intense days, weeks

So, last couple days were pretty full of happenings and stuff, so I didn't really have time to write here :/

First off there was the weekend, which included some more architecture related traveling to a library by Toyo Ito. After that great gyoza and fried rice lunch for like 500 yen total. Seriously kickass price for a ton of food. Then there's a visit to Nakano, and Nakano Broadway specifically. Basically 4 floors of anime, manga, cells, figures, maidcafees, cosplay stores etc etc..

umm then monday started off with a visit to Midtown in Roppongi. Cool benches infront of the building, and on the backside there's a nice park, in connection to the hotel. Definetly a place to stay at if you're not on a budget. The Gallery shopping mall had highend boutiques -.-" but a bunch of well priced food places too. In the park there's also a Tadao Ando and Issey Miyake codesigned museum for art, called Design sight 21-21. 1k yen entrance and what turns out to be a somewhat overhyped museum and exhibition... :/ After that a short walk to the free Fuji Museum on the second floor of their shop. Nice old cameras, but just 2 boring exhibitions, one with portraits of japanese emigrants to brazil, and the bigger one with nature and flower photography. From like 50 pictures 2 made me go "Nice =) ", the rest was bland basic flower photography that you'll find in any random flickr users list of images.... First Highlight, or sorta was afterwards, when a bugatti Veyron drove past me. Since I was preoccupied with not drooling and running after it to ask for a small testdrive or even to be allowed to sit in it I didn't get my camera out in time for a pic :(

Afterward, Roppongi Hills, a BMW exhibit and a Turner price retro exhibit with works by all winners so far. And ofc City view and the roof that they just opened. Awesome. Nice pics of a just somewhat smoggy Tokyo.

In the evening off to Liquidroom in Ebisu for Autechre, Massonix and Rob Hall, the first 2 live, the last doing several DJ gigs. Massonix also did a DJ gig later that night. Autechre was just about as awesome and jawdropping as you'd expect. 1 Hour only :( but straight with no pauses, mixing live their synths and drummachines etc, in a totally packed main floor with no lights on. Cool....

Yesterday was a BBQ at a river, since it was Green Day, and a national holiday at that. So we, about 10 or so people, along with like 50000 other people were out BBQ along the river. Sun shines, it's like 25 degrees warm, no clouds anywhere and you can hear a soundsystem playing techno somewhere...

hmmm

Lots of stuff happening and not really much time to write it all, the last couple days have been visits to Yokohama, Kamakura, and today a roadtrip of sorts with some norwegian architecture students and some japanese ones to a library designed by Toyo Ito. The building was cool, traveling for almost 4 hours in total to and from the place wasn't :P Oh well, atleast I got to see a whole bunch of the suburb side of Tokyo. Tomorrow will be another visit to the same areas, but to an open air architecture museum, basically a large collection of houses that represent various aspects of Japanese life, from office and small business all the way to bathhouses etc, from various periods of time.

After that starts the last week here, already it seems :( Plans include going to Nakano to check out a whole bunch of Manga and animerelated stuff, there's basically a whole shopping center for that kinda stuff =) And prolly some more oogling at cool camera gear and stuff that would be nice to have but prolly doesn't make much sense at this point in time :( There's also a Bauhaus exhibition aswell as a retrospective on Turner price winners and some more awesome foods. Oh and Autechre live at Liquid!!!!! weee

Nice weekend

Not having internet access is highly annoying -.-" And with my phone charger being broken it also means I'm effectively cut off from any direct communication with Finland, which sucks :(

On the bright side there's still Wired cafee wee =)

The weekend went by nicely, on Saturday we checked out a larger area for redevelopment in Shinjuku -.- and on the side checked out some more Disc Union stores in Shinjuku, along with a quick walk through Kabukicho during daytime. Gonna have to go back there at night to do some photography. Sunday was more fun, first 2 museums, one with western art including Monet, Van Gogh etc etc. and one with japanese and asian stuff, including swords and the likes. And one cool building. I even got another shot of a skateboarder on almost the exact same spot as last year =)

After that I headed back to Asakusa, where I stayed for 2 weeks last time, so it was a cool reunion with a place that hadn't changed at all from last time. Knowing the place meant I sort of knew where people go and where the different places are so I was at leasure to do alot of photography without concern for getting lost. So about 100 pictures later I got rather fed up when nothing really worked, must be somekinda slump in shooting or so. Sensoji, the largest temple and an awesome place to do lots of shots of people in their natural enviroment praying, doing the smokething and the waterthing at the temple entrance aswell as busy shopping streets would usually mean you should get atleast 1 shot thats atleast ok. Oh well, from there I met up with Nano and we headed up north along the Sumida river, past the Asahi beer hall and main HQ on the other side of the river and abit further north to an apartment/studio for a couple young architects.

It's Gyoza time. I guess it's basically chinese dumplings, i.e. round pieces of thin dough with different kinds of fillings, we had hambuga aka minced meat, minced chicken and nattou. The first fun part is ofc making the gyoza. Since we had about 20 people coming it meant alot of folding gyoza together. Once we got those done we first fried them, then put some water on them and put the lid on until the water had evaporated. Then lots of eating and drinking ensued.

So overall the weekend was cool and the gyozaparty was a great highlight =) This week'll be abit more traveling around, weather permitting. Kamakura and Nikko should be awesome with good weather, both being places where you can see Temples and more temples. Then there's Yokohama with a huge chinatown, aswell as todays plan of heading to Roppongi to check out 2 BIG skyscraper sights with stores, museums, cafees etc etc. And on thursday there's once again Pecha Kucha, which'll be cool to revisit a year later, just to see the various speeches.

Next week was supposed to be concerts and clubs, but that's still somewhat open, Autechre's live gig at Liquidroom was sold out in the Lawson ticketmachines, so unless I can find tickets elsewhere that'll not happen. :( On the bright side there's a huge techno thing happening the day before I leave, however there's also a big rock festival at the same day, so we'll see if I can manage to go to both :P

shinjuku for a change

So the last couple days have been spent in Shibuya, with good weather one might add. After Kensei's gig I did a day of walking a loong way from Nakameguro to Shibuya. Then yesteryday was an open house for a new office building that one of the local architects had designed, so I tagged along with Nano to that, and again it was in Shibuya, although on the Omotesando side of the Yamanote line this time. Thats towards the center of Tokyo, if such a thing exists...

Looking at an empty building was pretty cool, the windows were put in weird places, following no clear pattern, and each floor had 5m high roofs. The coolest thing for me atleast was the view though, and I got some decent shots from the top floor. So while I went about taking pictures towards the outside the other visitors to the open house, all somehow related to the architecture firm went about photographing corners, the placement of ventilation shafts etc. The connection between the stairs and the basement stairs even got some "woo" sounds from the architect posse. As we left the building the sun had dissapeared and the cloudy sky decided it was time to start the rain :#

Since then it's roughly 24 hours by now, and it still rains and things look miserable. As the title says I decided to head out to Shinjuku today, hoping to see something different from the bombardment of Gyaru in Shibuya. Although really there aren't that many of them. Less tourists here too which is nice. The westside with the skyscrapers has larger roads, less people, and when you look up you just see a huge wall of buildings on either side. So very different from what Shibuya is like, although even there you get higher buildings than in Helsinki. Then again where in the world don't you get that....

Shinjukus got the different vibe though, and there's a bunch of record stores although less highend fashion here, with the notable exception of Gucci, who have their largest store on the planet here. I'd guess Maria would have a field day there -.-" Past Gucci and the road it's on to the north starts Kabukicho, home of an kabukitheatre from which it got it's name, and then a whole lot of porn shops, clubs, bars, restaurants, yakuza hanging around during night etc.

Anyways, I need to prolly get going soon, gotta find a disc union and a loft to get a couple CDs for someone, and while I'm at it look around for some pants, constant rain doesn't seem to make jeans that comfortable after a couple hours of walking around... :(

Air

So Kensei was last night (or the club had some other name and was held at Air)but he was mixing for a couple hours, which was pretty good. Nice to have someone mix all genres of "black" music from reggae to d'n'b in a smooth way. After him some dude played the usual gangsta stuff and we made our way back to Shibuya, from there via train to Yoga and a brisk walk to the apartment.

 Before that was shopping day and today's been the same. Although less money has been spent =) I got the camera running too but forgot to bring a USB cable with me to wired cafe so no pictures uploaded today :/ right now I have the tripod with me so once the day goes on to evening and we get some nice neon going I should be able to make a bunch of cool shots in lowlight conditions =) Most likely I'll have to get a filter holder system since that would give me tons of new ways of using my existing gear too =)

Anyways, almost 3pm, and there's still a bunch of record shops to visit... actually there's the most record shops per square meter in the world in shibuya, incase you like vinyl, or dvd, or just about any other format that's available.  -.-"And my original plan was to head out to shimokitazawa but that doesn't seem to be possible unless I get some more time somehow today...

Oh and Otto : Autechre + some gescom guy etc are playing live on the 26th =) And psysalia psysalis psyche and dir en grey and some other bands have gigs upcoming too -.- On the 3rd My there'd be Satoshi Tomie live at Air, and Dir live at a huge festival :(

 

ok more

so, the flight was boooooring, but faster than last time, atleast if my goal had been Osaka. Since it was one of Finnairs older MD11s there was no personal screen, so everyone could either watch Die Hard4, a childrens movie and a japanese romantic comedy, Or they could close their eyes and try sleeping with 3 huge plane engines running closeby -.-"

The sunrise proved to be a far better entertainment though, although the pilot just had to turn at the moment the actual disc finally appeared -.- I sat in almost the last row, with a nice japanese pair next to me, who gave me stuff and asked a couple questions. Osaka proved to be boring and dangerous. Boring cause the connecting flight had been moved with one hour about a week after I'd reserved it, so I ended up with 4 hours to wait for a 1 hour flight. With the shinkansen I'd been in Tokyo before the flight -.-" Why don't they sell Flight/Shinkansen combos.... The time actually would have been enough to visit Osaka in, since the KIX airport is like straight infront of the city on a manmade island... Anyways boredom prevailed, and I cut myself on my own belt which led to a desperate hunt for a bandaid by a JAL girl, a japanese policeofficer and an airport guard. After that the waiting lounge got invaded by about 200 japense school uniforms as several classes or a whole school or something were going to Okinawa. The second planeride was 1 hour, only, but halfway was through stormclouds which meant lots and lots of turbulence and thoughts of impending doom.

Tokyo weather also improved, from the promised 12 degrees and rain we got sunshine and almost 20 today. Great for sitting in Yoyogikoen.

So today has been shopping day... -.-" Nanos at his school working on his diploma or something till 8pm, after that there's DJ Kensei at some club so I basically had the whole day to do as a please. Which meant heading out to Akihabara to get some cameragear, and after that heading over to shibuya, harajuku, omotesando etc and some clothes shopping. Total for today was prolly about 60k yen, which is alooot :( Mostly cameragear though, and a bunch of Tshirts from UTstore. I think whatever's left at the end of the trip will go up in flames there.. It's like the best Tshirt store I've ever seen. I guess it'd only be right for a couple people get that going in europe ASAP.

Still no pictures taken, have to clean the sensor today, after that shooting will begin. Got a couple filters today, aswell as a remote, so you can also expect all sorts of selfportraits soon -.-" Oh and a fat fat pen for the DS, whcih is waay mor handy than the actual DS pen that comes with the console. Anyways I gotta leave the cafee now, I think, and head out into the crowd, or throng of japanese people... Or I might get some manga, this cafee's afterall ontop of 5 floors of books, manga, anime, films, etc etc.... I wonder if you can order a credit card online hmmm :%

matta ne... D

Wired cafe Shibuya

Stupid japanese mobile phones have internet by default, so it's surprisingly hard to find any spot with wifi, especially since my host, Nano, for some reason hasn't bothered with getting internet access at home. Good thing there's wired cafes though, with what looks like delicious food and free wifi. Be back after eating -.-"

Shitty weather

And free wireless internet on the mobile phone, gotta wait on a bus so i might test he this still works...

Yo

There will be Blood, I mean there will be Deneb in Japan part 2 this spring, April to be precise. Stay tuned.