I still have a few more pictures to put up from my other camera, but these are most of them. Sorry, but you might have to turn your head sideways for some of these. Maybe I'll fix that later.
First, some of the view from Sarah's apartment:
Next, we went to Yamagata (Mountain... what's gata? kata? town?). I suppose all I posted from that were a couple flowing waterfall pictures which struck me as nice... a very nice shot of Sarah, and I just _barely_ got a picture of the round sun disappearing behind the mountain. There was about 1/3 of it when Sarah pointed it out, but the whole thing was gone in under a minute. Still cool. Last, check out Sarah's Cube ;-)
Natto. Ohh, natto, my love. Fermented soy beans. The Japanese mix the beans, a little soy sauce and mustard into a small bowl, whip it into a booger-filled ball of snot and slurp it up as they eat rice. ewwww.... I mix it in with my rice, and that's how I love it! (The drier the rice the better, since any moisture with the natto makes it snotty. Some snottiness is ok though.)
Sarah's boyfriend Daisuke and me. I like him :-)
Queue jump to Korea... first and almost only images. I love the first city-skape pictures, and the sign. Shows what the Koreans are worried about: no the drug- and alcohol-free school zone, but the GREEN FOOD ZONE! ... hah. I dunno ;-) But that did look like a school on the other side of that wall.
And that is most of my pictures from Korea.
Here I am, back in Japan, taking the Narita Express from the airport to Tokyo, where I'd be staying for the next week. A week is _NOT_ enough time to experience anything, anywhere -- not Sendai, not Korea, not Tokyo. This should have been a 2-3 month trip.
First up, there are a _lot_ of rice fields near Narita before you get to Tokyo. It makes me feel like I'm in the train in Spirited Away. Some lovely Japanese-style houses in 5252 and 5253. It also shows that while Japnaese land is packed, crowded, and used fully, a lot of it is used for agriculture. Not in the cities though. More pictures along these lines if you ask for them.
Kanae and I went to ... somewhere near Utsunomiya for some pottery :-) We went, made clay cups (still waiting... takes a month(!) to fire it), wandered around the area. They had a lot of ... well, pots and stuff. The dishes and everything were all very pretty, like, wowzers, and the old Japanese house (which was apparently _not_ a temple) was amazing too. Check it out.
Oh, and the (not) bears with large stubby penises and ENORMOUS testicles... I dunno. Kanae didn't really know either.
On the way back from pottery, I looked out the back window and said, "That mountain's beautiful." So we stopped and snapped a couple pictures of it. Wyoming is brown, prairy, lacks trees. Japan is covered in trees, green everywhere.. just gorgeous.
While we stopped, I thought I'd get a few more pretty pictures :-)
Then Kanae took the camera and got a few. I think we need someone to edit these images -- they're too.. separate..
Ohhh hey, the Japanese porn. I just happened to notice it on my way to one of the hostels I was going to stay at. They were sold out (the hostel), so I stayed there a different night. Notice the content, notice the location. The decorative brick road is suggestive of it being in a relatively nice place.. and in fact this was less than two blocks from a small amusement park. I stayed one night at that hostel, and in the morning on my way out I noticed a woman walking with a friend and holding her son's hand as they walked in front of it. The son looked up, mildly interested, the two women just kept talking to each other, no one batted an eye. Just different, so I noticed.
I thought they were just hotels with cool signs. Kanae asked me, "You know what those are, right?" ... "Hotels with cool signs?" "They're love hotels." Oh :-)
At the hostel I stayed at most of the time I was there, top (5th) floor, just pictures from the balcony. No smoking on the balcony!
Ohhh, the high point of my trip!! Kanae and I hung out the last day I was in Japan. "Think of some things for us to do in Tokyo," she said. So I did. After all of those things didn't work out, I was like, "... we could walk around a park." And she took me to the emperor's palace. Great fun, and we layed in the grass.
Tokyo Tower. Lit up and pretty-like. I imagine it's mostly a tourist attraction, though it does serve to broadcast television and such too.
Pictures from 150m up in the tower, the lower observation area. It goes all around, so you can see a 360 degree view of Tokyo. I love the night pictures, and the detail is great. I keep seeing things in the thumbnails -- horns, bodies, various images that aren't actually there when I click to view the whole picture. I like that, too.
There was a monitor with information about what you could see out that window -- buildings, distances, heights, day/night view, 16th centure Tokyo maps overlayed with modern day satellite images, etc. The whole thing was on a like.. 24 or 27 inch touchscreen monitor. Touch, scroll, touch, scroll... cool. So there's where that Japanese technology can be found.
My first meal cooked at home when I got back. Just to show any interested Japanese ;-) Spaghetti (I hadn't added the pepper yet), toast, and a glass of wine. Nothing too extravagant, but a lot of food (that was hard to eat all of... ugh).
Other camera, Sarah holding an orange. For the Asians, an American orange is maybe 3/4 that size.
Back at the top, this was on our trip to Yamagata. Towards the beginning we stopped at a rest area to try and find a map of where we were going. They just "happened" to have ice cream, too. I got vanilla oreo cookie, Sarah got, er... rosemary?
Yamagata. Mountains.. and logging.. and coffee, oh my! (The Japanese says.. somethingsomething soba (noodles).)
I think I was trying to show the density of buildings and such in Japan with these.
Also, the density of people on the _average_ subway run -- all day long. I think this was rush hour, but it's the same at 11 AM, 2PM, 7PM, whenever. Sadly, I never got to try the Tokyo subway rushhour -- just didn't have enough time. I wanted to be crammed in like a sardine. There were a couple times that I didn't have any space to move at all, but never squishing :-/
Begin Korea pictures, take 2. Here I was taking pictures of the 4-way hologram. In the last one, I couldn't help but note how science, technology and acadamia were so highly regarded it was printed on the money... wow. I'm impressed.
Taking random pictures of the airport, the 30 minute ride to Seoul, there was an amazing bridge (that you can't see) in some of these, then just... some busses and city pictures. Interesting advertisements.
^-- Those pictures were from my trip _into_ Seoul. These pictures are from my trip _out_ of Seoul --v. I'm such a terrible tourist ;-) Tried to show some of the city, some of the business, and the bus sto I was waiting at... a man pulled up, and asked me and the woman beside me to move so that he could clean the windows. He sloshed water all over them, and the bench, apparently making it more dirty than they were to begin with, half-assedly squeegied them off, leaving water spots all over. Note that Family Mart is everywhere. Except the US.
Awaiting the Shinkansen to Utsunomiya to go make a cup with Kanae :-) I wanted to take pictures of the tracks and such -- they've always made me curious. You see, the electricity for the trains runs through the wires on top. Note, though, the gear of some sort around the tracks -- wires and cables and tubes and pipes all seem to run directly into the steel of the rails. Not pictured here, there are small pipes, or maybe bars, that links the two rails where they come dogether. I wonder if it's oil, as the links are _far_ too filthy to be electrical. Huh. In 2149, they look like copper ingots. They must be made to look like wood, but they're cast and polished metal. Really nice looking.
Japanese convenience store porn. Don't worry -- the kids are protected from the horrible atrocity of the human body by the sheets of paper they put on the side of the rack saying "Adults Only" or some such :-)
The start of my 3 hours in Osaka. I'm curious what this is. I sprikled a little bit on the food, and it was... weird food. The owner told me that the food would be very spicy -- mix some other stuff in to sweeten it a bit. I started eating, ok, not bad. A few bites in, my mouth... became backwards. I drank some water, it was ice cold but hurt and was hot. I ate some rice, it was hot but felt cold. The sauce was... just neutral. I couldn't figure it out. Phil told me, though, that that's what'll happen if you have too much chili pepper. On the way out they asked me if it was spicy. No, but.... it messed my mouth up for about half an hour.
Some pole to keep bikes or some such off the sidewalk, I think. It was made of rubber. Cool :-) Queue the end of Osaka.
Now that's just weird... I took a picture with the camera facing the other way, and so my script turned this one upside down. It's a toilet. With a toilet seat. With a toddler toilet seat.
Start Akihabara pictures. Induction heating rice cookers... I want one!!! *drooooolll*
A small temple either I or Kanae and I found while walking around. Sadly, the best quality one is upside down. I may fix that someday.
Kanae introduced me to some new Miyazaki stuff.. I need to look this movie up. One other, too. They look(ed) good :-) It turns out there's a Studio Ghibli museum in the Tokyo area that was quite accessible to me, so I looked up tickets and such... and found out they were closed for renovations for a week and a half, completely encompassing my time in Tokyo. :-/
Ok, I almost have (bad) anime hair. Kanae's got her eyes closed, I'm hunching like an old man... but at least it wasn't blurry like this camera takes all the time. Good company, good place, definitely the highlight of my trip.
And here is... chili pepper pizza. The chili peppers were sliced almost hair-thin.
FINALLY! We managed to get ONE (and a half) pictures of us together!!
Actually, here are three more -- we stopped on the way back from Tokyo Tower and took a picture with a temple behind us. But it didn't flash. So I tried again. And then I really looked at it, made sure the flash was on, set the timer, got ready, and... waited... and... nothing. I think the battery was too low. Well, enjoy!
Last morning in Tokyo, walking back from some stores in Akihabara, I just noticed the bridge. It has cables .. doing.. nothing? I imagine they're to keep components of the bridge from collapsing to the road in event of a major earthquake... for some reason.. but I really don't know. I took this picture because I missed the one with _really_thick_ ropes in the same configuration.Anyone?
And there you have it... my most recent trip to Japan.