Here is a montage of all the best photos from the Japan7 trip. I am slowly adding one of these to the top of each of my huge trip reports.
OMG its a montage!
Melbourne airport via skybus to the Singapore Airlines lounge
3rd year in a row going to Japan at this time.
Decaying leaf matter has proven far too exciting for me to resist so I must return and marvel at the colors.
This time I have a new camera, so expect some boring commentary on camera features and exposure times and shutter speeds and how the flip out screen is important.
Like nearly all my trips, this first post is the worst post, and worth skipping over. However since I am sitting in an airport trying not to eat cake, I must replace the temporary placeholder text with something less placeholder-y but none the less, still really placeholder for real text once I reach Japan.
I am going on Singapore Air again, because thats about the only international option other than Air New Zealand my frequent flyer points work on, and I am a terrible tight ass so instead of a ten hour trip for a few hundred dollars, I am enduring a 26 hour trip for free.
There will be a 5 hour stopover in Singapore, with similar photos to the last time I was stopping over there, probably the butterfly house, I think I am even wearing the same clothes. I buy new clothes roughly once every 11.5 years, click my previous trips for proof.
Heres some redundant photos but at least I took them today.
The first photo tradition continues. A photo from my apartment balcony. The terrible view blocking construction continues to be erected slowly. I will have to move soon, which is unfortunate.
I spend most of my rare days at home staring at those cranes waiting for them to topple into my bedroom, because cranes keep falling over in Australia lately.
Fortunately, my soon to be abandoned apartment is just a short walk to the train station, where you can catch trains to lots of places, except the airport.
Instead I have to get on a bus and go along the eternal highway construction site of prolonged damnation. I go on it twice a week to the airport for work, its terrible, once the construction is finished it will be no better as there is simply not enough room at the airport for so many cars to arrive.
Build a train you idiots.
Inside the bus is chaos with people falling over everywhere, bags toppling onto todlers, old women falling down the stairs to the upper level screaming. Its like trying to get to the airport in Mogadishu. Melbourne - worlds best city.
NO FOOD PICS today, I had fruit salad, same as last time I was in the Singapore lounge. I want to go for a walk rather than eat anyway, so no cake for me.
If I stay here I will eat cake.
Here I am, looking happy as ever. The other day I weighed 66.6kg, so proud, record low. People say thats too low, yet its smack in the middle of the healthy BMI range, everyone besides me is delusional. I am the only true source of truth on every topic, including all those mentioned herewith within. Rant over.
Melbourne to Singapore and the airport butterfly garden
As mentioned above, my 7.5 hour flight from Melbourne to Singapore was completely full, full of sickly horrible children.
Despite having a roomy seat, good food and all the ameneties you could want, the experience was cataclysmically bad.
First of all, some slight humor, before I describe in detail how I fantasized for hours about strangling small children.
Across the aisle from me there was an older Australian couple, heading off to a week in Singapore, the man was loudly telling every stewardess all he was going to do was pull up a stool at the Raffles club and drink Singapore slings until he passes out.
Well he and his wife decided to start early, and kept demanding drink after drink, they actually give you spirits in economy class.
Eventually they decided to stop serving them drinks, but then the next shift started and she gave them more, the main guy came over and told her in Chinese not to give these people any more alcohol because they are too drunk and getting silly - direct translation.
This had some of the Chinese speaking people nearby and me who pretends to speak Chinese laughing under our breath. Thats my 'I can speak Chinese' brag out of the way already.
Not to worry, a few minutes later the guy got up and retrieved a bottle of Johnny Walker from his hand luggage and they started drinking that out of a plastic tea cup.
My drunk countrymen were nothing though, nothing compared to the horror of horrible children.
How can you scream for 8 hours and not die? or be killed?
All around me children were competing to see who could be the most annoying, children too old to be behaving in such a manner.
One particular little girl would scream for an hour then start hurling abuse at her father, and he was even more useless, after every abusive thing she said he just would say 'enough' over and over.
Then this girl would fake choking and coughing fits, whilst the father yelled STOP NOW! STOP, STOP, STOP IT, NOW STOP, STOP NOW!
Meanwhile behind me, another child, screaming the whole time, was allowed to pull the remote thing out of the back of the seat, which is attached by a cable, and throw it around and pull on it, and scream into it.
He did this for at least 6 hours and the cable never broke! Fantastic engineering really when you think about it.
Finally, another little girl nearby seriously had whooping cough, and all the stewardesses fussed over her endlessly.
I wanted to throw all three of them out of the door at 40,000 feet.
Now I am in Singapore, for 5 hours, walking endlessly in a semi zombified state. Although I had an emergency, I needed to get my steps goal on my watch before midnight Melbourne time because I remember changing time zones on my watch causes a days data to be lost.
I just made it.
Still in Melbourne here, theres a wall of panda statues, I decided to pose with space panda.
This is the best photo I could get of my A330. I find them the most comfortable long haul plane, as the 2,4,2 seating means theres never more than 1 person to climb over you in economy.
The colors are wacky because of tinted glass.
Part of my epic 10km walk around Singapore airport. A sea of carpet.
Same spot looking the other way. Whoever won the carpet supply contract is rich.
As promised, here is the butterfly garden, shot from above, very high ISO on this photo (6400), handheld in the dark. Noisy probably, my eyes are too tired to tell.
I warned you there would be photo terminology nonsense.
This is the very disappointing Singapore airlines lounge. Their worst lounge is in Singapore. There is basically no food. No fruit at all.
Thats some really uninspiring photos so far, I better improve tomorrow, although I will be wandering around Tokyo on zero sleep.
There are currently 3 comments - click to add
David on 2017-10-21 said:
read above
I am right
everyone else is wrong
accept no compromises!!!
Phil on 2017-10-21 said:
I told you your BMI theories were wrong.????
on 2017-10-21 said:
You are too skinny
From Narita to Ikebukuro on the NEX
This is a kind of a micro update. Might even turn out to be one of the rare 3 update days.
The reason for this is I am now on the NEX train to Ikebukuro, one of the main centres of Tokyo, and despite it being a special airport express, it still takes about 90 minutes.
So I might as well type some more nonsense and share the last of my boring photos of things no one in their right mind would be interested in.
First the flight, what a contrast. This time it was a 777 rather than an A330, so it was very mechanically noisy and 9 across instead of 8 across seating, but there were no children, NONE. Its as if someone read my previous threats above and decided to remove them from the plane. I actually walked around and looked before landing, despite being a totally full flight, zero children.
The flight was full of teenage girls, both Japanese and Singaporean, as well as a few Australians who tended to be older, older then me and I am old.
It seems going to Japan is a thing for girls to do, so as I suspected, I am quite girly.
Then, I even managed to get some sleep, I am guessing about 3 hours, but that should be enough to keep me going for the remainder of today without behaving in a manner which is dangerous, such as falling down stairs, or crossing roads without looking due to extreme tiredness.
The immagration queues were fine, but then my bag was not there, I waited a long time, finally I decided to walk around the huge carousel thing and there was a Japanese woman holding a sign saying priority baggage in one hand, and my bag in the other.
I guess she had been standing there since before the regular bags even started coming out.
Here is my childless 777, after the earlier flight, the plane of my dreams.
As you can see, its pouring massive amounts of rain. The same thing happened last time I arrived in Japan on day 1 if I recall.
The forecast is better for tomorrow, yes I am talking about planes and weather.
Like I said above, the immigration queues were short, but this is the queue to activate a train pass for foreigners, it was not moving at all.
I wanted a different kind of pass, the kind you dont need to buy overseas and activate on landing, so I asked around and found I could go to the standard counter to get the JR All Tokyo 3 day pass.
Its about $100! But I plan a couple of long day trips on the next 2 days, weather permitting.
I am fully aware I am now taking photos of queues for lines I am not even in.
Here is my pocket WiFi thing. Generally I prefer this as I can leave my SIM in my phone to get authentication SMS messages to log into things I need to log into.
However I have found that global roaming seems to have been disabled on my SIM, which is strange, its always worked before.
Might be my hacked stolen rebirthed phone I bought off a Chinese woman on a street corner thats the issue.
Oh well, guess I cant log into my work email or any bank for a month.
Also look at my beautiful hands, I should model watches.
Also there is a reflection of my new camera and a reflection of myself, yet this photo should serve as no reflection on what quality photos should look like, including photos of reflections.
And here I am, I took this photo from a similar spot last time I arrived. I look considerably better this time despite my hair being out of control and appearing grey due to lighting.
Not the appearance of 3 chins, not pleased, yet I do not hide from the truth, as I am the true source of all truth. Fact.
Escaping a typhoon at Tokyo soup stock
More weather talk time, and hotel photos, brace yourself, but thats what happens on a 3 update day which is mainly travel.
It is raining, a lot, there are floods. Its raining so much there is actually a name for the rain, Typhoon Lan. However its really not windy, and by 9am tomorrow the sun is supposed to be out, time will tell.
I had at least 3 hours to kill in and around Ikebukuro station before I could check into my hotel, fortunately they were happy to store my bags, because I have walked a long way with my backpack, I think I have shrunk an inch from the pressure.
Unfortunately, Japan does not believe in awnings covering the street hanging from shops, presumably because you only have to rebuild them when the next natural disaster destroys them. What this meant today is that due to my morbid fear of umbrellas I periodically got wet.
I could have just stayed indoors, theres an underground mall to my hotel, but its too damn hot inside stores. This is all quite boring I am sure.
To kill time I enjoyed a non fatto matcha tea latte, which was delicious, the initial shock of grass taste is replaced with a lingering hint of high fructose corn syrup blended with nuclear green coloring.
I had only a couple of sudden moments where I felt tired and dopey, 3 hours plane sleep does wonders compared to none. I wont go to sleep properly until at least 9:30pm local time, even if that means doing jumping jacks in my room to stay awake.
Eventually after a bit more stumbling in puddles I could check in to my room and wash 2 days of aircraft air conditioning distributed mucus off myself and brush my teeth. The hotel shower was predictably fantastic.
Also - my lunch was awesome and very healthy. I need more amusing stories, I have none yet!
Here is my lunch from Tokyo Soup Stock, you can find them in most stations. You get to choose 2 different soups, rice or a roll. And its great.
One of my soups was listed as a Japanese style vegetable soup with ginger, and there really was a lot of ginger, I want this ginger soup to be available in Australia. Hopefully my hair doesnt go ginger as a result.
Outside in the rain. My camera is not waterproof, neither was my last one, and that got soaked many times. Still new camera is still new so I am still cautious.
I tried to get on the roof of various buildings to take rain photos, but they had the roof closed off due to typhoon.
So I had an ice cream and marshmallow cookie sandwich instead.
Here is the path to my hotel, it is long and crowded, and there are 10 good places to eat along here. I fell hungry again already.
This is my hotel room, my mother insists on these photos, and since shes the only reader, here it is. This is Tokyu Stay Ikebukuro, and it seems great, $200 for 3 nights attached to the station.
It gets great ratings and provides many amenities you wouldnt normally get, such as a microwave and.....
A full size washer dryer in the bathroom? Never experienced that before in any hotel room, just serviced apartments. The bathroom is nearly as big as the main room.
I laid down on the floor and then took a ride inside the huge washing machine.
My budget room even gets a pretty good view of the grey. I can watch the typhoon, and keep an eye out for North Korean missiles appearing below the clouds.
Sunshine city in Ikebukuro
The rare 3rd update in a single day eventuated, silly because I have had very little to photograph or talk about.
I am however starting to believe the typhoon warning was real.
Even navigating around the underground and in stores is treacherous, in many places the roof is leaking and people are splashing water around, making the tiles ridiculously slippery. Very poor design, someone should be stationed to apology bow.
On two occasions I did that thing where one leg slides out and the other starts to go but you just make it, flinging your arms out to balance. Nearby spectators were amused.
Now I have to make a decision on what to do tomorrow, the weather forecast still says sun shining by 9am, but I was hoping to go up a trail of sorts. There are warnings of potential landslides. I dont know what to believe, its barely even a stiff breeze despite there being a typhoon warning.
In good news, I can put my clothes which have reached saturation point in the dryer and wear them again tomorrow.
I still refuse to carry an umbrellea. Stubborn I am.
Not much I can do about the lack of interesting pictures.
A brief downgrade from torrential to heavy meant I could take a photo of a street corner whilst standing in a puddle that had a power cord running through it to light up a sign.
Despite that, I still felt more scared of the people reading their phones walking in the rain carrying umbrellas at eye height.
This is the new thing thats everywhere. A pancake of sorts prepared in a cast iron pan, served up to you in the pan. Expect a huge line outside of the first store that copies this idea in Australia soon.
Hang on, is this Donald Trumps Russian restaurant?
Predictably, my dinner is omurice. It still has not really become popular in Australia, which is annoying because I love it.
Adelaide had one restaurant serving it in the central market and they went broke, Melbourne has a couple of places but they are crap, Japan has one on every corner with 50 flavours.
My choice is the mushrooms of autumn special. Delicious, the rice inside the omelette also has more mushrooms mixed in.
Yes, its still raining. Hard.
Last boring rain day photo, in Australian we are proud of our wine in cardboard boxes, they are generally large. Japan has shrunk goon bag down to fruit box size. Everything is smaller in Japan.
There are currently 5 comments - click to add
David on 2017-10-25 said:
@adam Our father asked me the same question elsewhere
Fujifilm X70 which had a fixed goal length lense but still had an aps-c sensor
Its the smallest aps-c camera there is.
It also has a different style of sensor, most digital cameras have something called Bayer sensors, fujifilm use x-trans
This is the arrangement of the red /green /blue light receptors on the sensor
Having no zoom isn't as much of a problem as I thought it might be, I tend to always want wider anyway, and in low light zoom is useless
The x70 is a smaller wider version of the x100, same sensor, different lens, still has all the manual rangefinder controls.
The other difference is the smaller x70 has no viewfinder, but im used to not having one of those anyway as my old Sony RX100 mk1 doesn't have one either
Adam on 2017-10-25 said:
What camera did you buy?
David on 2017-10-23 said:
I like how random people I don't even know read this just for my mothers comments.
mother on 2017-10-23 said:
Not dead, just got dates mixed up. Thought you were going next week. Agree there should be a separate room for children on planes like they have in some churches. Also for germy people and disgusting drunks. Basically I want a room to myself on a plane. I'm very much liking the rain photos. Nice and clear with wet reflections. Typhoon has been downgraded to tropical storm now. Rain will make mountains slide down so be careful. What is the size of your hotel room? May have to check it out in FEb if it's big enough.
on 2017-10-23 said:
Wait, is your mother dead? Where are her comments??
Hiking in the plum tree gardens near Ome station
Finally, some photos of something mildly interesting!
I awoke to grey and rain, the typhoon raged on, despite this I slept solidly on a rock solid bed. Typhoon Lan raged all night as Shinzo Abe won the snap election and a 2/3 majority of the Diet (Japanese parliament) to allow him to first strike North Korea. No, really, that why he won such a huge majority, the Japanese election was all about North Korea.
First I had to have the free hotel breakfast, not available before 7am, I was waiting for the clock to tick over, and then all they had was 3 kinds of fried rice and various breads. No fruit. I had a couple of pieces of bread with margarine. No butter.
Anyway, pending nuclear destruction and fried rice breakfast aside, the weather forecasts had forecast that the terrible typhoon would pass by 9am and they were ABSOLUTELY RIGHT! Even at 7AM I could see out of my hotel room window brilliant blue sky on the horizon, and thats the way I was headed, so I decided to not cancel my plans for a small mountain today. But the train system had other ideas.
I had planned to go to a specific station, after two train changes. When I got on the first train at Ikebukuro, it was apparent that the train system was chaos, even the Tokaido Shinkansen, the main train to Osaka, was not running.
Many services were cancelled, and most rapid express services were operating as local services, stopping all stations.
I needed to change trains at Shinjuku, the worlds busiest station, and when the train got there, it rolled onto the platform at walking pace.
So many people were waiting on the platform that it was actually not possible to get off, we had to sit and wait with the doors open for enough people to clear.
Anyway, I didnt plummet onto the tracks in the crush, and I managed to find a train claiming to be going to my next change point, along the Chuo line, this was also chock full of people and would be my tomb for the next hour.
It was of course full of sick people, one guys mucus overwhelmed his face mask and was running out the bottom. Another guy was literally gargling snot. Great!
But then we were all kept amused when a guys apple airpod stupid no headphone jack thing fell out of his ear, we heard it hit the ground and people were looking around and he was saying things on the otherwise silent train pointing at his ear.
Of course it was way too crowded for anyone to bend over, his only hope was we could collectively kick it to someone sitting down to hold onto it for him, this game went for a few minutes and then everyone lost interest. His stupid $200 wireless ear piece, lost.
Finally we got to Ome, second station change point, except the service was suspended! I cant get to my mountain. Not to worry, Japan is all mountains and all hiking paths, I decided to find my own path, and I found about a hundred to choose from.
Ome station is warning about bears!
Here is what typhoon rain in a river looks like. Dangerous. Apparently a handful of people died in floods, probably like Australia trying to drive across a flooded river.
Tricky light, so bright, but nice blue sky and hills in the background. I actually am not overly pleased with my photos today, and I am also displeased with Adobe lightrooms ability to demosaic Fuji X-trans foilage photos (dont bother googling, its hugely complex).
Lightroom struggles to extract the detail from raw Fuji files because fuji cameras use a different style of sensor that has more green pixel receptors. Yeah still too complex.
Detail in green foilage is lost and looks like water paintings in tricky light.
Here is the town of Ome, photo appearing out of order because I changed the time on my camera, this should be 3 positions higher. Actually quite a nice town.
Also appearing out of order because its too hard to reorder photos in lightroom... this is the part of the line that is suspended, for the entire day.
As you can see here, this is just as the last of the grey passed, for the rest of the day, blazing sunshine, I wished I had worn shorts.
Near Ome is a plum tree garden. Except they cut down nearly all the trees for 'renewal', they say that a lot in Japan, when they change the design of store displays they just have a big sign saying RENEW!
At this point of the day I was still kind of following the train track looking for things to do, hoping the train would resume. But those mountains or hills across the other side of the valley, thats where I ended up!
The plum position to photograph the plum tree garden without any plum trees. I kept looking at those mountains across the other side...
Not a great photo, but a great view.
First one of these for this trip, hair out of control, it was periodically very windy, but then very calm.
Yes, I want some emergency water. Except the gate is locked. Luckily the town was full of supermarkets to buy water.
I crossed the river a again using a different bridge, thinking I was walking back to the train station trains were actually operating from.
These sirens were going off and lights were flashing. Probably warning that the bridge was about to be washed away.
I stopped to see if these people would be washed into the river 50 metres below. So bright and everything is so reflective! I have never experienced a day as clear as this in Japan before.
I walked past this temple / cemetery with the awesome tree, ruined by a power wire. I hear its easy to photoshop those out these days, I have no time for such things though.
Then I found a path. I was excited, a map suggested it would take me back to my station. The lower parts were a real challenge, the water had decided the hiking trail was the course of least resistance.
I dont have waterproof boots for this trip, I have trail running shoes, so I stepped carefully trying not to get wet socks.
Eventually, the torrent of water disappeared and I was in a great forest, taking crap photos. Hmmm, need to get better at editing.
There were a few lookout spots along the ridges, this is the best one, you can see Tokyo in the distance, well maybe not at the resized photo resolution. I wished I had zoom, but I do not, my camera has a prime lense.
Me again. I think I got sun burnt. I now refer to myself as old grey beard.
I was so happy to find this excellent path back to the station, I saw only 2 other people and they had safety vests with something written on them. I am guessing they were volunteers checking for typhoon damage.
Right where I had to head back down was this buddhist temple, I chose the angle carefully to make it look good, theres a lot of rubbish and building supplies strewn around the place. Filthy buddhists.
Shortly thereafter I arrived back at Ome station. The Ome line was still not running. Japan has vending machines selling chocolate coated potato chips for less then $2 Australian. I resisted.
Finally back in Tokyo, and I had to go buy my discount advanced purchase Shinkansen tickets from a travel agent hidden inside a government building in Shinjuku.
I save about $50 by doing this just for the first 2 legs of the journey, so its worth it.
In other news, the atrium is enormous and has a giant clock.
One last photo to appreciate the clear blue skies of Tokyo and its surrounding area today.
The great guitar stores near the Shibuya crossing
I like ramen a lot. But its bad for you, many calories, great amounts of salt, very few vegetables. So when I choose to have ramen, I should probably make sure I have good ramen.
Tonight I failed by having bad ramen in Shibuya.
I saw lots of places selling what looked like good ramen, including the place I selected, but the reality did not match the pictures or the various trophy bragging posters on the storefront.
Actually, you really dont need to go to Japan to have good ramen in my opinion, Australia does really well these days. Thats enough about ramen.
I chose Shibuya so I could take photos of bright lights with my new(ish) camera, and also because I wanted to go on a train so I could extract more value from my 3 day pass.
The pictures came out well, I spent a bit of time messing around with different film profiles and other nonsense in lightroom. No funny stories tonight, just over edited photos.
Check out the awesome sunset, as seen from my hotel window. I probably should have paid the money to go up the skytree tonight. Unless its shut whilst they inspect it for typhoon damage.
No multiple exposure trickery here, this is just a single shot.
The streets behind my hotel in Ikebukuro are bright and colorful, but not too busy, however it is Monday night. When I came back later the local yakuza teenage boys were busy trying to make me go to a place called 'High School Girl Only'.
I should have had dinner here. It looks great. Those jars are just chilli flakes. I dont know what the meat was but the red chilli stuff they serve it in seems like it would be right up my alley. Maybe I will go tomorrow or on the back end of my trip when I am back in Tokyo.
At some point I also have to have the tomato soup ramen thing that I love too.
Waiting for the train, in classic chrome.
If you have been to Tokyo you have been here. I have been here 5 times. Its worth it.
The streets around Shibuya seem to get busier and busier, and go further each time I visit. I think its overtaken Shinjuku in many ways.
The above mentioned disappointing ramen. Its not that it was bad or inedible, it was just flavourless with over cooked noodles. I chose the variety with fresh cabbage, then added every kind of condiment, however it was still lacking. Hakata Gensuke in Melbourne is much better.
This is the basement of book-off in Shibuya, which is all second hand clothes. If I lived in Japan I would buy all my stuff from here. I am fine with wearing secondhand shoes. A lot of stuff looks barely worn. Upstairs they also have secondhand books and electronics, including some guitar equipment.
Speaking of guitar equipment, I found this new store in a new building. I couldnt figure out it name but its fantastic. The staff did not like me taking photos, presumably because they dont want anyone to know how awesome their store is?
They also sell secondhand guitars, including lots of Japan only weird guitars. I want them all. This is another reason why I probably cant ever live in Japan, I would go broke from guitar purchasing and be fat from over eating.
My humps, my humps, my lovely camel lumps.
There are currently 10 comments - click to add
Antony S on 2017-11-13 said:
Camel photo and tagline is a cracker!! Funniest image I have seen ANYWHERE for ages!!
Brian on 2017-10-24 said:
I need a couple of thoses guitars too.
Brian on 2017-10-24 said:
brilliant photos David keep them coming.
David on 2017-10-24 said:
Also also, today's post will be on the next page, hopefully by now everyone can use my self designed website, theres a next and previous link at the top if there is a next or previous page, as well as a link to the latest content.
There's also the contents at the bottom, and you can quickly get to that from the top by clicking the contents link.
Finally to get back to the top of any page theres a link at the top that says top.
Simple really...
David on 2017-10-24 said:
Also I'm still in the mountains out near Mount fuji, just boarding a train back to Tokyo now so my photos from today will be a bit late.
David on 2017-10-24 said:
My camera is a fujifilm x70
It is small and has a non zoom lense yet it still has a full aps-c sized sensor.
The sensor that captures the light is therefore almost 4x the size of the 1 inch sensor in my old Sony RX100, which you also have.
However, it's a very manual camera with lots of dials, and no zoom at all.
Phil on 2017-10-24 said:
What brand is your new camera.
Good photos!
adriana on 2017-10-23 said:
Best photos yet. Love the train station with the view up the line, brilliant shot of crowds on Shibuya crossing and a crochet camel - classic!
mother again on 2017-10-23 said:
So you have a washer and dryer in your bathroom - how about a razor or are you going for a new look.
Mother on 2017-10-23 said:
I'm catching up now. I see the typhoon caused quite a lot of damage and flight cancellations etc. Lucky you got there and only had one train cancellation.
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