Tokyo #5: Loco Roco

One of the things on my shopping list for Japan was the PSP video game, Loco Roco. It's only available in Japan although I've since learned that it's coming to the US Sept 5th. I still like having the Japanese version - it's more authentic and it makes me practice reading Japanese!
The game has become one of my all time favorites. Not that the game itself is so great, its ok. It's the combination of game, graphics, and music that make so perfect. The style is very simple and graphic but it fit the quirky gameplay. You only use the right and left buttons to tilt the world and make Loco Roco roll right or left. But it's the music and sound effects that really shine. I've had the songs on my mind ever since I first played it. They're wonderfully annoying. I'm not the only one that is so effected. My friend Roy in Tokyo blogged about the infectious music as well. At first I thought they were singing in Japanese but actually it's all made up.
The follow YouTube video will show you what I'm talking about. Warning! If you play it more then once you will be humming it for the rest of the day!

Tokyo Trip #4: Tsukiji

Tsukiji Fish Market is one of the big tourist spots in Tokyo. What says Japan more then tons and tons of fresh fish as well as every other imaginable (and unimaginable) sea animal. Tsukiji is the largest fish market in Japan - it's huge. All the guide books say that you have to be there by 6am or it will be all over, especially the tuna auctions. It's a real working market so the tourists have to be constantly aware of the men on their motorized carts buzzing around at high speeds. The man in the photo is inspecting the fish. He and the others would walk up and down the rows, flip up a flap of tuna flesh, shine a flashlight on it, then move on. It seems to me that they were doing more 'busy work' then actually inspecting.

The second photo is of an ice block making machine. It really caught my eye because, by the look of it, it's been faithfully churning out ice blocks for probably 100 years. I believe the sign on front is the pricing.

After the market we had tempura soba (noodles) at a nearby stall along the street. Usually people go for the freshest sushi on Earth in the resturants surrounding Tsukiji, but neither of us were up for raw fish for breakfast at 7am.

Tsukiji on Wikipedia
My photos on Flickr

Velodrome

I went with 4 co-works that I ride bike with to a local velodrome in Blaine, MN. One of the guys actually races there weekly and the others were just trying it out. I opted to take photos instead but I'm willing to admit that the track scares me a bit. The end embankments are 42 degrees then tapper down - but not much. The other scary thing is that they were using real track bikes that don't have the ability to coast. So you always have to be turning the pedals or else the pedals will start turning you! Crazy! After watching it for the first time, I thought that it looked kinda fun. But it will still be a while before I'll try it.

Mostly I went along to try out my new 70-200mm Canon zoom. It's an awesome lens that I got just before the Tokyo trip. I wanted to try it out on active subjects because I don't have a lot of experience doing that. With the longer lens I could get farther away and keep them in focus more easily. It was still hard though and I missed many many times. Got to love deleting on the fly. The auto focus was never fast enough. By the time it ranged the subject they were already closer and out of focus. It worked better to use manual focus, find a spot to set the focus, then shot as they entered that zone of focus. The photo finish shot on the left was a rapid fire shot of 4 frames. that I combined in Photoshop. They weren't really racing each other.

The rest of my photos are on Flickr

Tokyo Trip #3: Toilet, Part 1

Home bath rooms and toilets are far more high tech then anything in the US and our apartment was no different. Please note that I said bathroom and toilet separately because in Japan they are their own rooms. They may not even be close to each other.
Most all Japanese home toilets have a hand washing bowl on top of the tank as you can see in the photo. With each flush, new water first goes through the top where you can rinse your hands, then is collected in the main tank as normal . This way there is no wasted water. Why isn't this used here in America? The flush handle has a large flush and a small flush for either solid or liquid flushes - you with me? Again, ingenious!

Our apartment toilet also had the high tech option of a build in bidet complete with a Captain Kirk control pad on the side. There were not one but 2 different stream options as can be seen in the icons - with the stop button on the left. It was a first for both of us. Linda is a convert, I am not.




The separate bath area was no less high tech. It had a typical Japanese bath, or furu, and a shower head with the entire room being water proof. The bath is really deep but only big enough to sit in, no stretching out here. The bath was filled once for the week and because we showered before entering, it was always clean. Again, in the hopes of saving water. The contol planel on the wall could control the temp of the bath and the shower separately and the black panel on the top was the LCD TV. There was also a duplicate control panel in the kitchen so that we could warm up the bath when we got up in the morning. Great for those cold winter mornings! Once again Linda was totally sold on the Japanese style bath however I stuck to just the shower. We both liked the bath TV.


Yes, the title says part 1 because I will be posting more about toilets.

Tokyo Trip #2: Apartment

Our friend Dan's Japanese cousin, Harumi, graciously helped us get an apartment for the week in the trending area of Shibuya. The apartment was a short 4 minute walk from Shinsen subway stations but it also ended up being only about 10 minutes by foot to the much larger and better connected Shibuya station. Chances are that if you've seen a photo of a bustling Tokyo street it might have been right outside Shibuya station. We ending up using the closer Shinsen station only twice. Shinsen would be a great area to live. Every day we walked by many nice resturants and bars (more on those later) and there was also a good sized market.










Our apartment was small but quite comfortable. Actually it was small by US standards but fairly typical of a Tokyo apartment. As a general rule, it's important to distinguish Tokyo from the rest of Japan just like New York standards of living must be distinguished from the rest of America. It was far better then either of the previous places I had lived in while working in Japan. We even had our own clothes washer.
It was such a bonus to have an apartment instead of a hotel room because it allowed Linda to get a feel for how it is to live in Japan. She's been in hundreds of hotel rooms so that experience would have been about the same as everywhere else. The apartment also ended up being far cheaper then a Tokyo hotel would have been. We were extremely lucky to have Harumi san find it for us.

Tokyo Trip #1: Portland Layover

Before we got to Tokyo, we did a layover in Porland, OR to visit my high school friends Jeff and Lisa Steffl. We arrived Saturday afternoon and after a few hours at their home we headed out onto the Columbia River on their beautiful boat. Their 3 kids joined us as well. We cruised up the river a ways and beached on a sand bar with
50 or so other boaters. It was a great afternoon and we enjoyed cracking a few beers and talking with old friends. The next morning we were off for Tokyo. An all to short stop but so worth the little extra effort to get there. Jeff has bug me for 20 year about when I was going to visit. I'm slow but I eventually come through.

Tokyo Trip

On July 24 Linda and I took a trip to Tokyo. For me it was a return trip. 12 years ago I taught English in Japan and have not been back since. Linda had never been to Japan. We walked all over Tokyo for 6 days to look at things really old and super modern. That is the great thing about Japan and Tokyo, they embrace the future while holding on to the past.

Instead of the typical cronological travel log, I've decided to instead post some of the more interesting things we saw in no particular order. They will probably not be very 'touristy' and at times might not even seem relevent, but hopely it will be an insight into what I find fascinating about the city I call my third home. It was most definitely be visual. I've got 4 gigbits of photos!