theHarajukuGirls

though very impressive, the cherry blossoms weren't the only thing we saw in Tokyo, nor yet the most visually stunning. For that we had to go to Harajuku. just outside the large and famous Meiji Jingu (Shrine) in this Westside neighborhood is a fairly small pedestrian area that becomes clogged on the weekends with tourists watching the now-famous Harajuku Girls.



Jill with a vanguard member of the Harajuku welcoming committee, who seemed to be doing quite well on his quest for emotional growth. our friend below, on the other hand, had engaged in some serious mission creep and was reaping the lonely consequences...



thought to be girls who don't fit in and are bullied at school, the Harajuku Girls come from all over, leaving their parents each weekend to come and escape into a very public double life. they bring their costumes with them and change back into regular clothes before returning home, so nobody but the thousands of anonymous tourists who show up every Saturday and Sunday would ever know about their hobby. as you can see, there are several different styles, and some of the girls would be hard to recognize even if you did know them:


some of our favorite Harajuku Girls, including the one in full bondage gear at the top left and the strange facial contraption at top right. they pretty much stand around and pose for tourists all day.

a few of the girls are not really so friendly looking, but they all turned out to be very amenable to having their picture taken. that's pretty much all there is for them to do, other than chatting amongst themselves, because the area is literally crawling with camera-toting foreigners--it can be hard to even move around the areas where some of the more exotically dressed girls have stationed themselves.


probably the most impressive total outfit we saw, who didn't look too friendly until Jill plucked up the courage to ask for a picture. i'm not sure, but i think the costume is at least manga (Japanese graphic novel, comic or cartoon) inspired, if not lifted wholesale from a character.

there were also several professional photographers who were dedicated to taking cutesy pictures of the girls which were printed right away and placed into albums many of them had; i guess some of them come in different costumes and want to keep a record. or maybe they're hiring these guys to make a portfolio of themselves for work purposes, though i doubt it--there is just something of a national obsession with cuteness and getting dressed up in costume. remember Little World?



watching the watchers: above, an HG-free view of some of the many folks who came to see the the more worldly side of the Meiji Shrine, and below, these watchers went in front of the lens for some proof we were really there.



it's not hard to see why tourists flock here. the Harajuku Girls provide a spectacle that's hard to find anywhere else--at least in one place. Japan is known, and rightly so, for having some pretty wild fashions, but coming to Meiji-Jingumae is like finding a microcosm of Japan in many ways: a lot of alienated people trying to escape from their reality and portray themselves as that which they are not.

thesakura

shortly before we went on our little European vacation, we got to experience one of Japan's most famous and impressive festivals, which is held all over the country. called hanami matsuri, it means flower watching festival, and the flower in question is one that has become among the most prominent symbols of Japan, the sakura, or cherry blossom.


sakura views, clockwise from top left: one of the blossoms itself, showing the famous shape that is often used as a symbol of Japan; the visual impact of a group of these trees in bloom, here at Kitanomaru Gardens in Tokyo; the blossoms fall quickly and thickly, as this couple's boat demonstrates; and Jill and i complement the beauty of the season...

the Japanese track the arrival of the sakura season with great interest, the national weather service issuing at least daily bulletins predicting when the petals will bloom. they don't last for long, usually about a week, and so they are comprehensively celebrated while they do linger, seemingly by everyone in the country. the weather service had some difficulty in their predictions this year, revising several times before people started to ignore them and just look out of the window, but the delay in arrival meant that we had perfect timing to see them in all their glory.


the drunken hordes sitting or weaving their way through the rest of the masses at Shinjuku Gyoen in West Tokyo. we've never seen such excitement caused by blossoming trees before.

to the Japanese, sakura season and the hanami festival are supposed to be a time to reflect on the ephemeral nature of life; to many however, this time of year is just an excuse to get very drunk in public. our good timing meant that we were in Tokyo at the height of the festival, and so got to visit some of the largest parks with the densest collections of trees--and drunks. the first thing we did after arriving at the Shinjuku station was to head for the nearby Shinjuku Gyoen, or park, which had about a half-hour line just to get in. and that was with a ¥200 per person admission fee. but there were a lot of trees, and, as in the rest of Japan, a lot of signs. all over the park there were examples written in Japanese and English explicitly enjoining the use of alcohol; all over the park there were large groups sitting on blue tarps with huge quantities of it. it was quite strange to see such lawlessness in straight-laced Japan, but i guess even they have to cut loose every once in a while. thank goodness for the sakura.

theToyotaway

now that our European vacation is over and we have regular internet access again, i can do a little better on blogging. i'll get around to all those England and France pictures, but first something a little closer to home. Nagoya, as i may have mentioned, is pretty much home to what will soon be the largest car manufacturing company in the world, Toyota. there is even an eponymous city a few Kilometers Southeast of town where many of their operations center. Toyota is widely believed to have been the force that virtually recession-proofed Nagoya during Japan's turbulent 90s, and its presence seems to be felt quite strongly, so we decided to find out a little more about it.


the pleasant grounds and glorious weather we experienced on our recent trip to Noritake Gardens in central Nagoya.

close to our place near the center of Nagoya, both Toyota and Noritake China have museums showcasing their various wares. though the Noritake place boasts beautiful grounds and a pretty decent lineup of sandwiches in the cafe, the museum subject matter wasn't all that appealing to me, so we spent the bulk of our afternoon at the nearby Toyota place. i suppose most folks don't know that Toyota started out as a manufacturer of weaving looms in the early twentieth century, nor yet that it was actually called Toyoda. the inventor of all those looms and the founder of the company was named Sakichi Toyoda, whose family name consists of two characters--豊田--the last of which can be read da or ta (if your browser doesn't support Chinese characters, the one we're talking about looks like a box divided horizontally and vertically into four equal quadrants).

the Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology is divided into a large section of working looms of all ages and another large sections for cars. i went having the cars in mind but was fascinated by all the demonstrations they had about textile manufacture. Mr Toyoda was quite the inventor, and developed numerous nifty devices for improving quality of production in weaving, many of which were demonstrated by the helpful uniformed hostesses that seemed to be everywhere. there were all kinds of machines there including fully automated entire production lines that are still being manufactured and sold by Toyota Industries.



just one of the many helpful hostesses who demonstrated the great variety of machinery in the textile area. below, the original badge of Toyoda's first passenger automobile, the AA, which cleverly incorporates the Toyoda characters into its design.



despite all of my Economics lectures being brought so vividly to life in this part of the museum, we did eventually make our way on to the vehicle section. this area, like its textile counterpart, had examples of all ages spread around the place, and even more hands-on demonstrations. there were numerous cutaways that showed how clutches, transmissions and four-wheel steering work; there working examples of the huge machines that stamp out body panels; there were production timeline presentations and prototypes and all kinds of things to keep a car person very busy. i could have spent much more than the three or four hours we did in there.


one of the cool demos in the kid's area that tells you your weight (unfortunately not in pounds) by balancing you on a lever against an engine.

but you can't spend your whole life in a museum, even one as good as this; it was really one of the most interesting i've ever been to. we did have to leave, but we made time to check out the area they have for kids, which they let us do i guess because they weren't sure how to tell us to leave in English. it was very cool and even more interactive than the rest of the museum, with a wind tunnel you could go in to get a feel for the principles of aerodynamics, a virtual-reality maze that you navigated by way of a computerized helmet and a huge treadwheel that made you feel just like a hamster. so for a good time in Nagoya i recommend a trip to the TCMIT; after all, this is Toyota's town.

themountain

so much for all the shrines and gates in Japan; probably no sight in the whole country is as iconic as Fuji-san (富士山), or Mount Fuji. just before our Tokyo trip, Jill and i were able to go with our friends the Johnsons to have a look at this very symmetrical cone-shaped volcanic mountain.


Fuji-san from the North. even on a gloomy day it's a pretty impressive sight.

it was a bit of a difficult look, with visibility down to virtually nothing on the South side we approached from. just getting there was about a three hour drive from Nagoya, but i'm glad we kept on going around to the North side so we could at least see something. we were hoping we'd be able to join the thousands of pilgrims who climb the mountain each year, but it's closed to trekkers for all but a couple of months of the year. nevertheless, it is possible to drive about halfway up the 3,776 meter high mountain, to the so-called "Fifth Station" from where most climbers begin. when we got there the winds were so intense that we could only be out of the car long enough to snap a picture with the very touristy sign you see below:


Jill and i at the "Fifth Station" about halfway up the mountain. it's a lot windier than it looks--i almost got blown over a couple of times and i'm holding onto the back of that sign just to stay upright!

so perhaps this visit was slightly underwhelming, but we did get to see the mighty Mount Fuji, and who can go to Japan without doing that? actually we had seen it from the plane on the way from Tokyo to Nagoya when we arrived in the country last year, but it felt a bit more real, being up close this way. and it wasn't all about the mountain, we got to take a pleasant-but-chilly boat ride on one of Fuji's five lakes, and of course we browsed some of the shops in the region that were stacked with, you guessed it, boxes of little Fuji red bean cakes to take back to the folks in the office. yum.

thephotographer

thejayfather is the only one who can take credit--or responsibility--for the prose on this site, but it's about time to give some recognition to someone who really deserves it. even if i owned a camera, my photographic skill wouldn't produce pictures of nearly the same caliber as the ones you have enjoyed seeing here since the birth of this blog. indeed, if it weren't for my wonderful wife Jill and her pictures, i probably wouldn't have a website at all.

she and i have been in five world capitals in the last six months, and so for want of a better way to organize a selection of her work to display, i've simply chosen one picture from the (many, many) she took in each city to display here. some you've seen before, others are new. one or two are iconic of the place they were taken, while more still are just generally representative of a location. there are best-of-the-bunch shots and pure favorites of mine. in any case, i hope you will enjoy.

from Beijing, People's Republic of China:


here Jill captures the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests at the Temple of Heaven reflected in my sweet aviator lenses. this is one of my favorites from China, and was taken on November 2nd of last year.

from Seoul, Republic of Korea:


Asia is known for the hustle and bustle of its many markets, and here Jill captures some of that never ending spectacle at the Namdaemun Market, one of Seoul's largest. taken on December 29th last year.

from Tokyo, Japan:


one of the largest cities on Earth, Tokyo is a vast urban sprawl, with concrete as far as the eye can see in any direction. at nighttime, however, the lights of town make it a sight to behold, especially from 45 stories up. Jill took this shot on April 3rd from the observation floor at the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Buildings in the heart of the city.

from London, United Kingdom:


a picture like this scarcely needs an explanation, but you're about to get one anyway: Big Ben is actually the name of the bell hanging inside the clock tower at the Houses of Parliament. we visited this elaborate housing on Jill's birthday, April 7th, and she was even able to capture the London Eye in the background.

from Paris, France:


the famous Moulin Rouge cabaret in Montmartre. shows were about $200 apiece, so we held back and settled for a shot of the exterior, which Jill took on the 19th of April.

and one more from Tokyo, Japan--a picture of the artist at work:


a personal favorite, this one, taken by yours truly, showing the organizational skill Jill has to muster to make many of these pictures happen. here she is caught marshaling the forces of her support staff who, in this case, didn't even speak English. for your many efforts, Jill, thank you from all of my readers and me.