Yes! I am indeed back after an even longer break than last time, but be warned! This time it is going to be a long read. Luckily for you I have had a heck of a long time to snap photos, so most of it will be illustrative rather than textual.
I will start with our trip to the beach. The 11th of October it was a warm and sunny Monday. We had looked up the weather forecast the previous week to find the best suiting day to go see the beach of Tokyo and Monday was the warmest. So, with our bags packed with things suited for the beach, which actually only meant swimming apparel, we went on our way. We didn't have any big expectations about the beach or any plans on what to do, other than just relaxing. When we arrived, however, we could see that swimming would not be a refreshing experience. The water was brown or a very dark shade of yellow. It had that distinct ease to foam, which can be seen at polluted streams of water, when the kids at the beach played in the shoreline. After seeing that, we decided to jut relax on the beach a bit. Soon though, Caspar and I got restless and wanted to explore. I grabbed my camera and we went on our way to see what was around. The following pictures shows the beach and what we found:
(A panorama of the beach)
(Bridge at the harbor)
(A TV-company's headquarters)
(Tokyo Tower and a boat)
(Another boat)
(What the hell? We're in New York City!)
(And New York City is in Tokyo!)
(A windsurfing lady on the nasty water)
After our excursion to explore the area, we went back to pick up Annette so we could go explore some more together. When we came back we saw a funny group of people, as shown below.It looked like a bachelor party of some sort.
(A funny group; Mexican wrestler, salary man
with feather duster, surfer dude, and casually dressed men)
(Annette's back after lying on the beach)
(Another part of the beach)
(Back in New York Tokyo)
(The TV-company's headquarters again)
After having seen the surrounding outside, we went inside a big mall to see if there were any fun shops we could have fun in. We saw a big pet shop inside and decided to see what kind of animals they had. They had the ordinary selection of fluffy, cute rodents, fish, and birds. They also had a big selection of dogs, a dog salon, and a bakery with free samples of cake. Before thinking about it, we all took a piece of cake to taste it and it wasn't until after the taste really settled in that we realized what kind of cake it was: cake for dogs! Yum! It didn't taste bad as such, but it didn't taste like cake at all. When we came out, the sun was setting and we decided to head home to get some food.
(Lady Vengeance in the sunset)
(Caspar looking kewl in the sunset)
(The sunset at an angle)
The following Saturday, we were all invited for another game of rugby by Anthony, Joanna's boyfriend of sorts. This match was important for the Green Rockets and the game was very exciting. Way more exciting than the first one was. The first half was very even between the Green Rockets and the Wild Knights and spirit was high in the rows housing the green dressed fans. Second half, however, turned for the worse. Somehow the opposite team had gotten way more energy and stamina during the half time and the Green Rockets got behind in the score. The end result was 32-47 to the Wild Knights. A bit sad that we didn't get to see them win, but the game had been good. Below are some photos from the game.
(One of three cheering leaders for the Green Rockets)
(The full force of the Wild Knight's cheering crew)
(The team before the atch)
(Anthony in number 13 standing over a squashed
Wild Knights player eying the ball)
(A throw-in from the side line)
(A collision)
(Wild Knights fans)
(At the end of first half)
(After the blow of the horn symbolizing half time)
(Us!)
(The Green Rockets with arrows over some of the players)
Now you might be wondering what the arrows are doing on that last photo. There is actually a very good reason to this. The players who have an arrow over their heads are te ones who we went out to drink with afterwards. First, though, we went to an Australian barbecue restaurant and had a feast of kings. The best thing of it all was that after the dinner, Anthony didn't want us to pay. He just took care of the check with the comment that he rarely had an opportunity to treat guests. After the dinner, we went to sing karaoke and have a few drinks. It was fun to see these huge guys sing Aqua and other pop songs. After karaoke we went home to our respective places.
When I picked up the camera next day to transfer the photos, the lens fell off the camera body and my favorite lens was broken. Sadface. I have already told you about this incident and I will skip to the next thing in the chronological order of this blog entry, which is a day in Harajuku park to see some cosplayers.
On Sunday the 26th of October, Annette and I went to look at funnily dressed Japanese people. Every Sunday on a bridge in Harajuku, people line up dressed as anime or Japanese game characters. The thing was just that we needed to get there before twelve and due to some delays here and there we were there half past twelve and most of the people were already gone. Instead of just standing around on the bridge, we decided to go have a look around. After a short while we started hearing music and started walking in the direction of the sound. When we could see who were playing the music, we got a bit of a surprise. It was Japanese people dressed in 50's style and dancing jive and swing style dances.
(Grumpy man dancing)
(Slick dude)
(Toppling air guitarist)
(Duo dancing)
(Knee thruster)
(Kid tickler)
(Stomping kid)
(Duo air guitarists)
After being entertained by the dancing people, we continued into the park, where we saw the tops of some tents in the distance outside the park. We decided that it looked interesting enough to go check out and luckily that we did. It was a sort of organic flea market with food stalls too. It was very interesting to walk around and see the different things for sale, and somehow there were a lot of hats on sale, which can be seen below along with other photos from the market.
(A man grilling all the odd bits of a chicken on a grill)
(Live music)
(A man enjoying the live music)
(Winnie the Poo, Stitch and Dale!)
(Funny hat number one)
(Funny hat number two)
(Funny hat number three)
(Chocolate covered bananas)
The chocolate covered bananas above were sold at a booth with an octopus on the sign. This made Annette and I initially think that there was octopus hidden beneath the chocolate and sprinkles - an extremely weird gastronomical custom in my world. After having checked out the market, we headed back into the park to ultimately go home. On our way we caught some more interesting persons. A guy, almost as thin as a straw and with no hips, walking around hoola-hooping. We followed him for a while until he caught the attention of a group of teenagers who immediately drew out their mobile cameras and started snapping away. This was a funny scene to me, as I would have wanted photos of them rather than the guy because of their funny outfits. We also saw more of the dancing people and on the bridge of the cosplayers we got free hugs, which was very nice.
(The hoola-hoop scene)
(Another slick guy)
(Free hugs)
(A street artist stating his business to a police officer)
On Monday the 27th my favorite lens was ready for me to pick up after repair! It cost me 30000 Japanese pieces of gold but it was worth it. I found out that there was a government office close by the repair shop with a panoramic floor for free. I decided to get up there since I got my little friend back to take some shots of the city from above. This is a few of what I got:
(The Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building)
(The same with the fisheye lens)
(Downtown Shinjuku)
(Building in building)
(And up close)
(Tokyo Tower)
(Downtown Shinjuke from ground level)
Afterwards I went back to a station called Komagome close to our apartment, where there is a park I had wanted to see, and now that I had my lens back, I decided that it was time to see it. Here are a few shots of the most interesting views there:
(The path leading into the park)
(A view of the lake in the park)
(A bridge to the island in the lake)
(The bridge up close)
(Remember this spider? The same exact kind that
crawled on me when I was WWOOFing)
(A small bridge over a corner of the lake)
(Ravens defending their little island in the lake)
(A panorama of the island in the lake)
Not the time has come to tell about Caspar's second attempt to play with jam. It is actually a story of satisfying relief. We all went to What The Dickens the first Tuesday of November, as that is jam night, to listen to some good music and cheer for Caspar on stage. We had a slight fear that the same man, obnoxiously full of himself, would go on stage at the same time as Caspar again this time and the fear was well placed as he did! This time, however, he was way more open towards Caspar and his playing, which made the experience delightfully kewl.
(Caspar and the man full of himself)
(A rapping duo giving their interpretation of Rapper's
Delight by Sugar Hill Gang)
(Santa Claus on the flute)
This next bit of the blog entry will take quite a bit of space. Lots of pictures and some explaining to them, but hopefully it wont be too boring. The day after we went out for Caspar's jam playing, there was an event for traditional Japanese martial arts in Harajuku park, which we wanted to check out. We got up early to get the full program of the different sports. When we arrived, we had some difficulties finding where the event was taking place, which led us to the Meji shrine, a shrine in the park, where there was a religious happening. It was interesting to watch even though we didn't understand what was going on. Here are some highlights from in and around the shrine:
(Barrel like objects with kanji and other symbols on them)
(A zen sand rake man)
(Men observing the sand raking man)
(The pole of a gate)
(A religious shrine being carried by men)
(Caspar in the courtyard of the Meji shrine)
After consulting a map, we found a spot where the sporting event could be and went there. Sure enough, this was the area. There were a lot of different martial arts going on; katana training, fork fighting, horse archery, and normal archery. Here are some shots of the different things as well as a bunch of insects:
(A fork fighter)
(A display of the horse archers)
(A praying mantis - first of many insects of that day)
(The horse archers riding around)
At the archery range, the dragon flies
dominated the scene)
(Another dragon fly)
(The archers in a line)
(Second line of archers)
(Even old people do it)
(Another dragonfly)
(And yet another)
(Lining up for the shot)
(And that same type of spider again!)
(A butterfly!)
(This centipede was around 10 cm long)
Around midday, the main event would take place - horse archery. We went there early to get good seats, but it turned out that we had to sit around for an hour and a half listening to something in Japanese. We never found out what it was about but finally things turned more interesting when the horses showed up:
(Back to the main event - the horse archery)
(The writers and their horses again)
(Caspar is excited beyond expression)
(The horde of photographers waiting to get their shots)
(Even phones were out)
(First ride through, no shooting)
(A horse got lose and went off into the woods before
it got caught)
(It pulled one of the ropes forming the path off its poles)
(The first archer who hit the target)
After the show, we went to Akihabara to get our dose of techno to remind ourselves that we were actually still in Tokyo.
Now to the one thing that will probably take the most of this blog entry: my time in Fukuoka. I got on a plane (nearly didn't make it) to Fukuoka on Friday the 5th of November to go see Joachim and Wakako and to try out my first WWOOFing host. WWOOFing is a network of organic farm owners and other people of that sort, who offers a shelter and food for labor. The idea is that you come and experience the culture and language of a country by working with local people and living with them. I thought that sounded very interesting and the sort of thing I would like doing. I had had some correspondence with a host in Fukuoka prior to my departure from Tokyo and she had agreed to take me in for a week. On the WOOFing page, she had written that she was situated in Fukuoka city and that she would usually have time to spend with the WWOOFers (me). I thought that was perfect, as I would have the opportunity to get together with Joachim and Wakako in the evenings if I wished. Therefore, I was filled with a feeling of expectation for the experience that laid ahead. The reason I had initially looked into WWOOFing was that I had had no luck with work and I was starting to feel like I was wasting my time and money in Tokyo. I needed a change as it made me sad to be here.
Joachim greeted me at the airport and we took the train back to his area of town to go to his apartment. Wakako had made an epic dinner: a hamburger (not the sandwich but the beef itself) complete with soft roasted onions, gravy and a fried egg on top. To compliment that, there were potatoes, broccoli, avocado salad and delicious bread. A true feast and very tasty. After the dinner Joachim and I went out so he could show me the nightlife in Fukuoka. There I met Phillipp, a German friend of Joachim, who turned out to be a cool guy. I met him at Joachim and his favorite bar called Xaimaca. A Jamaican inspired bar in the main bar street in Fukuoka. It was fun to go out with Joachim and Phillipp as they knew everybody at every place we went. The weekend basically just went by with nights out and meeting Joachim's friends here and there. Before I knew it it was Tuesday and I was on my way to meet the lady that I would be working for.
She picked me up at the nearest station to her bed and breakfast in Fukuoka city. I hoped that I would be living there, as it was very close to Joachim's place. After a Japanese breakfast, fish soup and rice, she got me started with some carpentry work. There was a boardwalk in the garden of the bed and breakfast that was rotten and she needed me to replace the boards with new ones. It was a quite easy task and I was done in an hour. After that, the lady, Narita-san, had a meeting with her "Green Fukuoka" group, a group dedicated to get more trees and green areas in Fukuoka. During the meeting I walked around the neighborhood where we were and just went around the small alleys, I didn't think of bringing my camera to the meeting, so it was locked in the lady's car and I didn't want to disturb the meeting.
After the meeting we went to another place she had, a big warehouse/workshop, where she did a lot of work with wood. I was asked to cut up cardboard boxes and stow them away in a corner. I have learned that very few Japanese people throw things away. They keep it just in case they would need it again for something. The next place she took me was evidence of that. This was the place I would be spending my days working for her - in a house out in the countryside far away from Fukuoka. She only told me when we arrived that this was the place I would be spending my time. Not what I had expected, but I thought that I would try and get the most of it.
(The sunset on the countryside)
I was given a room all to myself with personal shower and toilet, which was very nice. There was not much insulation, as there rarely are in Japanese houses, so I was given an electrically heated blanket to lie on. That was a life saver. Without it, I would not have been able to get through the night as it was 5 degrees or so in the room.
The following morning, Narita-san gave me a tour of the house and introduced me to her sisters, who couldn't speak a word English, and her mother who was 100 years old. She showed me what needed to be done and asked me to get started after breakfast. Once again a fishy meal. I put it worse than it was. It actually tasted very good, but there was one incident, which I will return to later.
The routine of the days was like this: after breakfast I washed the dishes and then started on the chores. Around midday I was called in for lunch after which I washed dishes again and returned to the chores. After work I had dinner and washed the dishes and went to my room. I was not expected to be in the living room. The first day I vacuum cleaned the living room and kitchen, washed the floor of the kitchen and then I got ready for the chores outside. The things that needed to be done were as following: the barn needed to be broomed and organized, a pathway in the garden needed to be redone, a few windows needed new frames and put up, and a grape vine holder contraption needed to be redone in metal. I started off with the sweeping of the barn. Well, that means I started organizing the barn, which was a difficult task. There was stuff everywhere. A whole bunch of old things that was just kept for the sake of keeping it. It took me three hours to clean up and broom the barn. Here are some shots of the end result:
(This area was filled with random stuff before)
(Some planks after picking them up
and sorting them)
(Flamingo boxes neatly stacked)
(Behind the small digging machine was a whole different
part of the barn that I couldn't manage to clean up)
After having done the best I could (actually after giving up on the rest because I didn't know where to put half of the things I picked up), I started on the pathway in the garden. It consisted of some mats on top of stones that all needed to be pulled up and redone. Below is another "after shot":
The pathway is the grey line from the right bottom corner and it continues until the end of the building at the top of the image. That was a days work. All day I worked alone because Narita-san had to be somewhere else. I didn't see her for the next couple of days, so I was left alone with her two sisters and mother. It was a quite lonely day as I had expected to be working with somebody for company. I found out that this was the way I was expected to work, sadly.
The next day everybody left the house and I was left to take care of the dog. Narita-san told me that I could just go explore, but I wanted to get some more work done, so I started working on the window frames until the dog, Mana-chan, demanded a walk. I then put on her leash and went out. I let her lead the way and I ended up walking around for three hours. Stupidly enough I forgot to bring the camera, as this was by far the most interesting part of my WWOOFing experience. I was guided into some hilly, forest terrain by Mana-chan and got to climb a slope with huge bamboo plants. When I say huge I mean tall. It was a very refreshing walk and when I came back I realized how boring it was being stuck at that place again. Not much fun. I started missing home a lot during the stay.
The next day, I didn't feel like working at all, but I got up and got breakfast and started on the window frames after cleaning the dishes. It took me the most of the day to fit the wood to the glass and the rails they had to slide on, but in the end I was proud of the result I got. The wood fitted the window and the frame could slide in the rail. Then I started work on the grape vine contraption in the garden. Below is a photo of the old contraption. Not a very good one, though, and I haven't got a photo of the window frames either, sadly.
The contraption was made of the rods and bamboo sticks that can be seen in the top of the photo above. I had to take all of it down and replace it with metal tubes, heavy metal tubes. I got half of the contraption down and carried it away. While I handled one of the bamboo sticks something colorful fell onto my arm and I thought that it was a pretty butterfly and looked down with interest. Then I saw that it was something quite other than a beautiful butterfly. It was a big fuck off spider! I was only wearing a thin long armed t-shirt and I was afraid the spider felt like taking a bite. If it had done so, it was more than capable to bite through the fabric. Luckily for me, it decided to walk down my arm and unto my hand, which meant a chance for me to get it to walk off me. I managed to get it to walk onto a stick and I could plant the stick and get my camera. This is some shots of it:
It is the same kind of spider that I shot previously and can be seen above.
The next day was my last working day at the place, as I had had the chance to talk to Narita-san about stopping earlier because of mismatching expectations. I spend the day taking down the rest of the bamboo contraption to hold the grape vines and replacing it with the heavy metal tubes. The height of the thing was so low that I couldn't work in a standing position and getting the tubes in place while trying to secure them was a pain in the back. It took all the day in that uncomfortable working position to replace the contraption and by the end I was worn out and went straight to bed after dinner.
Talking about dinner, I remember writing that I wanted to get back to a story regarding this particular subject. It involves one of the sisters as well, one that seemed to dislike me. One night there was fish soup on the menu and the sister that had made it and served it had poured the fish heads (plural) into my bowl. This meant very little soup and meat and a lot of bone for Esben. I had to help myself for second servings to get a bowl of actual soup. Weird lady.
Sunday i took the bus back to Fukuoka to meet up with Joachim and Wakako again. We spent the day walking around Fukuoka and going to the harbor, where there was an outlet mall. I will let the pictures do the talking here:
(In the streets of Fukuoka)
(At a cheap ramen restaurant)
(Getting a coffee)
(Taking the retards for a bus ride)
(A lot of chemistry)
(Really a lot of chemistry)
(A tacky church)
(Smoker number one)
(Smoker number two)
(A ferris wheel in motion)
(The hat style in Fukuoka)
(Seen from another perspective)
(Enjoying some drumming)
(On a pier near the outlet mall)
(Photo love)
(Stick love)
(Long shutter speed bench exposure)
(The ferris wheel up close)
(And from down low)
(And at a portrait format)
That evening we went out to have dinner at Xaimaca and we met Phillipp again, who invited me to his goodbye dinner at his old language school the next day. Joachim and Wakako went home early that evening, so Phillipp and I went out with another friend of him and Joachim and I tried something very delicious: Mushrooms and melted cheese wrapped in bacon as small rolls and fried on the grill. An epic combination of taste and texture.
The following day I met up with Phillipp to get some lunch and to hang out and talk a bit. Joachim had to work, so him and Wakako would join us later. Phillipp and I ended up at his place before the dinner and he showed me some epicly funny German videos. For any of you who understands German, I would like to share them with you.
The first one is a young hip hopper who is being interviewed about the war in Iraq:
The second clip is from a German TV-show called Mitten im Leben from RTL and it is abotu a man cooking a romantic dinner for his girlfriend:
The last one I would like to share is from a German TV-show called TV Total and it is a mix of stupid answers in the German version of The Weakest Link:
After having had a cheap laugh, we went to the dinner in a very traditional Japanese izakaya, which is a form of bar or pub where they serve food as well. We were sitting on tatami mats with our legs down a hole in the floor and shared a lot of different Japanese meals. It was very tasty and the atmosphere was great. I didn't bring my camera, though, as I felt it would be too big and clumsy for the dinner.
After the dinner we met up with Joachim and Wakako to go get some drinks in a fancy lounge where Phillipp knew the owner as they were old neighbors. It was a nice and easy last night in Fukuoka before my return to Tokyo.
The next day I took the plane home and Joachim saw me off at the airport. When I came back, it was Annette's birthday a few days later and I was looking forward to celebrating it.
We started the birthday off with a morning meal at McDonald's before heading to an indoor fun park called SEGA Joypolis (spelled Jøypølis). There were a lot of visual attractions such as a drifting game where you were actually sitting in a complete car while racing on the screen. Another one was a futuristic racing game where the car we were sitting in rotated a full 360 degrees so we rolled over sideways when the track in the game rotated. That was fun! There were also a hang gliding simulator game and a few virtual reality exploration rides. In one of the virtual reality rides, Caspar jokingly said that I was a "special" boy and the lady operating the ride applauded me after the ride had finished while saying "For special boy!". That was quite funny. Then there were the more physical attractions. One where we were sliding from side to side in a half pipe while trying to rotate the platform we were standing on at the right time in order to score the highest amount of points. It was a very dizzying experience but fun as hell. Then there was the most shitty ride I have ever tried. It was a small roller coaster with a circular, rotating cart. The thing was that the seat was too small and the paddings to protect against bumps as the cart twirled were very thin and of no use in reality. This meant that I was banging my elbows, knees, shoulders and head into hard metal bars. It was so shitty that I had to laugh out hard at how ridiculously bad it was. It was in fact a fun experience to try it out. There was also a very fun and different physical attraction, where we took part in a prison break and followed a Japanese lady around dark corridors, experiencing a jailbreak. It was quite well made and a fun way of doing an attraction.
After we had reached our satisfaction with the rides, we head home to shower and get ready before going for dinner and partying. We went out to Shibuya, where we went to the same Australian barbecue restaurant as the time with the rugby players. There we had a hearty feast and after the meal none of us were able to move. The portions there are huge! Very Australian sized. Nice. We started out sharing a deep fried onion, a giant deep fried onion. After that, Annette got ribs, Caspar got a rib-eye steak and I had an Alice Springs Chicken - a chicken fillet covered in melted cheese, bacon and mushrooms. After having digested our meals for a while we rolled on to find a place to go sing karaoke and ended up searching for a specific place for a while before randomly being approached by a guy, from the same chain we were looking for, who asked us if we wanted cheap karaoke. That was an easy question to answer and we followed him and got a room for ourselves with free drinks for an hour. Afterwards we went to a place called Gaspanic, where they serve 300 Yen drinks on Thursday nights, but it was completely packed, so we only stayed there for a little while before deciding to go back to Ueno, close to where we live.
We managed to get on the last train and we could relax until we needed to get off. We just had one problem which became apparent to us when everybody got off the train, It only went to a place called Ikkebukuro, a two hour walk from Ueno. Being stranded there and not wanting to pay for the cap fare home, we went out in a search for a suitable place to spend the rest of the night. We drifted from place to place for a while before we found a club, where people were lively. We spent the rest of the night dancing silly dances and having fun, before getting on the first train home. All in all a very, very good day.
The following Saturday, Zack and his room mate, Timo from Finland, held a housewarming party. It ended out being a miserable experience for Caspar. After ending up in Roppongi and witnessing daybreak, I went home and Caspar decided to stay out. He was then approached by some ladies who wanted him to buy them champagne but he refused. Then he received a glass of champagne himself and after that he couldn't remember anything. The next thing he knew he was standing on a train station 45 minutes out of Tokyo with no cash on him. He had had 25000 Yen on him but luckily he still had money on his train card to get back. he thinks that he was drugged with the glass of champagne because he has no recollection from the time after that glass till he found himself on the train station. He was scared that the ladies or whoever had drugged him also had cleaned out his credit cards, so he got them cancelled when he got back. Luckily, nothing had been withdrawn, but now he needs to wait for new credit cards.
The last thing I will be talking about is this last week. That's right, I have now gone through about a month and a half of neglected blogging and it is down to this: a week of photography. I have been out all the days taking photos.
Monday and Tuesday I spent close to home, mostly in and around campus grounds of Tokyo University, and in Ueno. This is what I got:
(I was not the only photographer out)
The first day, Monday, was cloudy, but Tuesday had some sunshine just after a quick rain fall, so the colors were great.
Wednesday, Annette and I went to Yokohama to see Chinatown. We also wanted to get up to the highest panorama floor in Japan, which conveniently enough was close to Chinatown in Yokohama. We took the train to Shinjuku first, to get tickets to the new Harry Potter movie, before we went to Yokohama. When we arrived we thought that the station was below the building we wanted to get to in order to get to the panorama floor, because the name of the building was "Landmark Building". This is the view we had from the top floor of that building:
(Not a bad view at all)
(we could see far)
(And we saw the building we were
supposed to be in)
After realizing that we had gone up the wrong building, we made our way down and across the bridge to the right one.
It cost 1000 Yen to get up, but we were determined to see it, so we paid the ticket and took the elevator up. The fastest elevator in Japan with a maximum speed of 750 meters per minute ~ 21 km per hour. Decently fast for an elevator. We came up just in time for the sunset and we were lucky enough to find a couch facing the setting sun, where we had some colorful ice cream float sodas.
When the sun had set behind a huge cloud, we decided to make our way to Chinatown. First we went to check out a small amusement park for children, which was turning very colorful in the darkening light (can you even say that?). It was hard to get good shots because I didn't bring my tripod, so I only have a few without too much blur.
It was getting cold quick, so we decided to take the subway the rest of the way to Chinatown. Chinatown was very colorful too. A lot of lamps and lights everywhere and colored buildings. There were also a few shrines here and there. We had dinner at an all-you-can-eat restaurant with free refill of drinks and six dishes each that we could order refills from. We had to admit, though, that after the first serving of the twelve dishes, we were both rather full, so we headed out to the streets again to see more of the little charismatic area before we had to return to Shinjuku to go to the cinema, where Caspar joined up with us.
The next day, Thursday, I had a photo walk arranged with Thomas, another passionate photographer, in Harajuku. We wanted to do some street photography and we wanted to combine that with some practice of distance judging. On the lenses we have, there are some markers marking the distance to the point of focus in meters and feet. We wanted to set it to a predetermined point of focus and then try and judge when we were close enough to capture people in right focus. We also wanted to practice hip fire accuracy, so we had to judge our aim without looking through the viewfinder. This is the shots I at least got somehow right:
After a while, we went for a coffee (that's right! I am learning to drink coffee) and talk about gear. Thomas has a lens that I would wish I had, but it is so expensive that I will have to wait a long time before I will actually go buy it. It is a n ultra wide angle lens called the Canon 14mm f/2.8L II USM and it costs 220.000 Yen. This is a photo of it:
After the gear talk, we went to Shibuya to catch some crowds and light streaks from head and tail lights of cars. The biggest pedestrian crossing in Tokyo lies here and it is a good place to capture a lot of different types of people.
After experimenting with cathing the movement of the immense crowd, we headed over to the other side of the station, where we wanted to catch light trails from a pathway over the road.
(Cars everywhere!)
(Thomas setting up a shot)
From the pathway we also had a clear shot into Shibuya station where we could shoot people rushing and waiting for the trains.
It was beginning to get really cold and neither of us had brought gloves, so we went to get some dinner and the warmth back in our fingers. After food, another photography guy called Steve joined us for the last bit of shooting that day at the main pedestrian crossing where we practiced some more focus distance judging hip fire accuracy until it started raining and we made our way to a bar where we had a beer to end the day properly.
And that was all from the past month and a half! I must say that it took a little bit longer than expected to write this blog entry, but admittedly it is quite long. I started writing at one o'clock and it is now four in the morning. The photo editing was definitely the time consumer. I haven't gone through any of the photos posted here until today, so it took a while.
The last bit of this entry, I will turn direct at the future. On the first of December I will be back in good old Europe. I have decided to spend Christmas at home because I have been feeling slightly miserable for the past couple of weeks. Mostly because this adventure didn't turn out as expected and because the WWOOFing, I had hoped would reignite my interest for Japan, turned out to be a dead end. This means that I will be back for New Year's Eve here in Tokyo to travel around with Lady D and to greet the guys coming to visit us here, before going home for good in the end of January.
Most likely this will be the last blog entry for a while from the Toyboy in Tokyo, but I will be back with tales from around New Year's Eve and till the end of January.
Until then, take care!
