You are currently viewing all entries tagged "tokyo".
There are a total of 22 entries in the blog tagged "tokyo". This is about 5 % of the total number of entries on the blog.
Click on the title of any entry below to jump to that entry.
Street Style II
The lovely Beckz. Shot on and around the streets of Jiyugaoka and inside of the delicious Sweets Forest and Spoon Bread Cafe because she graduated pastry school, so naturally we had to hit up some cake shops.
Street Style I
A few shots of the lovely Maya taken last week in Tokyo... I really want this lens, but for the time being I'm shooting with this and this. Oh, and this for the catchlights.
Kichijoji
I debated for a while whether to title this a Sky Worship post or not, but in the end decided that it wasn't focused enough to merit the title. Actually, there's not much to this post in general. I stopped by Kichijoji the other day, one of my favourite neighborhoods in Tokyo to take a few photos with a friend. This random smattering of pictures is the result.
Tokyo B&W
I woke up at 5:20 AM this morning and decided to take the day off to attend to the huge pile of things I had to do that have built up over the past month. I started out making some pretty decent progress but then when lunch rolled around I took a break to surf the net whilst stuffing my face and sort of lost my momentum. One of the things I've been meaning to do is update the blog, and so here I am, trying to regain my motivation to churn though the list of things for today. I spent a few minutes trying to think of what to write about, but nothing particular came to my mind. So instead, I decided to clear out a bunch of B&W photos I had laying around from various places in Tokyo. I don't like to mix them in with colour photos, so they sit and wait for posts like this where I can clear them out in one go.
Daikanyama Blue Skies - Sky Worship VIII
It's been a while since we've had a good Sky Worship post, hasn't it? Besides Harajuku, Daikanyama has got to be one of my favourite little neighborhoods in Tokyo. I actually posted a few photos of the area last year, but it occurred to me that it probably deserved its own sky-themed post as well. In addition to all the great boutiques and cafes that line its streets, Daikanyama features (much like ura-harajuku) a ton of fantastic white buildings that look stunning against those blue blue skies of Tokyo that I love so much.
Takao-san
I did however, decided to take a quick little trip over to Takao-san, a beautiful mountain in western Tokyo. It's a popular destination amongst Tokyo-ites due to its proximity and also relative accessiblity - unlike Fuji-san, you can easily tackle it in a day without even having to get up early and you don't need any extra gear. Its popularity is a double-edged sword however, because it's often crowded on weekends and holidays, and I was a bit apprehensive to tackle it during Golden Week because I was pretty sure the place would be swarming with tourists. But that's true no matter where you go in Japan during Golden Week, so without further ado, my lovely traveling companion and I decided to head over bright and early on a Monday, figuring that most people would have hit it up on the preceding Saturday or Sunday.
Tamachi Skate Park
It was beautiful weather last weekend (rare, given how freezing it's been this winter) and to take advantage of the opportunity mother nature had seen fit to bless us with, a friend and I grabbed our cameras and headed over to the Tamachi neighborhood of Tokyo to snap a few shops of some skater boys doing their thing at the local skateboard park.
Quiet streets
My mind ended up turning to thoughts about my blog, life and future these days (not necessarily in that order, mind you). It's been almost 7 years since I moved to Japan and I thought that by now I'd know what I want to do with my life. Sadly, this does not appear to be the case. I think the core issue is that I'm a fickle panda: this is a blessing in that I have many and multi-varied interests, but also a curse because I tire of things quickly. Every time I think I have found something I want to do with my life, three weeks later I decide it's not really for me and I stop working towards it.
Akihabara-Ochanomizu Pt. I
And while I have been to both places quite a few times (the former because I have an obsession with cameras (like this one, for example), and the latter for business), I had actually never walked between them - which seems a shame, given that they are located right next to each other. Plus, in most big cities, the most interesting spots are not necessarily those right in front of the major train stations (since that landscape tends to be dominated by the same homogenous chain stores that can afford the pricey real estate), but rather in the areas just outside or between the "station zones."
A few from Tuesday
It was gorgeous autumn weather out last Tuesday, and there are few better places to take advantage of it than the myriad of cafes lining the winding streets between Shibuya and Daikanyama. Thus my spiffy new $14 puffar vest and I headed over to see how much caffeine I could cram down my throat. I managed 8 cups of espresso in various forms over the course of 12 hours, though I stopped being able to hold the camera steady long before that....It was, in every way, a wonderful day.
Ura-Harajuku Part I
But for now, something a little bit different. There are a lot of fun places to see in Tokyo (one of the reasons I like it so much) - some more familiar to Westerners than others. One of the neighborhoods that got a lot of attention back in the states a few years back (thanks to Gwen Steffani, I suppose) is Harajuku. I happen to like Harajuku quite a bit as it packs a lot of interesting stuff, but sometimes people only scratch the surface - i.e. the two main drags of Ometesando-dori and Takeshita-dori - of what it has to offer. Those places are quite nice in and of themselves and you could do worse than to spend some time (and money) walking down them. However, in my opinion, it's the back streets of Harajuku - known as "Uraharajuku" (or "Urahara" for short) that are far more interesting than the more commonly visited Takeshita and Omotesando streets. In addition to countless hip clothing stores (a veritable paradise for a tragic fashion victim such as myself and a prime reason why I'm perpetually broke), this area also features some pretty great cafes, and is inhabited by some of the trendiest cats around, if you're into people watching.
2009 World Bicycle Messenger Championships
I'll be back with the next set of pictures from the Yokohama Birthday Bash and of course the next installment of the Great 2008 Cross Japan Autumn Roadtrip soon, but first I just wanted to post a few pictures from the 2009 World Bicycle Messenger Championships held in Odaiba, Tokyo last week. I had wanted to catch the track stand and skid competitions in particular, but I got there pretty late last Wednesday, so all I managed to see was the tail end of one of the sprint competitions.
570 Days of Summer - Sky Worship VII
The reason I even decided to calculate how many days of summer I've spent in these fair isles is that recently we've been having some absolutely kick ass summer weather in Tokyo (seriously, the skies have been ridiculously beautiful) and as I headed out the door to snap some pictures from the top of the Mori Tower in Roppongi Hills (one of my favourite photography spots) on a particularly fantastic - albeit sweltering - summer day, it struck me that this year I've been a lot more active this summer than in all the other summers past combined.
Sunday Skies - Sky Worship VI
Speaking of taking more pictures, I happened to be out in Shinjuku last Sunday doing that whole "make the most out of my time in Japan" thing when I lucked into some of the most beautiful blue skies I have seen to date. I say "lucked into" because the weather forecast from the previous day said it was supposed to be gloomy and rainy all day - and it was anything but. I pointed my camera upward and just started snapping away at the always imposing Takashimaya and its fantastic concrete and steel skyward projection.
Tiny Planets
Spring is slowly making its way to Japan (even though today was a freezing cold day), and I decided to take advantage of the nice weather last week to make some so-called "tiny planets" pictures. Most of these pictures were taken in the vast Showa Memorial Park in Tachikawa, out West of Tokyo. You might remember this park from a visit I took last Autumn, pictures of which you can see here
Ameyoko
I'll post the next installment of the Great Western Japan Autumn Roadtrip soon, but for now, a quick interlude of some rainy pictures from Ameyoko in the Ueno neighborhood of Tokyo.
Cold Tokyo Days
It's been cold and sort of gloomy off and on recently in Tokyo. There have been some intermittent days of sunshine as well, but for the most part it's just been that long, dull, slow drag through the middle of January.
I know I haven't updated in forever, but that's because I've been working on the grand site redesign I've been talking about since last year. As some of you may have noticed, I haven't updated my moblog in almost a year, primarily because the script that powers it just sort of stopped working one day. Unfortunately, that script is written in Perl, a language I don't know, so that kind of was that.
Showa Memorial Park
It's Autumn! And on top of that, only 4 more days until I set off on the great Western-Japan Autumn Road Trip 2008! I guess I should probably start thinking about packing and stuff, huh?
Until then, to tide you over, here are some pictures from a recent trip out to Showa Memorial Park just west of Tokyo. I love this park - it's so huge and you wouldn't believe you are still in the greater Tokyo area when you're standing in the middle of it, surrounded by all the nature and trees.
Tokyo Throwaway Pics
Originally I had a moment of photographic inspiration this evening whilst taking a break from fighting my computer (Adobe InDesign to be specific) in an attempt to make a few hundred name tags for a seminar I have to organize for work. Normally this is a straightforward data merge operation, but due to a comedic series of mishaps, this task has ended up taking me the better part of two days (at one memorable juncture I created a 400 MB, 563 page document which contained the same personnel information 10 times on each page) including the 5 hours I spent today cutting out name tags and stuffing them into lanyard holders. I never want to see another damn name tag so long as I live.
The Hard Light Blowout and Nuno Napkin Extravaganza
You're probably wondering about the title of today's post. Well, I've been playing around with "hard lighting" in some of my photos to give them a darker, more atmospheric feeling. I've accumulated a few over the past couple of months, and decided to post them all in one big entry so I can clear the deck for new photos in future posts. Hence the "hard light blowout".
Shinjuku Birthday Panda ver. Blue Skies
Yeah, so I haven't updated in forever...! What else is new? So what has happened recently, you ask? Well, for one thing, I became another year older. Sadly, I am starting to run out of birthdays in which I can still refer to myself as a "20-something" year old. That's not so good. Adding to the glumness of it all, if my plans for next year still hold, it means that I've got less than 365 days left here in Japan. That my friends, was enough to drive me into something of a depressed state for a while. Sigh. I don't want to leave Japan, but...
August Break
What has panda been up to the past couple of weeks since his last update? Well, it involves delicious chocolate cake, dodging baseballs to the face and power flexing in Starbucks. Interested? (umm, I hope so, or else this will be a boring entry! *laughs*) Let's get into it!