the top of the hill in Amanohashidate last Autumn. There were two old men working as attendants who were supposed to help you disembark the tram chair, but all they did was point to the ground and say "get off here".

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But for now, something a little bit different. There are a lot of fun places to see in Tokyo (one of the reasons I like it so much) - some more familiar to Westerners than others. One of the neighborhoods that got a lot of attention back in the states a few years back (thanks to Gwen Steffani, I suppose) is Harajuku. I happen to like Harajuku quite a bit as it packs a lot of interesting stuff, but sometimes people only scratch the surface - i.e. the two main drags of Ometesando-dori and Takeshita-dori - of what it has to offer. Those places are quite nice in and of themselves and you could do worse than to spend some time (and money) walking down them. However, in my opinion, it's the back streets of Harajuku - known as "Uraharajuku" (or "Urahara" for short) that are far more interesting than the more commonly visited Takeshita and Omotesando streets. In addition to countless hip clothing stores (a veritable paradise for a tragic fashion victim such as myself and a prime reason why I'm perpetually broke), this area also features some pretty great cafes, and is inhabited by some of the trendiest cats around, if you're into people watching.

But beyond all of this, the thing I find most attractive about this part of Harajuku is its distinct atmosphere, which really ought be experienced rather than described. The atmosphere is a result of many different factors, but the one that interests me the most is the architecture - stark pale white concretes mixed with frosted glass, fixtures and railings made of brushed aluminum, polished woods and textured fabrics peeking out here and there - all coming together in narrow winding streets, gently sloping hills and deep valleys following small waterways surrounded by tall buildings on both sides. It's a wonderful place to spend a few hours - or a few days - and you will never want for things to see, do or eat.

I often visit Harajuku these days, and a couple of weeks ago I went with a couple of friends and brought my camera along to take a few pictures. They don't really do the place justice, so if you ever find yourself in the area, try taking a step into the winding maze of streets just beyond the main avenues. I bet you'll love it.

If you want more information about this part of town, you can check out the wikipedia entry (only in Japanese, I'm afraid). Otherwise, there are some more shots after the jump below.

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Well, not really a "red" umbrella, but more like an umbrella with a dash of red. An upshot on an overcast day in Kawagoe.

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I love the usage of concrete in the backstreets of Harajuku - there's so much of it, and it forms these fabulous combinations with frosted glass, brushed aluminum and polished wood that makes me feeling like walking around there for hours on end.

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Pausing for a moment whilst thinking about where to go next in the back streets of Harajuku ("Ura Hara" as the kids say).

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Having lived in Japan for quite a while now, I have to say that there aren't too many things that I miss about the States. However, near the top of that short list would be turkey - it's hard to get turkey in Japanese grocery stores, and it's not commonly served in restaurants either. One restaurant that does do a pretty good imitation of a turkey-and-swiss sandwich is the Hawaiian chain Kua' Aina - you can see the lovely Bethann posing here with our sammichs mere moments before they disappeared down our throats.

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Thought I'd try a tighter crop than usual with this one. Anyway, it was a gorgeous sunny Autumn day last Sunday - an auspicious start to a day that concluded with us dominating the UFO catcher machines at the Sega game centre in Ikebukuro and walking away with armloads of Capybara-san and Totoro goods!

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A crowded Monday in Harajuku's famed Takeshita-dori. We sought out higher ground to try and escape the maddening crowds.

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I've been dragging/cajoling/bribing friends into modeling for me as I try to figure out some of the basics of off-camera flash. Here we decided to have a little fun to interrupt the monotony of dozens of straight portrait shots.

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So when I last left off (last month...), our fearless duo had just finished stuffing themselves full of momiji manju and grilled eel bentos and decided to head into Hiroshima city proper to do a little bit of sightseeing. Now, besides Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka, the other two cities in Japan that probably most people in America have heard of are Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for obvious reasons. And of course, if you find yourself in Hiroshima as a tourist, the first stop one usually makes is the Genbaku Dome ("Atomic Dome") and the Peace Memorial Park with its Peace Memorial Museum.

I am in no way qualified to talk about World War II, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima or modern day controversies related to nuclear weapons as I know very little beyond what I was taught in school, saw on the History Channel or learned in the museums. So rather than try to write about it from any position of authority, I think I'll just post a few pictures and leave it at that. If you want to know more, you can of course check out the links above, or else head down to your local library for some educational reading.

All in all, we saw some interesting things that made us think during our time in Hiroshima. In many ways, the effect of the atomic dome and the peace museum were nullified by the excesses of modern warfare - as horrifying at the atomic bombings were, they are outdone in every way by the cruelties of modern (non-atomic) conflicts which may lack their own dedicated memorials or infamy, but result in hundreds of thousands of more deaths than these bombs ever caused. In a way, I felt desensitised by the staggering images of violence we see every day on the television, and the immaculately maintained and pristine surroundings of the Peace Park (with children running around couples on dates, musicians playing for cash) only furthering the difficulty of focusing on what the dome and museum represented. The overwhelming feeling I came away with was that yes, nuclear weapons are terrible, but they have nothing on regular people, armed with nothing more than guns, machetes, or sometimes even just sticks and stones, and all the evil they do on each other in the modern day.

But still, it was a thought-provoking window into another time that seems alien to me now, traipsing merrily across the Japanese countryside where my biggest worry is whether I should stop at 7-11 or Lawsons to pick up a riceball for lunch, because everyone knows that 7-11 has better riceballs, but on the other hand, Lawsons sometimes has cute toys on the shelves next to the instant ramen and who doesn't want to buy a toy with their lunch?

So if you ever find yourself in Hiroshima, then I think you should stop by and see it for yourself.

More pictures after the jump below.

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White concrete, brushed steel and frosted glass dominate the back streets in the area behind Omotesando Hills in Harajuku, which both reminds me of Daikanyama and makes it one of my favourite places for an afternoon stroll.

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A rather busy-looking power cable setup in Harajuku last Monday.

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Catching some air in Yoyogi Park on a beautiful Monday morning. It was a holiday today (and gorgeous weather to boot), so we headed into Harajuku to shoot some photos and avoid thinking about having to go to work tomorrow.

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Thank god it's finally Friday! I knocked off early from work today because this week has completely exhausted me and I needed a break. Since I'm not usually home by this time, I was somewhat at a loss as to what to do, and ended up taking a picture whilst still dressed in my work clothes. I'm so happy I can finally wear my autumn ties again!

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On the street in Harajuku walking towards Shibuya. This street is lined with so many of my favourite shops, including Paul Smith and District United Arrows. I promise this will be the last B&W photo I'll post for a few days! :)

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Waiting for the train to come deep in the recesses of Tokyo station. The way the man is sitting is referred to as "Yanki Suwari" ("yanki" meaning something akin to "hoodlum") and it's a way of sitting that I don't recall seeing much back in the States.

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An upshot near Burton (in fact, this may actually be the Burton building) in Harajuku, en route to District (one of my favourite stores) to look longingly at a fantastic boiled wool suit I can't afford.

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On the way home from the 2009 Bike Messenger Championships in Odaiba. Granted, I post-processed the hell out of this image, but the skies and clouds were also being pretty fricken dramatic that day.

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Heading home after some evening shopping in Tokyo's Ameyoko area (for a new suit, no less). This picture is pretty noisy, but unfortunately, that's par for the course when shooting at ISO 800 on a 3 year old Rebel. Oh how I lust after a new Canon 7D with its fancy-schmancy ISO 12800...

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A crowded day in Harajuku, in front of the constantly changing La Foret shopping complex on the intersection of Meiji-dori and Omotesando-dori. Despite its status as a trendy fashion retailer, the complex also hosts a variety of art events, including a rather famous exhibit on Helvetica last year.

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My friend holding an empty ramune bottle after we stopped for a drink in Kawagoe's famed "Candy Street".

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I had wanted to catch the track stand and skid competitions in particular, but I got there pretty late last Wednesday, so all I managed to see was the tail end of one of the sprint competitions.

Unfortunately, all I had with me was my wide-angle 10-22mm and 50mm prime, so I didn't have much focal length to work with to catch decent closeups of the riders (I know, excuses excuses) from my position on the side of the track where I was standing. But it was still fun to see them go at it and they were definitely a colourful and fun group to photograph.

Not much else to say about this. A bunch more pictures after the keep reading link below.

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During a recent trip to Kawagoe, Starbucks Girl helpfully pointed out a store whose location we ought to remember in case of a sudden zombie attack.

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As frequent readers of the pandablog may know, I love roller coasters with a passion. I've been to most of the big ones in Japan, but for some reason hadn't been to Cosmo World in Yokohama yet. So that's where we went, followed by a delicious all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet in the neighboring Chinatown.

Cosmo World isn't a huge park, and the rides are certainly tamer than some of the bigger parks, but in terms of setting and scenery, it can't be beat. Located right on the waterfront, its ferris wheel forms part of Yokohama's oft-photographed iconic horizon line. Not only that it's also conveniently located next to the old red brick warehouses of Akarenga in the Minato Mirai area of the city, filled with lots of delicious restaurants, stores, entertainment, ships, the tallest building in Japan and other touristy things to see.

This part of Yokohama is fantastically photogenic (if we can use this adjective for inanimate objects) due to its aforementioned waterfront location, widely varied structures, interesting architecture and most of all, the fact that many of the buildings are white, which makes for amazing contrast against the blue, blue sky.

Speaking of those blue, blue skies which I love oh so very much, it was absolutely gorgeous that day. The clouds perfect, white, streaky and feathers, cumulous and puffy, floating and whispy. The sky was azure and cerulean, teals fading into whites and indigos blending with prussian and all the other shades of blue beauty in between.

Roller coasters, good friends, delicious food and beautiful skies. What more can you ask for on a birthday? More pics after the keep reading link below.

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I stopped by for the third day of the World Bicycle Messenger Championships held in Odaiba. Originally I wanted to watch the track stand and skid race, but all I managed to catch was the tail end of the sprint competition. It was still a great time!

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Upshot taken underneath the gigantic ferris wheel in Yokohama's Cosmo World amusement park. The pink track belongs to "Vanish", a coaster that plunges into the water (sort of).

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I went to visit some friends in a nearby city and they gave me this incredibly awesome panda cape as a birthday present! (it was my birthday a little while back). It's made for girls aged 7-10, but who cares, I rocked it like a celebrity out in front of the station!! Try to ignore the massive bags under my eyes, I haven't been getting much sleep recently and it's really taking its toll on me.

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Walking along the boardwalk in the Akarenga area of Yokohama. This area is lined with lots of old red brick buildings, some of which have been around for 100 years or more. Fortunately, the shops inside are more modern, if no less cramped and claustrophobic for their location.

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The lovely Terrapin staring down from the top floor of a two-story carousel in Yokohama. Have you ever noticed that carousels are either art-deco-esque-gaudy, or downright creepy as hell? There's no happy medium with these things.

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Chromatic variations of blue filling this upshot in the middle of Yokohama's Cosmo World amusement park. Many more photos from this day coming up, so stay tuned!

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...in my wonderful, my wonderful balloon? A bright yellow one at that, spotted soaring above the skies in the Brazil Festival in Yoyogi Koen last weekend.

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I guess when it's hot, people will do whatever they can to beat the heat. Even if it means wearing an umbrella hat in the middle of Tokyo. (He gets extra points for the polka-dot do-rag under the umbrella hat.)

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I randomly met Billy Blanks (the Tae-Bo guy) in the middle of Tokyo yesterday. He was selling "Hawaiian Donuts" in a Brazil Festival in Harajuku's Yoyogi Park of all places. Of course I had to get a picture with him - ignore the goofy look on my face, please! He seemed confused as to whether I was Japanese or American, but I was so excited to meet him I didn't care - he's the only "celebrity" I've ever met haha!

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When I was young, I once heard a Sir Mix-a-Lot song ("Swap Meet Louis") that went "Louis Vuitton never made a sweat suit / But you're swearin' up and down, that you got the Louie boots". I had no idea what that meant until I came to Japan and quickly learned about Louis Vuitton and how popular it is with Japanese women. I hear though, that these days it's being overtaken in popularity by other brands, but you wouldn't know that from the Louis Vuitton store in Ginza, which was packed when I took this photo earlier this year.

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Oh well. I guess I can't end up floating helplessly amongst a bunch of naked men, or be force-fed the tortured, skewered carcass of an impaled baby bird every day. So without further ado, let's just race through this, shall we?

At the conclusion of our previous entry, our intrepid travelers had just settled in for the evening at the last rest stop in Shikoku right on the coast of the Inland Sea. We woke up the next morning to find the first rays of the sun slowly filtering their way over the still quiet of the water. It actually was quite beautiful - the multiple tiny islands scattered across the water show up in multiple variations of violet and subtle shaded grey in the very early morning and very late dusk - gentle sloping curves and shapes jutting out of the water and blending into the horizon which very much resemble classical scenes found in old Japanese sumi ink drawings.

In general, my preference for beauty lies in bold colours and even bolder shapes (think brilliant hued autumn leaves, or majestic soaring stark white clouds against azure skies, gleaming glass and polished steel skyscrapers, etc.), but I have to tell you, standing on the coast at 5 am, not another soul around, staring out at the incredible stillness and quiet, the sense of well... I can't quite explain it, but almost sadness and wistfulness and melancholy for a time and a place to which I rightfully lack any right to feel these things for... a sort of bittersweet longing and nostalgic sense of reflection for this place, this place which I have never known before, but wish that I had. It was beautiful and sad and gorgeous in its crystalline stillness, nary a soul stirring and only the neigh-imperceptible subtle gradation of the violet gray hues of the islands changing and shifting in response to the slow movement of sun rays across the still dawn sky serving as an indication that time still moved in this place.Anyway, after spending a good 10 minutes or so pondering life, the universe and everything whilst staring at the stillness of the inland sea before me, I finally reached the conclusion that while I still didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, I did know that I needed a coffee, and so with that, the spell was broken and I dragged my groggy panda bottom over to a nearby vending machine and purchased a can of coffee to wake me up and power me through the day.

By this point, the lovely Starbucks Girl had also awoken and after getting changed and washed up, we threw our belongings in the back of the car, jumped in, and started heading north, across the winding bridges and meandering island roads of the Shimanami Kaido highway. As far as Japanese highways go, this is one of the more scenic ones, spanning several beautiful little islands and nine amazing bridges, their cable supports and arching central piers standing in fascinating relief to the gorgeous deep violet orange blue hues of the dawn slowly developing in the sky above us. I should like to visit here again someday and if you ever have the chance (and a car) you should try driving it in the early morning too, when you have the entire length of the span practically to yourself.

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A co-worker recently sent me some delicious 信玄餅 ("shingen mochi") as a traditional Japanese mid-summer gift known as お中元 ("ochugen"). They were delicious and quickly disappeared, though I managed to get a shot with the Capybaras playing around with them first!

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The Nintendo Wii is an incredibly fun machine, but it can be a little tricky to set up, especially the wireless controllers. For some reason we couldn't get the controllers to respond reliably - it was only after about 10 minutes of frustrated shaking, waving and smacking the controllers wildly through the air in the direction of the screen that we finally figured out we had set the little sensor bar on top of the screen upside down. Which I suppose says more about us than it does about the Wii, but we'll not dwell on that at present...

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I was originally headed to the Asakusa Samba Festival in Tokyo yesterday, but somehow I ended up getting dragged to some crappy coffee shop in the Odakyu department store in Shinjuku. So instead of sexy pictures of scantily clad samba dancers, you get this sad-ass shot of the world's crappiest rooftop "garden" (and I use that word lightly).

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I stopped by one of the largest malls in Kanto the other week in search of a shirt and a birthday present for a friend. Alas, I didn't manage to find either, but to my credit, I also avoided buying some Legos, which if you know me, you will know is no mean feat.

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Driving to meet the sunrise as we race through the twisting bridges of the Shimanami-Kado highway towards Hiroshima last Autumn. The highway was near-deserted at this early hour and we practically had the bridges to ourselves.

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Shot from the tram car leading up the side of the mountain in Amanohashidate, Kyoto last Autumn. I've been really sick for the past 2 weeks (and still am), so I apologise for the sparse updates. I'll try to catch up once I get better.

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When I passed this apartment complex in a small Japanese suburban town, I was struck by how it seemed to contain aspects of the modern Pueblo-inspired architecture found in certain parts of the Southwestern United States. My mother was really into that sort of stuff when we were younger and my brother and I spent countless hours of our lives being dragged to look at dusty old pottery, faux-turquoise jewelry and terra-cotta coyote statues.

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Bethann got a new Nintendo Wii along with one of the best games ever made, Super Mario Kart, so we had a miniature tournament in her new apartment. It was so much fun and brought back fond memories of college-era apartment-wide Super Mario Kart 64 tournaments :)

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The lovely Risa pausing for a moment to enjoy the skies on the roof of the Mori Tower in Roppongi Hills. I should have waited for the two guys to get out of the way, but stupid me, I didn't notice they were in the frame! :(

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Something about the combination of colours, shapes and angles in this staircase really caught my eye. Taken in Amanohashidate, Kyoto last year.

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The West side of Shinjuku station. There are some great little shops and yattais on this side that really come alive at night which I'd like to photograph. Alas it will have to be another time because on this particular day I was rushing to meet a friend.

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As somewhat of a consolation prize, I decided to pop over to a neighboring prefecture to catch a Tanabata festival in a smaller town. Continuing the streak of amazing summer weather we've been having recently, the skies were just a stellar mix of rich blue hues, interspersed with fantastic white clouds and the whole affair dramatically lit from up above by a summer sun out in full force.

We paid for the amazing weather with amazing heat - I honestly think this was one of the hottest days so far this summer, but at least it was (to use a semi-tired cliche) a dry heat - rather unusual for the normally humid Japanese summer - so we lucked out in a way. We did our best to avoid wilting under the ferocious solar onslaught by consuming copious amounts of liquid, usually in the form of kakigori (Japanese shaved ice). I'm not usually the biggest kakigori fan, but I easily consumed more on this day alone than in the past 3 years combined.

Besides colourful taste treat sensations that turned my tongue all sorts of funky colours, I was pleasantly surprised to see a veritable (neon) rainbow of colours spread out across all the thousands of decorations lining the shops and streets. I don't think I've seen this much colour in an inaka (countryside) town in quite some time!

All in all it was a great time. I'm not sure if I'll make it to any more summer festivals this year, but even if I don't, this was a nice way to cap off the summer.

A bunch more pictures after the jump, plus my usual plaintive pleas for patience while I work on the next installment of my Autumn Road Trip series.

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I never got around to reading Harry Potter in English, but my friend sent me a copy in Japanese (complete with a fantastic custom-designed book jacket!) so I decided to give it a try. It's pretty interesting, actually.

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Catching a quick breakfast in one of my favourite cafes in Tokyo - Bakery Cafe 426 on Omotesando-dori in Harajuku. Best of all, it's just across from the famous Kiddyland toy store!

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Fooling around with the camera and a speedlite whilst waiting for a kettle to boil so I can have some tea.

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Some bright and colourful lanterns during a Tanabata Festival in a local town a few weeks back.

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So as a way of making recompense for my laziness, I decided to take a moment the other day to calculate how many days of summer I have spent in Japan. The answer, it turns out, is 570 (at least as of when I calculated it) a number that lets me steal the title of another movie, 500 Days of Summer to use as the title of this post. Incidentally, that title is really intriguing and made me want to go see the movie, but as usual the movie isn't being released in Japan for god knows how long after it finishes its US run (if it is even released at all) and I, being of the impatient panda persuasion, just ended up reading the movie spoiler and now I'm not going to go see it all. Tsk tsk Fox. That's what you get for being greedy and staggering releases to milk more money out of international distribution.

Anyway, I digress. The reason I even decided to calculate how many days of summer I've spent in these fair isles is that recently we've been having some absolutely kick ass summer weather in Tokyo (seriously, the skies have been ridiculously beautiful) and as I headed out the door to snap some pictures from the top of the Mori Tower in Roppongi Hills (one of my favourite photography spots) on a particularly fantastic - albeit sweltering - summer day, it struck me that this year I've been a lot more active this summer than in all the other summers past combined.

Summer for me has always been a dead and dread season, ranking fourth on the scale behind autumn, spring and winter - something to be endured rather than enjoyed. For a cold-weather panda such as me, Japan's summer was particularly brutal, with heat, humidity and a lengthy torrential rainy season that conspired to wilt the mind, body and spirit the second one left their air-conditioned sanctuary (provided you were lucky enough to even have air-conditioning).

This year, however, has been different. I mean, I have always loved certain things about the summer - but this year it's like all of those things and more - it's hard to explain, but I'm not dreading summer like before, I'm not constantly feeling melted and miserable, I'm not continuously counting the days until Autumn swings around like I used to. Rather, I'm looking forward to all the fun things Summer has to offer - the seasonal cuisine, the summer festivals, the gorgeous verdant rice fields that fill the countryside... and of course, those gorgeous blue skies over Tokyo.

Speaking of which...

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A stairway leading up to (I believe) a movie theater in Roppongi Hills. I once caught a showing of Pirates of the Caribbean here at 3AM (that's not a typo). Needless to say, I fell asleep halfway through.

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Sky worship looking over Tokyo from the "Sky Deck" observatory located on the roof of the Mori Tower in Roppongi Hills. One could not ask for a more perfect summer day.

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The lovely Bella flashing her famous smile in anticipation of some delicious summer-matsuri kakigori (shaved iced).

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A yosakoi dancer waving a giant flag during his group's dance performance at a local matsuri (festival). The Japanese countryside is dotted with these matsuris every summer!

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This afternoon I decided to go out on the skydeck roof of the Mori Tower in Roppongi Hills on a whim. It was a stunning summer day out and I just happened to have my camera handy!

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Visitors passing underneath some of the many torii gates in Zeniarai Benten in Kamakura, Japan. I like that most of the gates here are unpainted and unadorned as opposed to the standard orange/red scheme.

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The sun setting over the hood earlier this week. In the interest of full disclosure, I did bump the colours and tweak the contrast a bit during post-production. :P

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I tend to shoot more cityscapes than people, but recently I've been trying to do more portraits as well. This was shot at a nighttime BBQ last week - I found it so easy to photograph her because her face is expressive. Surprisingly, this was shot with a 10-22mm wide angle lens and a single on-camera strobe with no bounce (we were outdoors). Not your usual portrait setup!

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We got bored while waiting for the train and decided to take a couple of impromptu shots.

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Being half-panda, I'm not normally a huge fan of the sweltering summer heat (we have a tendency to melt into little quivering heaps on the floor). However, every once in a while I find myself venturing out despite the heat and usually when I do I'm rewarded with some great scenery, generally of Tokyo's fantastic blue skies and concrete.

This past week however, I thought I'd mix it up a little, and instead headed out to the countryside to hang with the lovely Bethann. We had a great time frolicking amongst the lush rice fields that are just now in their prime - I'd forgotten how beautiful they can be! (I used to live in a place that was filled with rice fields, but I wasn't into photography back then so I never took any pictures of them - until now!)

But as you can see, I've tried my very best to rectify that oversight in this post so prepare yourself for more pictures of rice fields than you will have seen so far this week :P

Not much else to say, other than just sit back and enjoy the verdant greens and brooding blues of the Japanese summer in the countryside. Many more pictures after the jump below.

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Pedestrian paradise in Ginza last Saturday afternoon.

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Another variation of the shot from yesterday - because I just can't get enough of the emerald seas that dot the Japanese countryside every summer.

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A snapshot taken as I crept amongst one of the many beautiful rice fields that dot the Japanese countryside at this time of year. It was so beautiful out!

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The first sunflower of the season, just hanging out by a tiny parking lot (that was coincidentally available for rent...).

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Sunrise over Japan's Inland Sea, looking north from Shikoku towards Honshu.

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I had to work most of the weekend, so when I finally got some time to myself on Sunday afternoon, I swore I was going to put it to good use. Instead I just ended up taking stupid pictures of my stuffed animals and myself. *sigh*

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Capybara-san frolicking amongst piles of fallen leaves and rich green moss in Kyoto's Tofuku-ji Temple last Autumn. What a great trip that was!

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Cherry trees and clouds keeping it real in Kichijoji this past spring.

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Shot whilst hanging out at the beach with some friends a few months ago. Today was yet another unseasonably gorgeous day and made me want to go back to the beach so badly!

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A rather spectacular sunset as seen from my veranda. I was rushing to the dry cleaners before they closed so I didn't have time to set up the shot correctly - this is an HDR composite of three bracketed exposures taken in succession.

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It's bargain sale season in Japan, and the streets of Shinjuku were filled with people either shopping, or as in this case, waiting to cross the street to go shopping.

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Uchiko isn't famous for much - nature (a polite way of saying it's in the remote countryside), mikans ("famous" insomuch as they grow them, like the rest of Shikoku), a Bunraku theater, and a little merchant street with old houses, the name of which escapes me at the moment. Ironically, it's the latter item that drew us to Uchiko - as many a foreigner who has visited Japan with a copy of the Lonely Planet in hand knows, interspersed between the black and white text pages are several full colour plates featuring photos of places - famous and off the beaten path - all around Japan. One of the random plates towards the back showed the scene of this very quaint looking shopping street with lots of buildings in Shikoku which caught my eye. As you may have guessed, it was the very same merchant street in Uchiko, so being in Shikoku, I thought it prudent to satisfy my curiosity and stop by to see if it really looked the same as in the picture. It was, I am happy to report, more or less just as advertised.

Anyway, there's not much to say about Uchiko other than it really was quaint, just as in the pictures, and had lots of lovely old houses which people still live in. I really dig places like this in Japan, where people still live in old restored houses (like the "samurai district" in Kanazawa, the thatched roof farm houses in Gokayama, or some of the few remaining "machiya" in Kyoto for example) to this day. It's neat, in the same way that an old colonial-era house still standing in the middle of New York or Boston is. I'm not sure I'd recommend making Uchiko a number one priority for a trip to Shikoku (that honour would definitely go to the Iya Valley) but if you're in the area it's a nice place to kill a few hours.

After fooling around in Uchiko for a bit, we wearily returned to the car, as the morning's strenuous exertions in the Iya Valley and an afternoon of high speed driving and jumping pictures in Uchiko started to catch up with us. This also marked the second day we had slept in the car as opposed to a hotel to save money, and while this was all fine and good in terms of sleeping, it did slowly dawn on us as we pulled away that it was having somewhat of a deleterious effect upon the pleasantness of our body odor - a fact drawn into sharp relief as we found it necessary to roll down the windows to get some fresh air in and around our sweaty icky selves.

Ironically, if there is one country where it's not a problem to camp out in a car for multiple nights in a row, it would be Japan. This of course, not only because it's incredibly safe here (as opposed to America where you'd likely be jacked, raped or murdered in your face), but also because the country is literally dotted with thousands of onsens, sentos and other assorted public baths where anyone can just swing by and bathe their dirty, dirty selves for a few hundred yen (the US equivalent of a few dollars). Even most fancy onsen hotel resort complexes will let you use their baths for a small fee, even if you're not staying at the hotel itself.

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The shiny new Oazo shopping complex just outside Tokyo station. It houses a nice book store, some random little cafes and shops, and a JAXA (the Japanese space agency) exhibit hall.

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A rather entertaining street performer in Ueno park two years ago, clad in a smashing kilt and in possession of some insane diabolo (a traditional Chinese juggling toy) skills.

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An old shot from the beach almost exactly 2 years ago today. It was so beautiful out that day - a stark contrast to the gray, torrential rains outside at the moment.

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Bishamonten temple along Iidabashi's famed Kagurazaka-dori in the middle of Tokyo on a sunny Autumn day two years ago. I used to live in Iidabashi back in 2001, although not on Kagurazaka-dori!

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The view down National Route 20 in the middle of Akasaka-Mitsuke in Tokyo last weekend. Traffic was surprisingly light for a Saturday!

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File this under ridiculous retail trends: This sign advertising a 2009 Autumn clothing line reads "Wait for Autumn." I took this picture 2 weeks ago on June 14th. Friends, you're going to be waiting for a while...

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The scenery along the walk from Akasaka Mitsuke to Yotsuya station. The silverish building on the left is actually the headquarters of the 7-11 company, complete with a fancy glass-and-steel 7-11 convenience store on the first floor!

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I know I've posted many similar shots of this pedestrian skywalk in Shinjuku, but what can I say? Know your theme and run with it ;)

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Just another winter day in Shinjuku, waiting for the light to turn so we could cross. The sky was just hanging out, being all cold and dramatic.

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Starbucks Girl demonstrating the "proper" way to view Amanohashidate in Kyoto - by standing on a bench, bending over and peering at it upside down between your legs. (I'm not kidding.) She almost fell over the side of the cliff in the process.

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Memories of a fine day in Kichijoji this past spring. Today was hot, gray, humid and gross, so it's hard to believe that only a couple months ago it was this pleasant out!

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I have been a busy panda recently however. About a month ago I had a bit of a life-changing epiphany - one of those "this is the first day of the rest of your life" type of deals. I woke up one morning and decided that it was time to change all these things that had been bothering me for a long time. And so I decided to start eating right, exercise regularly, stop wasting money, study harder, take more pictures and finally, make the most out of my remaining time in Japan.

The results have been pretty dramatic - I've lost nearly 10.8 kilograms (24 pounds!) in just over a month, have managed to save more out of my monthly paycheck than I ever have in the past five years, have made a big dent in my JLPT textbooks and above all, have been having a blast each and every weekend.

To tell the truth, if I had known it was this easy to change my bad habits, I would have done it ages ago :). But all that matters is that it's been more than a month and my new lifestyle shows no signs of slowing down - quite the opposite, each new success (especially the weight loss) brings a renewed sense of progress and encouragement. It's good stuff all around - even the impending hot, humid, rainy season isn't bringing me down like it usually does.

Speaking of taking more pictures, I happened to be out in Shinjuku last Sunday doing that whole "make the most out of my time in Japan" thing when I lucked into some of the most beautiful blue skies I have seen to date. I say "lucked into" because the weather forecast from the previous day said it was supposed to be gloomy and rainy all day - and it was anything but. I pointed my camera upward and just started snapping away at the always imposing Takashimaya and its fantastic concrete and steel skyward projection.

Afterward, I swung over to nearby Takadanobaba and took a few more before the sun started to set, taking those gorgeous skies with it. I really dig Takadanobaba - nothing particularly touristy about it, but as one of my friends put it - "it's like the real Tokyo - people working, studying, walking, just living." I'm not sure if I'd put it so dramatically - plus my camera spent all its time pointed firmly upward as I am for the most part more interested in buildings than people - but it definitely is a welcome change of pace from the hustle and glam of Shinjuku and the other more famous Tokyo neighborhoods.

You can view a few more pictures after the jump, along with my usual plaintive pleas for patience until my next blog entry.

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A shot overlooking the main train lines passing through Shinjuku at night. You can see the station off in the distance.

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Dramatic blue skies over Takadanobaba ("Baba") last Sunday. It looked like the heavens spilled a watchglass of Prussian Blue pigment onto the damp canvas of the sky and these gorgeous depths are what came out.

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A rather imposing looking barbed wire fence surrounding the roof of Takashimaya's in Shinjuku. I understand the need to prevent suicide, but fences like these (and their plexiglass wall cousins) consistently ruin what would otherwise be stunning shots over the Tokyo cityscape below.

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The weather forecast said it was going to rain today, but clearly this was not the case. I spent 4 hours shopping at the Tokyu Hands in Takashimaya's in Shinjuku - I almost missed the lovely weather outside!

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When I was trying to find a creative angle to photograph Shinjuku station at night, I came across this couple with great chemistry. They weren't super lovey-dovey or anything, but they clearly enjoyed each other company. Seeing other people happy like this always puts a good feeling in my heart.

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Yet another rainy day in Ebisu.

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It cost 100 yen to ride this giant mechanical horse dog for 3 or 4 minutes. It was pretty slow, but its legs actually moved when it walked, which was kinda cool.

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A wickedly fun inner tube water-slide ride at Yomiuriland. We had to climb like 87,000 stairs to get to the top, but in the end it was worth it. The best part were the great bumps that threw you up in the air along the way!

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Starbucks girl riding a statue of the random horse-dog Yomiuriland mascot character. I've been having a hell of a time trying to get acceptable skin tones out of Lightroom when working with Canon RAWs. Grrr...

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I didn't think this ride at Yomiuriland was going to be so fun, but it turned out to be one of the best there! The attendant seemed hate us for some reason though - she just glowered at us the whole time. This scene reminds me of the Do As Infinity video for "Deep Forest".

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A view from the top of the Ferris Wheel in Yomiuriland, out west of Tokyo. It was a cloudy day so there were hardly any people or lines. We rode more than 19 rides!!!

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The last thing I need is to start collecting any more cute things, but these Tales of Agriculture capsule toys were too cute to pass up!

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Dramatic clouds over the Tokyo Metropolitan Photography Museum in Ebisu.

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Waiting for a friend outside of Ebisu station on a rainy day. This was the only open table, just barely underneath the patio awning. I staked out the driest spot on the table and prayed the wind didn't pick up.

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Got the urge to make a (crappy) faux tilt-shift photo today for some reason. This is the famous floating torii of Miyajima shrine in Hiroshima.

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An anago-meshi (grilled sea eel on rice) bento with momiji-manju (maple leaf shaped traditional Japanese sweets) for dessert. Two of the most famous "meisanbutsu" (specialties) of the Miyajima island in Hiroshima.

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Getting my cook on - ingredients being lined up for sake-marinated salmon and assorted vegetables steamed in a foil pouch for dinner.

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I had to push the limits of what the RAW file could produce to get this shot looking this way, but I swear, this is really how the clouds over Amanohashidate Shrine looked last Autumn.

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I had plans to meet my friend at Kokusai Tenjijyo station for Design Festa 2009, but didn't realise there are actually two stations with that name - one on the Yurikamome and one on the Rinkai line. We wasted 20 minutes waiting at different stations!

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A panorama around a lakeside walkway out in my favourite park, Showa Memorial Park. Sorry I was too lazy to photoshop my shadow out of the image.

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The 日の丸 (Japanese flag) flying high up above a building roof. I know, I know, I need to stop with these faux-lomo-esque photographs.

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We were parked in a rest stop somewhere in the mountain roads of Shikoku, which was to be our destination for the day. One of the four major islands that comprises Japan, Shikoku is often overlooked, I think, by a lot of foreigners. For example, I'd been here 6 years and this was the firs time for me to set foot in the place.

But had I known what I know now, I would have gone a lot sooner. Unlike many other places I've been in Japan, Shikoku is quite beautiful, and pretty sparsely populated. Lots of nature, lots of gorgeous scenery, and not too many people around to interrupt your enjoyment of it. In fact, Shikoku is the setting for a major portion of Alex Kerr's Lost Japan, one of the books about Japan a lot of people seem to have read (for better or for worse). In the book, Kerr writes about his adventures in purchasing and restoring an old Japanese-style farmhouse in the Iya Valley region of the island.

I remember reading this book back when I was in university and being captivated by his description of the place, and seeing as how here I was, in the middle of Shikoku, it seemed like this was the perfect opportunity. So after washing our faces and enjoying a nice breakfast and cup of coffee in one of the cutest little convenience-store-slash-gas-stations I've seen around (open 24 hours with hot food, and they even had a free massage chair you could use, though my friend complained it "smelled like old men") (me: "how do you know what old men smell like?" her: "....shut up.") we threw our gear in the back of the car and headed south, up, up and into the mountains.

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Rocks in an isolated river in the Iya Valley, Shikoku Japan. It was so beautiful here and there was nary another soul for literally kilometers around.

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Razor blue skies over Shinjuku last year. Today was a sweltering hot day in Tokyo, reminding us that summer is just around the corner.

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The lovely Starbucksgirl eating her first kebab ever from a Turkish street vendor in Akihabara.

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Two friends having a grand old jam in Inokashira Park in Kichijoi. I'm not sure what kind of instrument one on the left was playing, but it sort of looks like a ukulele to me!

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Some dramatic stone lantern upshot action taking place on Miyajima, just off the coast of Hiroshima.

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Okay, I promise this is the last photo I'll put up from the beach for a while. Incidentally, I've added the ability to comment on Photos of the Day, so feel free to leave a message below if you want! :)

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The Western and Japanese versions of a dog shadow puppet, respectively. Like most things Japanese, their version is infinitely cuter than ours!

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I didn't have any shorts to wear at the beach, so I just rolled up my jeans and jumped into the ocean. It took a while to dry them out though, and they were as stiff as plywood for a while afterward.

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A meeting of the fists taken on a brilliant spring day on the beach with azure skies and golden sun from up above. This actually came off looking more stock-photography-esque than I had intended!

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There's a scene like this outside the front of virtually every train station in Japan.

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Two political posters for the same candidate found next to each other. I wonder what was going through their heads when they put these up? Were they trying to appeal to different demographics? Did the guy not have his coffee before the first photoshoot?

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Shot with a wide angle lens pointed straight down. My friend was crouching on some stairs about 2 feet below me, but the distortion makes her look like she's at the bottom of a well.

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As a child, I never liked the colour combination of blue and gold, but as I get older I find it growing on me, as in this picture of the sunset reflecting off of an office building in Ginza.

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The lovely Bethann enjoying kakigori (the Japanese take on a snowcone) at a taiko festival in Narita city. She always wears the most colourful and unusual scarves!

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When we last left our intrepid heros, you may recall that they - meaning we, I suppose - had just been force-fed a contorted carcass of a baby bird impaled on a wooden stake. Needless to say, after sleeping the tormented slumber of baby bird munchers, we awoke the next day unable to shake the feeling that we had in some way participated in making the world a less happy place (at least if you have feathers and live in Kyoto), and were eager to leave Kyoto, its seething crowds and the indelible stain of our sin against bird-anity and start on the next leg of our journey.

Though the morning started out normal enough, as we piled our bags into the car and started to navigate the convoluted expressways out of Kyoto, the skies began to turn alarmingly grey and menacing. Our streak of beautiful Autumn weather, it seemed, was about to be broken (only for a day though, it turns out) and just as we turned onto the highway, the skies opened up and it began to rain.

The gloomy rain notwithstanding, our destination this day was Himeji - home to the beautiful Shirasagi-jyo castle - the finest castle in all of Japan, and one of the few originals left standing. Rather than recount the general awesomeness of the castle, I'll direct you to the wikipedia entry on Himeji Castle and let you read about it there.

By the time we got into downtown Himeji, everything was well soaked, dreary and cold. But always ones to make lemonade out of lemons, we parked the car, grabbed our umbrellas and trudged over to get our castle on.

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I was walking to a lake to feed some ducks when I passed along this dark and fey stretch of road shaded by a copse of soaring trees.

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Upshots of glass and steel in Ikebukuro. The clouds were particularly fine that afternoon and I remember them fondly on days like today when I feel depressed and melancholy.

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I was bored at Starbucks the other day. My friend had a black marker in her pen case. This was the result...

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I wish I could go to work dressed like this every day. But sadly, I have to take the ears off at the door :(

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Unlike the US, you can usually go out onto the roof of department stores in Japan. Sometimes there are little gardens, playgrounds, or even shrines out there, and it makes a nice escape from the seething crowds inside.

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What I love about Tokyo is that no matter where you are, if you look up, chances are you will find an endless visual feast of interlocking shapes, contrasting colours and tangled powercable smatterings just like this one.

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I was having issues with my router earlier today, so while I waited for the firmware to update, I decided to play with some toys. The plastic foods are actually erasers!

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As you can see, structurally the site isn't that different from the previous version. But many of the existing design elements were tweaked to meet the new goals which I set for the site. These goals include:

• Updating more frequently. The addition of a tumbleblog allows for short, timely updates (every other day or so).
• Posting more pictures. I've always had a surplus of pictures - the addition of the Picture of the Day ensures a constant stream of tasty new photos.
• Focusing entries - free from having to cram three or four weeks worth of posting into one massive entry allows for concise and engaging entries without a ton of fluff.

Despite the structural similarities to the old blog, there are also some new design cues I've tried to incorporate, including:

• bigger fonts and more whitespace for an "airier" feel and increased readability
• less overall boxiness with more rounded corners
• a bright, bold colours palette set against lots of white
• simple, large shapes and suggestions of lines as opposed to overbuilt boxes within boxes

More information about the update in the rest of the article...

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An old woman setting out tea candles in front of her shop in Narita Japan. There were thousands of candles all over the place, having something to do with the big taiko matsuri in town that weekend.

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