Speaking of snow in Tokyo, the other day the trucked in some serious piles of the white stuff where some folks crafted them into snowmen that are real works of art.
Mr. Pink was there with his camera and he kindly shares with us what he saw. . .
Last week it snowed briefly in Tokyo on my way to work. I love snow but it doesn’t snow in Tokyo that much any more these days.
Are you a window-gazer? Can you spend long, contented periods just staring at not much at all? Or perhaps you crave a view that your window lacks?
For me a decent view is one of the joys of no longer being a city-dweller. It’s one of the reasons (along with fear of crowds, dislike of crowded public transport, and loathing of most Japanese urban architecture) that, despite living in Japan a few years, I’d never been to the capital or anywhere near it, until last month. And being a bit short of ready cash prior to Christmas, I regarded a recent overnight stay in Tokyo as something to be endured, rather than as any sort of opportunity.
But allow me to pass on a tip that a friend gave me, knowing my liking for all things cheap or preferably free.
Following my friend’s advice, I found myself in a lift, heading for the top of 東京都庁 (Tokyo Tochou - Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building) in Shinjuku. Being a bumpkin with vertigo, I don’t recall ever being in a building much higher than 10 floors, but here I was in a viewing gallery on the dizzying 45th floor. And that affords quite a view.
In every direction.
Mrs Overoften and I spent a wordless age gazing out of those windows. Although the 都庁 itself is closed in the evening, the viewing gallery stays open until 11pm (as I recall, but I’d check times and days first if I were you). And entrance is free.
Incidentally, if you find yourself at Haneda airport early in the morning in the right weather, there’s quite a view from their rooftop viewing gallery too (Open air, though. No windows!)
Check out this young lady’s hot licks on the accordian.
Koharu is 19 years old and is also a member of a street band named Minority Orchestra (Japanese page).
If you are lucky, you can catch her live at Tokyo’s Ueno Park.
As we reported on here and here, Japan recently instituted a new system for dealing with illegal parking. From this year the government started subcontracting the task of dealing with illegally parked vehicles to private firms employing traffic wardens.
I must say that I personally found a dramatic drop in the number of parked vehicles interfering with the flow of traffic in the Shinjuku area when the wardens first hit the streets earlier this year, but these day I get the impression that either the illegal parkers either have become smarter or they have greased the requisite palms. Things don’t seem to be to be any different now from what they were before the new system was implemented.
If you want to read another perspective on how Japan is dealing with illegal parking, check out this in special to The Japan Times by Peter Lyon, a 20-year motor journalist who covers the Japanese automotive industry.
[Are the] traffic wardens, who look like overgrown leprechauns in their bright-green uniforms with “Traffic Warden — Metropolitan Police Department” emblazoned in huge characters across their backs, making a difference? Definitely yes. Unlike the police, whose reserves were stretched to the limit, the private firms put more wardens on the streets, allowing them to cover more ground more often. Illegal parking is down and motorists are searching out metered parking bays. Since the wardens were first employed back in mid-2006, police records reveal that the number of illegally parked vehicles along 10 major Tokyo thoroughfares — including Shinjuku-dori, Meiji-dori and Harumi-dori — has dropped by 65 percent from 1,051 to 363. Metropolitan Police Department data also shows that the average length of traffic congestion on 10 major highways in Tokyo has fallen by 25 percent from 12 km to 9 km (parking a car on a street that doesn’t have bays blocks off an entire lane of traffic). Strangely, though, it appears from the same data that the average time it takes to drive 5 km on central Tokyo thoroughfares has only fallen by 1 min 5 secs — meaning it still takes nearly 18 1/2 mins to travel just 5 km.
And since we are on the subject of parking, check out this video on one guy’s parking spot in Korea.
The popular Blue Man Group is coming to Japan in December and will be performing here throughout next spring in a special theater being prepared for them in Roppongi.
The Blue Man Group was created in New York City back in the late 1980s, when its three founding members, including Matt Goldman, started to give street performances.
In 1991, the three men painted themselves in blue from the neck up and started to give comical performances. Since then, the show has gained constant popularity over the past 16 years, and now eight cities across the globe have hosted the show.
I have never seen these guys live, but the bits of their act that I have caught on TV make me interested enough that I will probably run in to the Big-T to catch their show.
In case you have not seen it yet, check out this amazing dance trooper routine performed by Danny Choo, a guy that likes to show up at places dressed up as an intergalactic storm trooper.
Big thanks to Len Cullum, a talented woodworker who specializes in Japanese-style works.
And now for something completely different (as they say)…
Hitotoki: a narrative map of Tokyo.
Police are getting ready to perform an autopsy on a human leg, severed at the thigh, that was found recently floating in a river in downtown Tokyo.
Local police are set to examine how it was severed from its body.
Noting that many boats pass through the area as it is connected with the Sumida River, investigators pointed to the possibility that the leg was severed by the propeller of one of the boats.
No word yet on whether anyone has reported missing a leg.
“We need to improve (taxi drivers’) working conditions to continue to offer safe and convenient services.”
Land, Infrastructure and Transport Minister Tetsuzo Fuyushiba at a news conference announcing the government’s plan to allow Tokyo taxi companies, hit hard by gasoline prices and dwindling ridership, to raise initial taxi fares from 660 to 710 yen.
The 40th Tokyo Motor Show opens in Chiba City on October 26, and this little number is said to be one of the concepts to be presented at the show.
It’s called the Suzuki Biplane, and is powered by a V4. Other than that, no other details appear to be available yet, but I would imagine the styling is what’s supposed to make the impact.
Tickets for the show are ¥1300 on the door (1100 in advance) for adults and ¥600 (500 in advance) for kids (junior/senior high - otherwise free).
Japan has taken one more step away from its claim on being one of the safest countries in the world with the revelation that a Tokyo man has been arrested for building an explosive device with the intention of setting it off on a commuter train.
Yoshihiro Terasawa, 38, facing charges of violating the explosives control law, has admitted to making and possessing the explosives but has denied intending to detonate them, saying, “I was not going to harm people or their assets.”
One of the prosecutors said in an opening statement that Terasawa “was thinking about detonating the explosives on a commuter train on Seibu Railway Co.’s Shinjuku Line, on which the defendant’s nearest station is located, after reading about a method for manufacturing the explosives on the Internet.”
Prosecuters are claiming that Terasawa was envious of other people because he was unable to secure steady employment. Apparently, reports about the deadly 2005 suicide bombings in London served as inspiration.
Sorry for all the video clips of late, but I am snowed under with work an a video clip is. . . well. . . worth a thousand words.
Anyway, check out this effort by someone who edited 35 years of photographs of the Shinjuku skyline into a 10-second video clip. Cool!
I took my first trip to Japan in 2004. When I got back to New York I found that I missed being there and seeing all the unique things about it, especially seeing what people are wearing on the street. Tokyo people really put themselves together well and you really notice it when you come back in the USA.
Anyway, when I got back I searched the Internet for websites about Japan and found a couple that were just pictures of everyday people on the street. One of them was Japanese Streets. At the time the website was a little difficult to navigate so I never really got hooked on it, but today I got an email in my Inbox stating that they’ve just relaunched the site with a new design and more content. I just looked at it and now it looks like a real website 
They have pictures of regular people (not fashion models) on the street and they’ve kept their old archives online which could be interesting if you want to see what Japanese people were wearing in 2004. They even added videos and some other stuff, too. I don’t have any affiliation with the site and I don’t know the guys who run it, I just think it’s a cool website if you like this kind of thing.
Aren’t those precious expressions priceless? In this photo from the Mainichi, we have, on the left, Mariko Amano, “a sports and health advisor”, and on the right, Ram, a 3-month-old French bulldog.
Mariko runs “an oxygen salon”, Air Press, in Tokyo, which claims to “slow down human aging”, so it was a natural step to open “a ‘Dogs O2′ capsule for pet dogs’ relaxation.”
A 30-minute treatment for a dog costs 2,000 yen, and assuming that this is post-treatment, you can’t deny that our Ram does indeed look pretty blissed out.
I’ve never actually met anyone who has heaps of money yet doesn’t want it, but they’re evidently out there. I just wish I could get to them first.
The Mainichi reports that a square metre of land in Tokyo’s Ginza district can now fetch just short of 25 million yen.
According to the National Tax Agency, this makes it “the most expensive plot of land facing a major road in Japan”, which seems a rather odd designation, but it’s number one nevertheless. Land prices have risen by up to 33% in that area in the last year.
The Japan Times has published a story about Shun Akida, a reporter who is investigating the tunnels that lie beneath Tokyo and the possibility that there is are hidden tunnels that are being deliberately concealed from the public.
The bulk of Shun’s book covers the development of the subway system and questions the many inconsistencies between maps of the past and present — even those that were contemporaneous. “Even allowing for errors, there are too many oddities.”
Shun claims to have uncovered a secret code that links a complex network of tunnels unknown to the general public. “Every city with a historic subterranean transport system has secrets,” he says. “In London, for example, some lines are near the surface and others very deep, for no obvious reason.”
Sitting on the Ginza subway from Suehirocho to Kanda, he says, you can see many mysterious tunnels leading off from the main track. “No such routes are shown on maps.” Traveling from Kasumigaseki to Kokkai-gijidomae, there is a line off to the left that is not shown on any map. Nor is it indicated in subway construction records.
The full article can be found here.
GamesBids.com reports that Governor Ishihara unveiled the logo for Tokyo’s stab at hosting the 2016 Olympic Games yesterday.
Looks like an awareness ribbon of some description to my eyes.
SunShine Co. Ltd., a security firm in Tokyo, is planning to market a home earthquake warning device from this coming October.
The size of a paperback book, the EQGuard accesses data from the early warning system network maintained by the Japan Meteorological Agency (JAMA) via the Internet and sounds a loud countdown up to 20 seconds before an earthquake starts.
According to SunShine, the countdown should give people warning enough to allow them to duck under a table, turn off fires, etc.
The appliance sends alerts once it detects primary waves, or the first waves of an earthquake that do not cause major rattling but travel faster than the secondary waves that are responsible for the actual shaking.
The alerts could precede the shaking by 10 to 20 seconds, although the period would be much shorter — and in some cases absent — if the tremor’s center is near.
I don’t know. . . To me it sounds like that old George Carlin routine in which he imagines a two-minute warning before we die. Two minutes before you check out, a voice goes off in your head, “You’ve got two minutes. . . Get your sh*t together. . .”
Via The Raw Feed.
Justin Diamond who runs a blog called The Life Nippon and who reported a while back on his Krispy Kreme adventure recently took a trip over to the newly opened Burger King in Tokyo.