Above: Paper cranes on the student commemoration monument in Hiroshima’s Peace Park. So our Japanese trip’s at an end; we’ll be flying back to the UK tomorrow morning. I can safely say it’s been the best holiday I’ve taken so far, I’d come back to Tokyo in a heartbeat. There’s a huge amount I haven’t covered, …
Monthly Archives: September 2009
The Tsukiji Fish Market
We decided that a trip to the Tsukiji fish market’s tuna auction was a must-see while we were in Tokyo — despite needing a 4am start, it proved to be a great plan. The market handles 2000 tons of seafood a day, which requires a huge amount of manpower — inside and around the market area …
Shibuya
The famous Shibuya crossing…one word: mental. As soon as the lights turn green, a massive tide of people flood the crossing heading in all directions — I’ve never seen such a ridiculously huge number of people moving in concert. Lit by the huge neon signs in Shibuya, it has to be one of the craziest …
Kaze Wo Atsumete
One of the things Ben and I had said we’d really like to do in Tokyo is visit the New York Bar at the top of the Park Hyatt hotel (the bar in Lost in Translation)…so we did. The hotel is extremely nice, easily the most incredible hotel I’ve ever seen. You have to get the …
Sumo!
We went to the Nihon Sumo Kyokai Official Grand Sumo tournament for the 2nd day of competition in Ryogoku, Tokyo. Initially quite baffling, personally I thought this was an instant highlight of the trip so far — the rather curious ceremony surrounding the bouts and the grandeur of the Ryogoku Kokugikan were steeped in atmosphere …
Jape-mie Middleton 2: The Fuji-tive
Apparently I didn’t learn the lessons of last time and Mog has done it again: Storing passwords in your browser is not a good idea, and becomes an even worse one when your friends are ruthless maniacs. Now I need to think up a suitable retaliation. Jim
Sumimasen!
Today’s been a long one: we’ve visited the Meiji shrine in Harajuku, watched the Sumo Wrestling in Ryogoku, visited a maid cafe in Akihabara and crossed the famous crossing in Shibuya. My feet are killing me! The Meiji shrine was fascinating, a lovely and quiet Shinto shrine in a secluded wooded park near Harajuku train …
Arrived!
We arrived safe and sound after a typically eventful journey (me and Ben ended up sitting next to some reprehensible yardie bloke who spent the first hour apparently talking on the phone about a murder and beatings he was involved in, then about the hygiene certificate he’s trying to get). The flight wasn’t too bad, we …
Japan.
In 21 hours and 22 minutes I’ll be setting off to Heathrow with Mat and Ben to jet off to Japan. I’ve wanted to go to Japan for a while; the culture is fascinating to me, not least as a result of all the Haruki Murakami books I’ve read. It seems that on one hand you …
A Sunset Over Leeds
I took this with my tripod from our apartment balcony the other night. I ended up using Quicktime Pro to arrange and encode the video as windows movie maker really let itself down in terms of quality. Also, it was a good test of my re-written intervalometer script which is more compatible with the Canon …