Camp!

Hej hej!

I spent last weekend camping in the mountains of Kanagawa-ken, a prefecture just south of Tokyo, with

Tomo (the grill master)

Matt (the settler and finder of hidden waterfalls)

and a bunch of friends.
From the left: Satoshi, Yoko, Aoi (happy guy in the back), me (green guy in the front), Chakko (standing in the middle), Sachi, Tomo and Matt.

Fireworks!

An intense game of Jenga.

Swimming in a river.

It was so good to be in the nature for a change. Green mountains, sunshine, a cool river and BBQ.

Not to say that Tokyo completely lacks greenery. The lotus flowers of Ueno koen are blossoming now! I passed there this morning, just by coincidence, and took these pictures.

Nice, huh?

That's it!

Take care.

Night lights

Hej hej!

Last weekend was way too busy and I didn't get a chance to take pictures or update the blog. This week was better, though we had a lab meeting yesterday that lasted 6 hours. Can't describe how much I dislike spending my whole Saturday at work... But in the evening I joined a very nice birthday party of a friend of a friend, eating and drinking at an izakaya (a Japanese bar) in Shibuya. Good good!

I've been lazy lately, taking most of the photos from my balcony. :)

This view is rather boring in the daytime. Just grey buildings. But in the night I found so many more colours. Like that.

I thought it looked so cool with the blue light around Roppongi (bottom left part).

The bears of the Medicom Toy building. I pass them every morning and every night.

That's it. Short one today.

Take care!

Kanazawa

I spent this weekend in Kanazawa, a small town on the northern side of Honshu. I've actually been there before. Natsuko and I went there in the end of February 2005 on our first trip together. There are some interesting spots that shouldn't be missed out on; the Kenroku-en garden, the Ninja temple, the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art and a small but nice fish market. The last thing (raw fish) is probably the best part of Kanazawa. It's absolutely delicious and I had a lot of it this time! :D

I took the overnight train from Tokyo on Friday night, an all together horrible experience that ended up in me only sleeping for 2 (non-consecutive) hours that night... Natsuko arrived already on Friday evening and stayed with Sayaka-chan, a friend from Osaka University who is now living and working in Kanazawa. She took care of us the whole time, driving us around to different parts of the town in her car. There is an old part of Kanazawa that resembles Kyoto in many ways, which was really nice, with several temples and calm streets.

I'm making a habit of playing around with my camera. Here's the result of that.

Me pretending to sleep in the train.

Kaisendon - sashimi on a bowl of rice.

Natsuko and Sayaka-chan sightseeing.

A meeting.

Taking a break.

Magurodon - different kinds of raw tuna on rice.
Too much, too good!

Ok, that's it.

Take care!

Ume Kayo

This..
... is the weather of Tokyo today. Not very nice. We're in the rainy season...

I didn't really feel like taking a long walk in the rain. Instead I took the subway to Harajuku and went to a gallery called Little More Chika (Japanese hompage) where there is an exhibition with a Japanese photographer called Ume Kayo. I saw her in a TV-show called Top Runner the other week and got interested in her work. She's very skilled at getting close to people and by that she's able to capture everyday moments, things that I would like to be better at. And also, she was really funny in the TV-show.

The exhibition at Little More Chika is called Jiichan-sama (Mr Grandpa) and features photos that she's been taking of her grandfather for ~7 years. I think I can summarize it as being a warm and friendly event. I also bought...

.. Ume-me (The eyes of Ume), which was her first photo book released in 2006. It has sold more than 100 000 copies and made her something of a celebrity in Japan. I have just flipped through it once today, but I must say that I find it really nice.

And lastly...

.. a shop that I found close to my train station. I guess, to some, it doesn't make much sense, but the name of the place is "The Little House" in Swedish! It turns out that the owner (a middle-aged woman) was working for a Swedish company (Tetra Pak) and visited friends in Sweden (Eslöv) for many years. She quit her job and now owns this little store in Yoyogi-Uehara. There are actually not many things from Sweden sold in her store. It's more the atmosphere of the place that's... Scandinavian, I guess.

That's it.

Take care!

Another walkabout

Hejhej!

As some of you might already know we had a rather big earthquake in Japan on Saturday morning. The epicenter was quite far away from Tokyo but it shook a lot here as well. Enough to wake me up from my sleep. I can tell you that an earthquake is not my favorite way of starting the day...

But everything is fine now, all you can do is forget about it. I spent Saturday evening with Matt at Ai Ai, an Okinavan restaurant not far away from Harajuku, eating a lot of garlic and drinking a great deal of Awamori (Okinawan sake).

Today I took my camera for another long walk around Tokyo. Here are a couple of pictures from that. Click for larger versions.

A narrow house.

Another view. Note the car parked under the house.

There's not much air between the roof of the car and the building! It's as if they first measured the height of the parking space and then chose what car model to get based on that...

I felt rather exhausted after today's walk and decided to go to the local sento for a bath. This is what it looks like.

The sento is the red building to the right. To the left is a coin laundry. This laundry/sento combination seems to be common in Japan.

The sign to look for when you are tired.

That's it.

Take care!

Sunday Walkabout in Tokyo

Hej!

First I should say that I didn't go to Akihabara today and by that I luckily avoided the knife-wielding lunatic that went berserk on the main street of that area around noon killing and injuring several people. The whole thing is very sad and scary!

I took a walk with my camera to a rather posh district called Daikanyama, situated between Shibuya and Ebisu. On my way over there I saw a space ship that had crashed into to the roof of a small supermarket.

No-one else seemed to pay much attention to it.

As I got closer I realized that it wasn't a space ship, but a gigantic robo-grasshopper!

It was stuck there on top of the building, entangled in the phone-wires and couldn't budge.

A view of the head of the beast.

Pretty cool thing, but I'm sure that I would have a lot of nightmares if I was 10 and had this monster as my neighbour...

That's it!

Take care!

Osaka Jazz Weekend

I made another short trip to Kansai this weekend. Took the shinkansen (bullet train) down on Friday evening and the night bus back home to Tokyo yesterday night. For having made no plans at all we did a lot. The highlight was the jazz club on Saturday night; Suntory 5 in Umeda. The band, New Orleans Rascals, is a bunch of old guys playing Dixieland jazz and they are so good at it that they've received the honorary citizenship of New Orleans. They started playing in 1961 and I wouldn't be surprised if we actually saw some of the original members this weekend

Apart from that we sang karaoke, watched a movie, cooked and played/listened to piano. Pictures!

Experimenting with macro.

Biker girl.

Back alley of N's apartment.

New Orleans Rascals at Suntory 5, Osaka.

Guess the drink!

That's it.

Take care!