Tokyo Blog

The TiltShift Generator iPhone app by Takayuki Fukatsu is part of his popular Toy Camera series. Since moving to my new neighbourhood, I haven’t posted a picture of it as I usually do - so here is the view from my balcony (above) given the TiltShift treatment. Those not familiar with tilt-shift photography can get a definition from Wikipedia here, but the technique produces a picture that simulates a scene in miniature. For those interested in taking tilt-shift pictures themselves there’s the app mentioned in this post as well as another app by Michael Krause simply called TiltShift. The Michael Krause version arguably has more features, but I prefer the Takayuki Fukatsu one which also happens to have a better icon (very important!).

Wow - I can barely remember how to use Wordpress it’s been that long. Having taken the initiative only to post things that I consider to be worth noting, and never to recycle links or stories featured on other people’s blogs, content dried up. This was because I was moving to a new apartment. This time it’s a more permanent place to live, now I’m beginning my 3rd year in Tokyo. Moving was no mean feat either. I had to pay big money to actually move in, I had to inform the utility companies and call out engineers to connect my gas supply and internet, and I had to order in various kinds of furniture and appliances to make it livable. All this while maintaining my usual work/freelance schedule. For these reasons, I haven’t been recording my daily encounters with interesting things in the city, and I haven’t had anything else to write about. Now it’s all over though, and I live in Edogawa Ward on the east side. Thanks for waiting!

It’s the end of a decade and as you can probably tell, I’m in Tokyo. I saw in the new year on the top floor of the Mori building in Tokyo, at a party that featured DJs from United Future Organization and Kyoto Jazz Massive but I couldn’t tell you for sure if I caught the performances of either one. It was mayhem and the place was absolutely huge. You couldn’t miss however, the stunning panoramic views of the city and the famous Tokyo Tower. The night was not so cold and crystal clear and it was a good chance to remind myself just how massive Tokyo actually is. In this new year I’m going to try to see much more of it, projects allowing. At the turn of midnight, Tokyo tower lit up in white displaying ‘2010’.

Having cleared my head after the actual event, it was then time to participate in the traditional practice of ‘Hatsumode’, where people visit shrines and temples to pray for good fortune and purchase religious trinkets and lucky charms. I got myself an all-purpose talisman and threw some coins in offering and of course prayed in front of the shrine. In order to do this I had to wait for 2 hours, but I was able to watch a documentary about the shrine (Meiji Jingu near Harajuku) on a huge TV screen to kill the time as we all shuffled slowly up the approach.

And then all that was left to do was to file back out and get back on the train, but not before sampling some of the festival fare on offer at the many traditional food stands lining the route. I ate buttered potato to try to warm up enough to make it as far as Yoyogi station. I feel very positive about this year - it was definitely a good thing to be here in Japan for the transition as I plan to be here for the foreseeable future, but I’ve got a lot of work to do this year if I want to achieve my goals. What they are exactly are only known to me and the Deities at Meiji Jingu.

Happy New Year, and good luck in 2010.

Today is Christmas Day, and this year I’m spending it in Japan. This morning I watched Tom & Jerry’s The Night Before Christmas and Disney’s A Christmas Carol while eating one of the two Christmas cakes from the fridge, played the fresh copy of Super Mario Bros. Wii for an hour, then went to Tokyo Midtown for the illuminations and the Christmas market. The picture you can see at the top of this post was taken there. I’m about to have dinner, but unfortunately it won’t include roast turkey this year. That’s OK, it’s been a pretty good day!

Merry Christmas and a prosperous and productive New Year from Tokyo Story!

It’s nearly the end of the year, and like most people I’m gearing up for the following one. After getting through a busy year with the aid of Muji notebooks and iCal, I’ve decided to go completely analogue for 2010 with a Moleskine diary, or schedule as the Americans will recognise it by, or possibly techou if your Japanese. So basically you’ve got several different formats of time-based notation throughout (but I got the one with the weekly format), with national holidays for every country in the world, time zones, measurement conversions, phases of the moon, timetabling, a matrix showing the distance between any two of the world’s major cities, a ruler, dialing codes, domain suffixes (internet TLD) a separate leather-bound notebook, a thinner notebook with customisable tabs, perforated tear-outs for giving details, icon stickers for weather, birthdays, events and so-on (you can just go ahead and stick them on a particular day or you can use the worded stickers to customise tabs in the notebook). It’s impressive because it’s pretty compact too. I know I recommended the Hobonichi Techou last time I talked about getting a diary, but I also recommend this one from Moleskine now too.

My Father is restoring a pre-war Riley Special, which is an British vintage car. He’s been doing this since before I was born, but this project is particularly special because he’s not just building one, he’s building five. This will be the first time my Dad’s process has ever been documented and will show you all the individual steps that are involved in taking the decomposed remains of a car dating back to the 1930’s and making it look like it just rolled out of the factory. Personally, I can’t wait to see the first one finished but you can read about it now and see the progress in ‘real time’ over at his Riley restoration diary blog.

I’m long overdue in doing this, but just a short note to let readers know, I’m moving the RSS and Atom feeds over to FeedBurner from now. You shouldn’t have to do anything, you should be redirected to the new feed automatically. If that doesn’t happen, don’t worry, the feed will continue to update with new posts, whatever happens.

Threadless have been making amazing T-Shirts for ages now. I even had a go at designing one myself, but it didn’t get printed! Now they’ve teamed up with Twitter to create a new line, in which people’s tweets get printed onto T-Shirts based on the number of votes they get from users. This news coincides with my own decision to finally join Twitter. I was totally against it for the longest time but pressure from peers has made me buckle. You can follow me: Tokyo Blog on Twitter. This blog is where the real meat will be found, but if you care about what I’m having for lunch or what trainers I’m wearing on that particular day…

Gashapon are small toys or novelties dispensed from vending machines here in Japan. They usually pop out in plastic ‘eggs’ and it’s completely random as to which one you’ll end up getting. Me and Mike piled numerous yen into a Gasha in Akihabara in order to get our hands on these mario trinkets. We got blocks, ghosts and shells in abundance, but didn’t get any power-up mushrooms or drain pipes. There’s no Mario in the collection by the way, which I thought was weird, but I’m happy just to get these to use as ornaments. They also double up as mini money boxes - useful for all the un-spendable ¥5’s and ¥1’s cluttering up my jeans.

I picked up these two beauties the other day. The orange one is the Sobu Line watch and the other is for the Yamanote Line. They only cost ¥500 each, and show a list of the station names along the length of the strap. They’re pretty bad quality as they’re so cheap, but I’ve been looking for a brightly coloured plastic watch for ages and being able to check the stations on the JR lines and see the time simultaneously can’t be bad.

These monks walk very slowly, exercising, or showcasing, their mastery of the zen principle of self control. Every next step is preceded by a quiet sounding of the small bell they carry in their right hand, the bowl in which they collect contributions gripped in their left. I’ve never seen anyone actually give a contribution to these buddhist monks. When I saw this one, I wanted to give him some money, but as so often in Tokyo, I found myself worrying about misunderstanding something and causing offense (how much do you give a takahatsu begging monk anyway?).

Intelligence: 8
Stamina: 7
Speed: 1
Resistance to Alcohol: 1
Sleeping Ability: 6
Combat Skill: 1
Voice Volume: 1
Magic Points: 9
Gold: 2

Train Through Tokyo II from Stephen Smith on Vimeo.

This is a video I shot during a train ride from the center of Tokyo to the airport (1hr 20mins or so away). It gives a good impression of the Tokyo cityscape, the buildings, logos and colours of the city rushing by. There’s also a few more videos from this series on my Vimeo.

As part of my continued effort to involve myself in as much of Japanese culture as possible (both traditional and contemporary), I went to my first baseball game last week! I went to a stadium near omotesando in the heart of Tokyo called Jingu Kyuu-Jou, home of the Yakult Swallows, where they took on the Chunichi Dragons from Nagoya - and lost. Still had a good time though. Between bouts of shouting and singing, I found time to snap a few photees, gobble a bowlful of steaming Udon, and knock back 4 draught beers. Especially for the occasion, I was sporting a Yakult Swallows jersey bearing the legendary Aoki’s name across the back - thanks Erica!

It’s that time again, when the inhabitants of Tokyo gather in their millions underneath the cherry blossom (sakura 桜) trees to celebrate the arrival of spring and the departure of winter. The tradition, known as Hanami (flower viewing) has been practiced for many centuries, and has evolved into the festival event it is now, with street performers, food stands and rawkus behaviour. Employees of individual companies, groups of friends, or family members will get together at this time of year to eat and drink outside in the ubiquitous parks and gardens of Tokyo. I was in Ueno park yesterday for a bit, to experience the madness, but now is only the beginning of Hanami, so I’m sure there will be a few more stories to follow over the next fortnight.

This is what it looks like as you exit Inaricho Sta. at around 5.30am after staying up all night in Shibuya. I’d forgotten I’d taken this picture. I just found it in my camera. The wind is pretty strong in Tokyo at the moment, and it blows into the entrances and exits of the metro stations. As your walking out feeling delicate after not sleeping, or having just woken up after half-an-hour’s sleep on the train, it chills you to the bone. I’ve done a lot of not-sleeping recently, and I’ve also got into the habit of sleeping on trains in the early hours of the morning and riding past my station, out into the suburbs and beyond.