Say, What Chu Looking At?

This is the last of my so called “Daily Posts” from Tokyo.  Needless to say, the original goal of posting at least a picture and some thoughts each day was sidelined by the frantic pace of TAF, the loss of Internet, and uh…  frankly the desire to be out and about exploring or doing business instead of blogging.   ^_^;;

But really?  I fell behind because its much easier to blog when you’re jet lagged and have nothing to do at 6AM while you wait for other people to wake up. 

I found that going out this year was very different from last year — we didn’t have to hit the ground running so things were less stressful.   I also didn’t ahve the same excitement as last year – since this was a return trip after just a year.   I loved being able to visit some places I’d already visited, and fill in the gaps in others.  (New locations for 2008 – Ikebukuro, Nagoya, Kyoto, Tokyo Tower, a bunch of Shrines, and a proper Sakura Festival.)

Anyway, I’ll write a more thorough writeup later this week as I start to get photos processed and posted.  For now, a few final photos, these are the ones I uploaded but never posted, and a few cellphone shots I took.

At the site for TAF, a giant saw runs through it.

 More photos under the cut… Read more…

After the late night of Friday, I had a hard time getting the energy to pack, let alone wake up in time to go wandering. That being said, I stay up until 5am preparing my bags and cleaning the hotel room — crash for a few hours, pack in the morning and meet with Alice to go walk around Harujuku.

At least, that was the plan. Somewhere along the way I get convinced that I’ve lost my gambling bankroll wallet (which I had in theory brought with me to hold my american cash..) … I blow about an hour calling the previous hotels and getting my current hotel to call the Airport police to try and see if anything has been found. Nothing. Nada. Zip. So we end up getting out later than I wished, around 11pm or so. This still gives us about three hours to go wander around town, so we try and swing over to Harujuku.

Of course, if you leave Alice and I alone with cameras to wander Tokyo, we’re not going to get anywhere fast. “Oooh pretty” happens too often and we’ll stop everywhere just to take photos. We lose another half an hour at the local temple, then get on to Harujuku.

… and of course we don’t go straight to Harujuku, but head instead to Meiji-jingu shrine. This shrine is huge. Gigantic. Epic.

Dozens of Sake barrels placed near the entrance to the Shrine.

The gates to the shrine are huge. Walking around, you smell the odor of spring soil and growth. You hear the sounds of a forest mixed with the sounds of the JR trains. Folks in ultra-modern dress mix with Harujuku street style and traditional garb of people at their weddings.

See, I’d have more photos, and photos of our lightning walk through harujuku… But.. instead around now, my camera runs out of juice. … Yes, I failed my “charge your fucking battery” roll. So, no photos from the final hours of my time in Tokyo! Boo!

We zip through Harujuku, and Alice has some interesting photos of “Drama Free” becoming a part of the harujuku decor…

We haul ass back to the hotel, I grab my bags, we run to TCat for the airport limo, and after a 1 hour scramble to rebalance my bags at the airport I get upgraded to Business Class and get on my way home. The trip home was pretty uneventful, watched three movies (Juno, I Am Legend and National Treasure : Book of Secrets), staggered home, unpacked and crashed. Kinda in that order.

Some random photos to fill in, and some other random photos from my cellphone to come last..

I spent much of Friday exploring Akihabara, but by this point much of my energy reserves were gone. So, a slow start combined with being fairly worn out resulted in a low photo haul and slow exploration. Even after 7 hours of being on my feet wandering, I did not manage to hit every store, and the nature of Akihabara is that there’s NO WAY to hit every store really. I wandered through most of the alleyways but missed a good chunk of the main street.

Oh yeah and cosplay shops – I don’t even fit in them. And running into random narrow stairwells to see what’s up those stairs is lots of fun, but there’s an awful lot of porn up some of those stairs. XD

Wakka Wakka wakka… The great thing about wandering through Akihabara is the randomness of what you’ll see if you just look up. or sideways. Or down.

These two bikes were all done up Otaku style.

Oh and yuaknow, I searched for a fucking HOUR for the Mandarake in fucking Akihabara. AN HOUR. Where the hell was it? I swear there was a fucking secret door or something. -_-;; So sorry — but no shopping success for people while out there.

Around 6:30pm I meet up with A & S to hit Cafe WitchCat (or WithCat).  They are currently running a promotional theme for the upcoming “Spice and Wolf” — but I’m not fond of the costumes they’re wearing for the show. I much prefer the original dresses, they’re cuter and don’t look like winter wear.   I also miss the wonderful apple mochi that they had last year, I would have bought five boxes to bring back with us..

After a quick nighttime meal, A and I split off to hit Roppongi Hills to be shutterbugs.

The subway entrance at Roppongi Hills – very pretty by night, and somewhat surreal. Makes one think they’re wandering on a space station set for the latest Star Trek flick.

We ended up having a business dinner with an industry friend of the con, where much gossip and discussion was had.  A taxi ride late at night later, and my last night in Tokyo was done.

Post JAM concert was spent eating combini store dinner on the streets of Shibuya, chatting about the concert, people watching and generally being lazy about getting on the subway home.

Midnight on a thursday night still shows plenty of traffic on the streets.  I never did get back to Shibuya with my fish eye to get the perspective shots I wanted — when I went up to the starbucks the streets were nowhere near as crowded I wanted to shoot.

I think part of the facination with shooting street crowds in Japan is the general look.  (Random theory bullshitting now) — See, think about it.  When body type and facial appearances are alot more homogenized than the average New York street, the push to have your own identity through fashion style becomes alot more visible.

Anyway, just a random thought about it.