Musabi Time!

2008-04-14T08:00:00.000-07:00

weell...

new blog time!

sketchbot9000.blogspot.com

So long to japan, and hello to more giant robots and improbable energy weapons!

( wait, I thought that was japan?)

2007-12-11T05:57:00.000-08:00

This has been a week of discoveries by the way!

I learned that the new 12wx wacom cintiq touch screen tablet is shit! (thank god)

I thought that my camera was broken, but it turns out that fluorescent lighting has different color pulses undetectable to the human eye, and I figure that my camera gets more sensitive to them at high iso's and wide open f/stops, so the purple banding I was getting while shooting a dance competition (photos to come) was not in fact my camera freaking out, but rather shitty lighting at play. (again, thank god. I really thought my camera was busted fora bit.)

and finally (but certainly not least!) I figured out a LIFE CHANGING SOLUTION!!!

Normally while drawing I get distracted by the internet, comics, etc. etc. ETC. This is frustrating, because 90% of the time the things that distract me aren't all that important anyways. And it's not that I don'tt WANT to draw, it's just that drawing takes effort, and browsing the internet doesn't, and I can be sort of lazy.

BUT THEN AN EPIPHANY OCCURRED! I was talking to veronica, but sadly I had too much work to do it with video chat, so we were just talking through voice chat alone.

Because of this I couldn't go on the internet, or else I would be distracted from what she was saying, and the same was true about reading a comic, or wandering off to the kitchen or what not. So I diligently drew and talked, and after about an hour and a half of doing this I realized I had happily worked for a solid hour and a half.

This is not a huge amount of time, but the thing to remember here is that I felt no real urge to go and do anything else. It was solid work, without ANY TEMPTATION. (this is a big deal for me. I'm sure some of you too.)

HOWEVER. Obviously I can't just have someone in my pocket to talk to whenever I want to start drawing, so I searched inside of my monumental brain for a solution. And I *found one*.

...

it's really hard to build up drama when I can't really pause for dramatic effect you know?

anyways...

AUDIO BOOKS!

I theorized that if I was to listen to an audio book while working, all of the same benefits would occur as if I was talking to an actual person.

I downloaded the amber spyglass (honestly, this book was way WAY worse than the previous two. ugh.) and I got to work while listening to it.

I worked solidly for two days without any distractions.

FROM THIS DAY FORWARDS, THE WORLD IS MINE. As long as I don't run out of audio books that is.

anyways. feel free to use HARRY'S SOLUTION© at any time. results may vary.

(and here's the result of those two days work, and the previous weeks as well. fiiiinally done, but learned so so much about photoshop in the process.)

well, according to veronica I "never blog ever any more ever never ever.", (haha), and I figure she may be right (other obligations aside) so I figure I'll take a little break and throw up some pictures that I've snapped over the last week.

Also some more cliche japan pictures...

and finally, DANCING PEOPLE YAAY!

yeah you might notice the purple banding I was talking about earlier. sigh.

well. I have to go to sleep now.

My day was busy running around buying christmas presents and finishing drawings, and I just remembered I have to hang my clothing up to dry. (no dryer in this house sadly).

see you sooooon!

2007-12-05T01:17:00.000-08:00

well, it's essentially final time over here.

a little different though.

Because I currently only have TWO classes to do work for.

NOW. Before you get all huffy about how I get to take a walk down easy street, let me just say that it really isn't what it would seem.

Between these two classes I am BOOKED in terms of work.

but... it's ok, because both of the classes have me doing stuff that I enjoy. The puzzle is coming along well for the block class, and I'll probably get the wood cut out tomorrow to shape into the blocks.

And for my illustration class I'm doing three 13" by 19" illustrations. Done with two (almost, still have a day or two of touchups to do on them) and still have one left to go.

Aaanyways, life is busy for me... but I'm almost done with japan! And I don't mean that in a "yaaay" sort of way, I mean that in a "holy CRAP! Time goes fast!" kind of way.

wow.

so crazy.

anyways, I'm going to post some pictures now.

Yeah, so this is what I'm currently working on.

Had to redesign the cube thing a bit, but it should work pretty well now. Also these two pictures aren't totally done yet, still need touchups and details added. Still the bulk of work on them is fairly finished.

This is the older design GIVEN FLESH.

Happily and sadly it showed that it was not yet perfect, but as previously stated I believe I fixed those problems. I hope. maybe. please.

anyways...

So I'm currently deliberating something.

I bought an L lens that covers the 80-200 range very well, and I bought it very cheaply too. I could sell it for *quite* a bit of money and buy myself a newer lens that covers the same range, and would have image stabilizer and be quite a bit lighter too (the L lens is like, 16 years old and made of what seems to be reinforced steel. Heaavy.)

And, the thing is, the L lens isn't SUPER sharp or anything, which seems to be the measurement of how good most lenses are these days.

But... when I take pictures with it, and after a bit of tweaking afterwards, they usually turn out really good. I don't know.

It's a hard decision to make, because if I give this lens up I know I'll never get it back again. siigh.

oh well, here's some pictures taken with said lens from around where I live.

I like it so much... but it's so damn heavy and has no image stabilization. le sigh.

Well.

my time here is coming to a close.

It's interesting, musabi certainly was different than pratt.

I believe that this environment allowed me to self teach myself alot more than pratt did, but did this at the expense of structured lessons.

In many ways I feel like I might have matured a bit? Well, in any case I go grocery shopping over here. haha.

The students here also have a wonderful sense of patience and I've YET to see anyone complain about having too much work or gripe about school problems. (although I'm sure they do gripe about work and school, in any sense it's much less than back home. I mean, hell, I gripe about work and school at the time even here...)

A really wonderful thing, and completely unforeseen, is that my time over here has done some pretty fantastic things towards my relationship with veronica.

I had worried that by going abroad for so long things would get fractured and seeds of discontent would have started growing between us, or that one of us would do something we might regret, or any other number of relationship harming might have happened.

But absence and heart growing fonder and such, instead, by getting to talk whenever we could, and sending e-mails when we couldn't talk, I've found that this time apart has actually strengthened the relationship to a point that I've never experienced before, or even knew I could achieve.

I feel like I could go on at length, but I'm going to resist the urge. I'll just say that anyone who's willing to wait lovingly for their daydreaming boyfriend to go galavanting off halfway around the world probably deserves more than anything that boyfriend can give to them to make up for it when he returns. Although he's certainly going to try.

2007-11-28T04:39:00.000-08:00

I HAVE CREATED THE MOST AWESOME PUZZLE/MINI ROBO CREATION KIT EVER!

MWA-HA-HA~BITCHES!

2007-11-27T08:07:00.001-08:00

argh late night art dump!

no time for talk, art only!

must sleep soon...

not all of these are finished! Some are!

I'll try and post more art soon!

a;lkdfjasdlkjf

2007-11-24T20:12:00.000-08:00

Well it's been awhile.

Before I go into *why* it's been awhile, let's try and move through some of my robot photo shoots eh?

I'll also throw up a classmates work or two, just cause.

I'm sure you can tell which are mine. (hint: they look like robots)

I also did a few different combinations. These things can combine together in more than just a few ways, so the only real limit would be your *IMAAAGINATIOOON*.

... the next ones I'm working are are going to be even crazier in terms of combination abilities. CRAZY! (hopefully actually achievable though)

eh, just some pretty pictures on campus I shot with one of the lenses I bought and fixed up. I'm going to sell this lens off, but I'm impressed that even after being battered around for years, being almost as old as me, and still having fungal residue inside of it, the thing still manages to take great pictures. Go canon woo!

anyways.

So my mom came and visited me!

It was only for two days because the actual purpose of flying out here was to use japan as a layover for her continued trip on to australia (to visit pa (my australian grandfather)), but all the same it was very enjoyable!

We went shopping for food stuffs and gifts and clothing, and wandered around the shinjuku area quite a bit.

Sadly mom couldn't come out to visit campus because of jetlag exhaustion, but we got to eat a fantastic thanksgiving dinner at a classy little traditional japanese place.

They brought multiple tiny perfectly prepared dishes, each one set to compliment the others in terms of taste and texture.

The tastes were so subtle and perfect... and of course the whole staff was virtually tripping over themselves to make the experience as perfect as possible. Very enjoyable.

In any case, I actually didn't take many pictures while we were walking around (as much of it was inside a very large nearby japanese department store) so I compensated by taking pictures out of the hotel rooms window. And, wow, what a view.

now I hope this gives you some sense of scale of what tokyo is like. And it isn't only like this in one direction either. It's like this 360 degrees around from where the hotel was.

Literally a sea of a city. I doubt any one person has even explored the whole thing. It's just simply insane.

Pictures of me and mum!

I don't really like putting pictures of me up, but, well if I'm going to put my mom on I might as well extend myself as well.

Thankfully my twisted smile doesn't look so menacing as it does bemused in this picture, and my mom has the whole thoughtful city gaze going on, so the combination isn't terrible or anything.

We did spend quite a bit of time just talking and looking out at the city, so I guess it is a pretty fitting picture in the end.

...

homwork is crunching down over here, and my time at musabi will soon draw to an end.

Can you believe that another semester has already almost passed by? Good god.

Soon I'm going to have to actually apply the skills I've learned or starve.

Thankfully I've learned the joys of amazingly cheap fast eating over here, so I'll probably die of hypothermia or something before I give into starvation.

MAN. I really need to start making posts more frequently. I *swear* I had more to say, but it seems to have trickled out of my head at some point.

blah.

2007-11-14T19:31:00.000-08:00

waah.

I have less classes than ever before.

and more work as well.

How does this make sense?

well, lot's of homework assignments here are very open ended. And the people here have good work ethic. and I'm competitive/ enjoy the work as well.

Sooo... yeah.

Anyways!

dancing people!

Took these all from up in the balcony area on a zoom, (later found out I wasn't supposed to take any pictures at all. haha.) sadly the lighting wasn't so great so I had to turn the iso way up, and because of this the pictures may be a bit grainy when zoomed in.

oh well. These dancers were all pros by the way.

Sadly I did not expect the train ride to this place to take TWO AND A HALF HOURS. So I missed all the people my age dancing. BOO.

That being said on the first sunday (saturday?) of december there will be another EVEN BIGGER dance competition. So I'll probably head to that one earlier so I don't miss out.

...

ALSO. ROBOTS. YAAAAY ROBOTS. So I did a short photoshoot with my robots outdoors. For this shoot I put them all together into one big robot for convenience. Since there are many MANY ways to combine them, this big robot is just one of many possible combinations.

My class is going to do a studio shoot this saturday (or monday) so I'll probably make a new big robot and shoot some pictures of it that way too.

(haha, the little guys aren't mine, but how could I tell an epic story of the great ROBO waking up from a thousand year sleep to go on a rampage without them?)

Yeah. I love these little guys.

Honestly If I was a kid I would have played with them ALL the time. But, then again, I did have legos, so It might have been a tossup.

MmmmmmMmm...

I sort of have more to say, but I should really get back to drawing for illustration class.

I will leave you with this view from outside of where I live as the sun sets.

2007-11-10T03:05:00.000-08:00

gnghh...

sorry for not updating the last few days.

My robots were due today, and I got them done and I think the teacher liked them quite a bit.

That being said, they took a HELL of a lot longer to complete than I hoped they would.

I had all the necessary measurements and designs ready to go on thursday at 11:00 a.m..

I got finished on saturday at 12:30 p.m.

Yes. I literally worked SOLID from thursday morning to saturday morning. I slept maybe 5 and a half hours thursday night and four and a half hours friday night.

I also took the time to eat food and shower.

Besides those breaks I did not stop at all.

I'm very very tired right now. But. It was worth it. I made enough mini bots to combine together to make a GIANT BOT.

It looked cool.

...

so yeah. uh. I'm going to do a photo dump for some more kyoto stuff. With some comments for things that strike me as needing comments.

Yeah, so yet more places I visited with David on my first trip here.

The golden temple as well as the zen rock garden were both highlights of the previous kyoto trip, as well as this one.

also, I *told* you the put moss on everything here!

I don't know. That cup is a big green tea desert.

quite tasty, but maybe a bit too much green tea taste for me.

hey! The internation manga museum. Highlight of the place is a MASSIVE wall of comics from around the world. Mostly manga though.

A nice quite place, actually very classy and well designed. More like a big nicely maintained and put together library than a museum, but honestly that's fine with me.

And I came up with an idea for a comic here too.

Essentially it's about a total narcissistic power hungry self serving charismatic god character who had to put himself into suspended animation for some reason or another.

While he was sleeping he was found by humans and parts of his "shell" were chipped off and *super charged* in order to greatly enchance and power up the group of humans who then proceeded to take over the world.

He gets woken up some time after this has happened and realizes that a bunch of his power has been sapped away, and that humans who now dominate the earth are the ones who are in control of it. Needless to say he is pissed, and the story would be about him "saving" the world, although in reality he's just mad that he was taken advantage of.

Of course the catch here is that he's still way WAY more powerful than any of the people that took his power. And he knows it too.

Think extreme hubris with the ability to back it up. Honestly if I ever get around to drawing it (haha) it'll just be a chance to show a guy laughing happily while slowly crushing his opponents under his god like heel. Yaaaay. Also I'm totally modeling this character after me too.

ok, back to kyoto.

Now this here is a place I'm sad my mom wasn't around to go to.

It's a restaurant that specializes in tofu. It is AWESOME. I personally love tofu and really enjoy all the different ways it can be prepared, but this place brings it to a WHOLE NEW LEVEL.

Very delicious too. I'm sad I couldn't try the huge dishes, but they were like 50 dollars. *sigh*.

Anyways, exterior, interior, close up interior, and views from outside the restaurant respectively.

the first one of these pictures is a delicious delicious traditional japanese sweet.

mmmMMMmmmm.

MINI SHRINE AAAAAAAAAAAW.

An awesome light show that was projected directly onto one of the temples. Sadly these pictures do not do it justice.

I liked it.

night time kyoto. I hate using flash. so I don't. nyah.

the second place we stayed at. We stayed here for two nights. Not as nice as the last place, but still very decent. Also around twenty five bucks a night, so really no complaints there.

and now for something complete different.

leaving the temple areas and heading to ????? (gah I forgot the name! Nagoya maybe? argh.) to sample some okonomiyaki and takyoyaki, as well as do a little bit of shopping for gifts and whatnot.

The huge lattice structure is the inside of the new(ish) kyoto train station. It's not terrible, but I heard that it replaced a really beautiful old station, so that's sort of sad.

this place is uh... kind of over the top.

Apparently a huge amount of comedians come from this area. Considering it's even crazier than the crazy parts of tokyo, (a hard thing to accomplish) I can believe it.

I liked the whole area alot though. Nice place to visit anyways.

the view from outside the train as me and Cilian slowly made our way back home at around six oclock in the morning. This being after spending the last eight hours on a bus that is.

this was a great trip.

Tomorrow I'm going to see a MASSIVE ballroom dance off in tokyo.

...

The work of harry's camera... is never done.

2007-11-06T15:33:00.000-08:00

I'm BACK!

Actually I was back two days ago, but I had work to do for classes, and also I took alot of pictures. ALOT. OF PICTURES.

So, I had to spend a few hours going through them and sorting the good from the bad.

That being said, I STILL HAVE ALOT OF PICTURES. So maybe I'll spread the picture dump over two days?

Anyways, I traveled to kyoto with Cilian and three of her friends. They were all quite nice to me, though to be honest I may have been too chatty. (something veronica has warned me about before.) I TRY to not talk people's ears off, but it's so HARD.

I blame my father. It's his fault not mine.

ANYWAYS. Picture time. I have lots. I'll interject from time to time.

Oops, interjecting right away. This is a mcdonalds. Why did I take a picture of it? Because the bus ride to kyoto was six hours long. And we started traveling at 12:00 at night. That's right. Had to sleep on the bus, and wake up at six oclock in the morning. Also, we couldn't move into the rooms we were going to stay at until 7:30, so we lounged in that mcdonalds for over an hour. Good times, good times.

(kyoto tower woo!)

First temple area! (I actually came to this place with David when we first visited japan! Actually, same with quite a few places we visited in Kyoto. It was interesting reflecting on what has changed since then in my life, and what hasn't. Very happy reflections actually.

By the way, throughout this entire trip I was always carrying a backpack full of lenses and my rebel xti, so I was constantly changing lenses. Don't know if you'll be able to notice quality changes from my best to my worse at this size and after my corrections in Lightroom, but you might be able to from time to time.

There are people SWARMING in these areas, but for the most part I try and shoot without too many of them in the shot.

In a change from america, japanese tourist attractions are usually made up of japanese tourists. Funny thing that.

I love these little buggers. You see them all over the place at temples. I took many pictures of them. Maybe I will steal one and take it home with me.

people. yeah.

This is a very old mud and straw wall (from what I can tell). It has thousands of graffiti markings scratched into it. I really really like to think that many of them are very old. I love really really old graffiti.

Ancient vandalism just seems to make old artifacts just that much more real you know?

temples n stuff. (by the way, these places are BEAUTIFUL in person. I really need to get a better wide angle lens or something.)

MACROOO!!! MOSS MACRO!

Apparently there is good moss. And there is bad moss. Some temples tend to the good moss and make ridiculous amounts of it grow EVERYWHERE. (including roof tops. I have pictures.)

I really couldn't tell the difference between the good moss and bad moss examples they had. I mean, sure they looked different. But why was one good? Why was one bad? Moss prejudice.

ah... pretty happy peaceful pictures...

oooo. happy feelings gone now.

This was even creepier in real life. They were all moving really slowly and making strange clicky sounds...

So I set fire to the whole tree.

Nah, kidding. That would have probably released some evil bug oni or some shit.

ah. Getting dark out, time to head back to the place were' staying at. (I forget what it's called. Not a riokan. murb.)

Took these shots with my handy dandy little portable tripod thingy. VERY useful. (cheap too. yay.)

Ah, home sweet home. At just a bit over 20 dollars a night we aren't exactly getting queen sized beds, but I have to admit, the place was fairly spacious, very clean, and I slept like a LOG. (I also slept in the next room, the girls stayed in this one.)

Actually, considering how well I slept I very well may want to invest in a futon to sleep on when I get back home. Have I said that already? Well I restate it because it's TRUE.

Also the guy who ran it reminded me of the dad from FLCL. In a nice way. But he was totally quirky.

And thus ends...

DAY 1; KYOTO ADVENTURE.

I'll try and get though day 2 and 3 tomorrow. But we'll see how that goes.

INSTANT RAMEN TIME YAH!

2007-10-28T19:03:00.000-07:00

Haha, so.

the fair isn't NEXT week. It's THIS WEEK. Actually, the last three days the fair was going on.

BUT DON'T WORRY! I found out soon enough to spend all of sunday at the fair, and since during both friday and saturday the world was being drowned by the second flood I didn't miss all that much anyways.

it was fairly awesome and HUUUGE.

I really didn't get a chance to go into all of the rooms in all of the buildings, but really, I'm not too bummed out about that because I pretty much burned myself out walking around all day as it was.

Out in the main areas there were multiple stands for buying food, beer, used clothing, and lots of musabi student made art, and the whole area was just bustling with traffic, both from students and teachers, but also from many people that obviously did not go to the school.

Inside the buildings the rooms were filled with musabi student art, which ranged quite a bit in style and media.

Haha, yeah, If I had taken pictures of everything It would be more than all the pictures I've taken since I got here.

BUT, although this was an art festival, the art *really* wasn't the only source of entertainment.

There were two other big things that I found fairly awesome/bizarre.

The first one, the more normal one, was a FANTASTIC fashion show.

Now, this wasn't like the ones at Pratt. The ones at Pratt usually showcase clothing that can be actually worn. Some times some fantastical stuff comes out, but alot of the things seem to be designed with actual usage in mind. Also there usually isn't an over arching theme, usually each person has their own thing going on, which is completely different to what the next person is going to do.

The fashion show here however? To be honest, if they had put in a few words of dialogue and made it a half an hour longer it wouldn't seem so out of place as some off broadway musical.

Also... man. They were moving. And I don't mean just strutting forwards, half the time they were doing twirls and ducks and all sorts of crazy synchronized dance moves. I had to constrain myself to taking pictures only when the music was loud though because the shutter slap on my camera would probalby have caused a small mob to come and toss me out on my ass if I did it during the more delicate moments.

So yeah, the fashion show was awesome. I would have gone into it again and taken more pictures, but it cost about ten bucks and festival food isn't as cheap as the normal cafeteria food is.

*le sigh*.

So anyways, I was taking some pictures of a little buddy I found mosying about,

(d'aaaaaw), when all of a sudden I hear all these drums booming off in the distance. I go around the corner and what do I see?

A GIANT ENGORGED BLACK PENIS. BEING SUPPORTED BY ALMOST ENTIRELY NAKED MEN.

(huuurrrr artsy black and white).

(one of the drum beaters by the way. Notice what she beats the drum with)

So I'm laughing at this, taking pictures, and after a little bit they march on their merry way.

But then I hear MORE drums beating, with a bit of a different beat than before. So I turn around...

And it's the female version! However, they seem to be carrying a giant Oni (demon) head? Obviously I'm missing some piece of information on this ceremony, but I tag along.

after circling around for awhile the GIANT PHALLUS and the Oni head come head to head (haha).

The women make a human wall which the GIANT PHALLUS breaks through with only minor resistance.

The guys holding up the GP then proceed to spin this massive thing around in circles while chanting something, while the women bang upon big steel drums. The guys do this a few times until they are all completely exhausted, and then the women make them do it a few more times.

(I was actually expecting them to be crushed under the GP at a few points, but they make it out ok).

Apparently the guys did their part of the deal admirably, because the women all cluster around the giant Oni head, and then proceed to split it down the middle and mount a large, bright red, flowery looking thing inside of it on a large pedestal (TOO. MANY. SEX. METAPHORS.)

Then, obviously, the men get the GP into "the position".

The guys then jump around a bit and make a buch of (I can only assume) manly speeches, while looking appropriately threatening.

Then they proceeded to RAM IT IN!!!!!

well. Actually they had some "technical difficulties" first. haha, much to the amusement of the girls and the surrounding crowd. But after some work arounds and getting the ramp set up a bit better, they then proceeded to smash those two things together for the better part of a half an hour.

Hahaha... the thing that makes me the most amused is that THIS WAS OBVIOUSLY A NORMAL TRADITIONAL PART OF THE FESTIVAL.

There were little kids, older grandparents, teachers, pretty much everyone who would raise a ruckus if this was attempted back home.

They were obviously all enjoying themselves, and although everyone seemed to be in good spirits I'm pretty sure that *I* was the only one laughing at the more absurd parts.

We get the violence, Japan gets the sex.

And of course there were also quite a few bands and musicians playing, and all sorts of interesting characters frequenting the Musabi fair...

*phew*

yeah. I had to take a trip home to empty my camera's memory card into my computer and switch my lenses.

I am *VERY* glad I did not miss this fair. That's all I'm going to say. It was awesome. I would have been a sad sad little boy if I had.

And tomorrow I'm going to KYOTO!!

So although I won't update for a few days, I should definately have a few pictures to show off when I get back.

GPLOLOLOL!!!

2007-10-27T01:44:00.000-07:00

boo.

it's raining. alot.

also, getting cold. brr.

DIRECTLY RELATED TO THOSE THOUGHTS.

I want a cat, or a bunny, or a dog, or SOMETHING. Not necessarily here in japan, but when I get back.

The problem being of course that I will probably be in living in very small aparments for some time to come. Maybe a teacup bunny/cat/dog? They make those right?

...

Also, know what I hate? When people take pictures of me that I don't know. I mean, I don't care if they ask even. I *still* wouldn't want them to take pictures of me.

That being said, boy o boy do do Iove taking pictures of other people. I'm pretty sure that 99% of the people I take pictures of I would forget about in 3 minutes if I hadn't captured them digitally, but once I *have* captured them, then I have these strangers locked away in that slice of time forever.

bwahahahaa.

...

yeah.

or

Shopping in japan is quite the trip.

On one hand you have the MEGA STORES. The likes of which are only equaled by malls back in america. Except these AREN'T malls. They are ONE SINGLE STORE. Usually the said store sells a bunch of different items, but all the same, it's one store.

Really, if you want to see EVERY CAMERA, EVERY DISHWASHER, and EVERY ETHERNET PLUG EVER MADE. You go to one of these stores. I quite honestly have no idea how it can even stay profitable.

On the other hand you have the tiny, cramped, and seemingly catacomb esque store mazes. In these most stores are usually under ten square feet, and it's not uncommon to find the store itself comprising only of a front stand with just enough room in the back for the owner to sit on a small wooden stool.

But don't be fooled. Although they don't usually sell the larger more expensive items, you can still find every version of X, Y OR Z if you look in the right places. From the looks of some of these stalls Japan must have the most industrious and thriving mad scientest/fix it up community in the world.

Anyways, so like I previously stated I'm on break right now (although I still have work to do for classes), and currently alternate between relaxing at home (or to be more honest, trapped at home while a typhoon tears apart the world outside my window), and heading into tokyo to just sort of bob around and explore as much as I can.

I'm feeling very zen these days. Maybe this is because nothing bad has happened for awhile, but just overall life feels like it's flowing very smoothly.

haha, of course this feeling is slightly muddied by that feeling that if nothing bad has happened for awhile then something bad is BOUND to happen soon. But, you know, I'm good at repressing those sorts of feelings anyways.

ommmmmmmm.

2007-10-23T02:41:00.000-07:00

CATS!

I miss the Pratt cats... The musabi cats only love you for your food! They don't even let you pet them! *sigh*

Also, Japan has a ton of stray cats. I mean, usually about every other time I go into the city I see a cat or two. Just wandering around, usually bugging people for food. I guess this means the black death won't be coming to japan anytime soon?

MACROS!

The weather is currently being a bit wonky. I wake up and my room is really cold. I poke my head outside, cold.

So I put on a decent sweater, warm pants, socks, shoes, etc. etc. For the first few hours I'm fine, a comfortable temperature.

Then. All of a sudden. It gets much hotter! And I end up sweating! And then later on in the day... It gets colder again!

This all strangely correlates with the amount of light present as well. HRRRMMMM. I'm going to have to research furthur.

HOMEWORK!

So the first one is the end product of my Hyaku draw class. It's filled with delicious experimental line drawings involving various amounts of ink and paper.

I really enjoyed that class and wish there was a more advanced version of it for still lifes or figure drawing or something. That would be amazing.

So, yeah, that book took a crazy long time to put together, but the end reseult was satisfactory, and I believe that it was recieved well. I also gave it to Musabi because I really don't have the room to bring a five pound tome of drawings back to the US, but I have everything digitally backed up so I *guess* I could always remake it If I wanted to. (By the by, I'll eventually get around to picking out a few choice experimental line pieces and posting them here. probably.)

Also, ROBOT! I have devised a genius way of etching patterns into the hard foam surface. By getting a soldering iron and using a thin metal wire I can wrap a thin pin to the end of it. The heat transfers happily through the pin and allows me to have much finer lines, something that would have been impossible with just the soldering iron or even something like an exacto knife. GENIUS. Also I burned myself figuring this out. Apparently soldering irons heat other metal up REALLY FAST. Including metal rulers. haha.

These three dishes probably comprise about 70% of what I eat for meals.

Curry. Sushi. Ramen. Many different variations of those things, but still, those things.

Is this healthy? Um. Maybe? But I do snack on carrots, bananas, health bars etc.

And everyonce in awhile I eat something different. I had a subway avacado and veggie sandwich for lunch today!

That being said I'm about to go out and eat some shitake ramen with egg noodles and tempura for dinner tonight.

Still delicious... still cheap. I do miss a good NYC slice of pizza though!

RANDOM!

Just a picture I took of some doodles made by a guy in my Block class. (he made a self portrait in the upper right hand corner).

This guy is a genius when it comes to drawings. Every drawing he makes is not only good, but it's AMAZINGLY FAST.

He could probably churn out a whole notebook filled with drawings in about two hours. And it would look like it took months. aaaargh.

All the same, by looking at what he's doing I feel like I'm learning a bit. ABSORB BY OSMOSIS. MMMM.

STEALTH!

I really do love catching people as they go about their business. I mean, I hate it when It gets done to me. So I'm a complete hypocrite, but there's something about grabbing people out of time, when they are completely natural, that just can never be simulated by setting someone up and asking them to do a pose for you.

I WISH that I could take photos of people inside the subway cars here with my macro lens. The faces and the attitudes are just so perfect.

I mean, really, every other person is this perfect example of some aspect of japan. Especially the older japanese people. I can't even describe it.

Oh!

I'm going to Kyoto at the end of the month! So that will be very very awesome, it will only be for a few days, but should still be great.

AND! The huge musabi fair is in a week!

I am fully prepared to be crushed and humiliated by the sheer quality and quantity of the artwork displayed there.

In a good way of course.

2007-10-19T07:36:00.000-07:00

I'm making lil robots that combine together to make bigger robots! THEY HAVE A HOLE IN THE BOTTOM FOR MAXIMUM COMBINATIONS.

These are still rough versions, but I'm getting much closer to a finalized idea. Then I'm gonna make a bunch. Alot a bunch.

um... this is for class. I swear.

(didn't make this though. Just... you know... art schools. WACKY.)

But I DID take both of these pictures with YET ANOTHER NEW CAMERA LENS. WHAT YOU SAY?

HARRY YOU CRAZY CRAZY BOY, A MAN CANNOT LIVE ON LENSES ALONE! HOW WILL YOU AFFORD FOOD???

Well, I respond, first of all, food is really crazy cheap over here. I probably spend about seven dollars a day on food. I'm not even kidding. It's actually sort of scary.

And SECOND, this lens was THIRTY BUCKS. It's a 70-210 canon zoom lens (with macro!) from *1988*. And although that does make it pretty damn old (I'm barely ahead of it...), this lens still manages to fetch anywhere from 150-200 dollars on the used market depending on what shape it's in.

And this lens is in FANTASTIC shape. So! How did I get such a fantastic deal?

FUNGUS.

GROWING INSIDE THE LENS.

yeah. that does seem to put a damper on things right?

NOT SO FOR A CRAFTY CRAFTY FELLOW SUCH AS MYSELF.

I whipped that thing open (against the advice of the shop I bought it from. HAH.), cleaned it up, and snapped it all back together so fast those spidery webby fungal strands didn't know what hit them. And just like that, Harry has a snappy new lens to haul around. *glee*.

And some more pictures from the shinjuku area... (taken with the 18-55 kit lens I bought for 25ish dollars. heehee.)

I will never think of New York as busy again. The sheer bustling LIFE that seems to be teeming in and out of every orifice in this city is just mind boggling at times. I can only imagine that numbers of things that I will never see and may have only missed by one floor or a right hand turn, but at the same time it's pointless to even think about that, because just by being here for a few months I've already found multiple shops that most of the students in my classes here have never even heard of! AND THESE ARE THE "FAMOUS" SHOPS TOO!!

Also, until you've spent an hour long train ride with a slightly sweaty japanese business man half your height sandwiched against your ass and lower back (and completely surrounded on all sides by other tokyo denizens) with no room to adjust your bags or even breath too deeply, you really haven't experienced the tokyo transportation system the way it was meant to be experienced. yay experience.

maybe a few sweeter pictures too. All taken near the Takanodai station (near where I live). This really is a very sweet area. A strangely balanced mixture of sage elderly grandparent types, younger lively college students, and bubbly energized little kids gives it a feeling of balance.

I have become completely addicted to riding my bike and will probably do so when I get back even in completely unecessary and stupid situations. You have been warned.

And don't you worry! I'm still taking far too many macro pictures!!

It really is like hunting... sadly it's getting colder and colder, and all the bugs are going away. *tear*.

I'm actually really looking forwards to going to the country in the summer just so I can spend a few days taking hundreds of macro pictures of little crawly things. MMMMM...

(also, the strange picture of the little beatle? It's about to start flying. I don't know. Freaks me out.)

And finally...

the ever reflective japanese business man.

I missed my train taking this picture.

hmm.

2007-10-16T06:55:00.000-07:00

Aaagh... it's been a long time without an update!

Or maybe not that long... but it sure feels like a long time to me.

I've been churning out drawings in my 100 drawings class, working on my little toy block robots in my cube form class, jutting around tokyo, and even going bowling! (sadly I don't have any pictures of the bowling... arg!)

But all and all I've been having a great time! Yay!

I found an *AWESOME* camera shop in Nakano too!

It has good prices for used and new lenses, but that's not the awesome part. The awesome part is the "junk" section!

It's a few shelves of lenses and cameras that are deemed to not be in good shape, but not to be so worthless that they should be thrown out. Some are almost completely broken, other ones only have a few superficial scratches.

I picked up a 70-300 sigma zoom lens for 10 bucks (can only go to the lowest f/stop), and a 18-55mm canon lens for 30 bucks (has a scratch on it? ha?) normally the sigma lens sells for about 150 dollars, and the canon lens for around 250 dollars.

AWESOME. Also a great oldschool monopod for 15 dollars, and a nikon case that normally sells for fifty bucks for 70 yen (less than a buck).

Tokyo is a terrible place to buy new lenses, but the best place in the world to buy used ones!

Um, some tokyo pictures? Dunno.

Also... more macro picture!!

See that strange moth thing? I don't know if this is its real name, but I've always called it the hummingbird moth. This is in no way an exaggeration. Its wings move as fast as a hummingbirds, and it zips around like it's cracked out of its cute little head.

I'm pretty sure I looked more than a little crazy hopping all over the place after it...

Requested picture time! Oyobe sensei on the left, and Seattle (haha, nickname, she studied in America during highschool...) on the right!

Oyobe Sensei is the teacher of my block creation class and has been incredibly awesome to me since I've been here, and Seattle is my translator in said block class, and has also been very awesome (and patient... ha...) as well.

And... this is why I don't put more pictures of me up! I'm a narcissist that hates to see pictures and drawings of myself... maybe it doesn't line up with the more idolized version of myself in my own mind? Probably.

but yup! I have to go now... I'll try and update even more often!

(p.s. OH MAN I AM GOING TO HAVE THE MOST AWESOME SCHEDULE FOR NEXT SEMESTER EVER.)

2007-10-12T16:22:00.000-07:00

Some more photos! This here is one of the many MUsabi kitties. They are VERY skittish, and many of them have mangled tails. Coincidence??? Probably.

Akihabara! Went there yesterday and shopped around. I didn't take any pictures for some strange reason, but the coolest parts are the mazelike stalls of strange and obscure computer parts. There are just so so so many of them. Tons of old and new computer parts.

Also that huge wall is a GIGANTIC akihabara computer/department store. It literally has every version of EVERYTHING EVER.

Just walls and walls of such strange stuff as usb 2.0 adapters and fans for laptops and the like...

aarg running out of time to write...

um also...

tee hee...

2007-10-10T03:30:00.000-07:00

ok, lets get some older pictures out of the way first. ho hum.

So today me and my illustration class spent the first hour and a half of the day...

BLOWING BUBBLES YAAAAY!

(we did drawing and shit after that, but, c'mon, it's the blowing bubbles you want to hear about.)

It was fun! Aslo, breaking in my 50mm 1.8 lens some more.

Really liking it. The autofocus misses sometimes, but the manual focus is very very easy to do on it, so no biggy. (all the bubble pictures were taken with it by the way.)

Also a few more HDR taken with the new lens. haha, some are a bit extreme.

And finally, this picture that is taking me forever. But, in a good way. Should get another few hours of work done on it tonight.

And remember folks! These are just the flat color layers! After this I have to put down three levels of darker shades ontop of each color layer, and then three levels on lighter shades as well!

IT'S GOING TO BE AWESOME.

i hope

2007-10-09T07:56:00.000-07:00

I FIXED MY STYLUS! I THINK! YAY?

Alsooo... macro.

I have more I should write.

But I be tired.

umm...

oh! I'm going to go bowling next saturday with some guys from musabi. hee hee. BOWLING!

BOOOWLING~!

2007-10-08T16:24:00.001-07:00

GAAH, well I have six minutes to write this blog post before I'm late to class, so lets see how much I can belt out shall we?

1. Me and one of my japanese classes went out drinking and eating and socializing! yaaay! It was actually a hell of a lot of fun, and everybody seemed to enjoy themselves a whole lot. And when I say I went out with the japanese class, I'm not just talking about the students. Two teachers also joined up with us, and very happily poured cups of beer and passed around the plates of food. (legal drinking age here is 20 of course). They also *paid* for a huge amount of it. Considering I ate enough to make myself completely full about twice over, including drinks and snacks, and in the end only paid around 10 bucks? Not a bad deal.

It made me very happy.

2.I bought a new lens for my camera! It's the canon 50mm f/1.8 lens. And boy, is it cheap. But in a good way. I paid about 85 bucks for it (in a market where most decent cameras start at around 300), and it takes some FANTASTIC pictures.

I mean, for what I paid anyways. It's a prime lens, so it can't zoom, it has all plastic construction ('cept for the lenses themselves, those are fine glass), and the zoom is noisy, but the pictures themselves are quite good.

I did a 1:1 zoom in so you can see how it actually managed to capture quite a bit of detail that would otherwise be unseeable.

and a spider! (I still really do need to invest in a good macro lens, but, later.)

Lots of other cool stuff that I should really talk about, but my six minutes are up! So, I'll leave you with an update to my strange drawing I'm still working on. Yup.

2007-10-05T05:13:00.000-07:00

HDR PHOTOOOOOOOOOOS!!!!!!! ABLBALGFAHGHAGHAAA!!!

Phew. Well I'm starting to get the hang of it. Still have to throw out a bunch of shots everytime, but it's all good.

HDR is of course a very limited technique. If you'll notice almost all of these pictures would normally have extreme lights and darks. It is in this situation that HDR shines. Also you might notice there are no moving people. Since HDR is composed of three (or more) shots if anything is moving during those shots you get a very strange (and very unpleasant looking) "ghosting effect". Because of this it really is only useful for still things, or things that are moving only slightly. This also makes shooting by hand much harder (which I sadly have to do) bcause even tiny hand shakes in one of the pictures can mess the whole thing up.

Still FUN THOUGH!

Ok.

So today and yesterday I did some more 100 drawings class. Well, if we weren't drawing before we're definately on our way now! I probably churned out almost a hundred hand drawings pictures in those two classes alone.

It would be hard to call them hand studies however. We were told to "explore the idea of the hand" (or some such thing) and by that the teacher meant INK HAND BRUSH PAPER GOOOOO!!!

I made some pretty cool stuff, but the other Musabi students were no slouches either. I guess I should take some pictures tomorrow? Yeah.

Also, japanese students are VERY ENTHUSIASTIC ABOUT THINGS.

something I have come to imitate much to their amusement. (think shouting the japanese equivalent of "awesome" and "cool" over things that you find interesting.)

It's fun. YOU SHOULD TRY!!

And on a final note...

I HAD THE COOLEST AND STRANGEST DREAM LAST NIGHT!

So, Nestor and my brother have both somehow gained INFINITE POWER. I'm a bit sad that I didn't get INFINITE POWER, but I'm like, oh well, can't always get everything right? But then I'm like "Wait... infinite power? HMMM" So I ask each of them for 1% of their power. Which they give to me. ( a bit grudgingly. skinflints.)

And well, 2% of infinity is still quite a bit of infinity eh? SO I HAVE INFINITE POWER TOO! And then I start to help out the town I live in by building gigantic stone monuments (of course). Which is awesome.

However, there are gods in charge of who gets INFINITE POWER, so they come down to deal with me. But, since I have INFINITE POWER I sort of know what's going on.

So we all start using our INFINITE POWER to try and trap and outsmart eachother.

IT WAS AWESOME. i was sad when i woke up though. *sigh*

2007-10-03T04:16:00.000-07:00

Ok, we got some actual HDR up in here.

(although for ULTIMATE BLEND I should really be using a tripod, but eh...)

Originals:

As you can see, this isn't exactly the most interesting subject material. The day is overcast lending the pictures to being completely wiped out on the top, and also not many cool things are happening in the pictures themselves.

ALL THE SAME, LET'S SEE WHAT WE CAN DO SHALL WE??

-hdr processing... vrrr...vrrr... vrrr... *DING*!-

WOAAW! Those pictures... they... they...

they still aren't all that interesting! Haha, well, you can't make gold out of lead after all. (dammnit).

BUT!

We can also see pretty clearly that there is a HUGE increase in the amount of visible detail and level of information displayed.

Using this under the right circumstances would allow for photographs that would otherwise be all but impossible.

The hard part then is of course *finding* the right circumstances, but, oh well, good things and waiting and all that.

A good point to note. I am using HDR somewhat sparingly. This is because HDR when used more liberally creates pictures that the mind immediately recognizes as fake. This can be a good thing (think fantasy worlds), but at the same time usually isn't what the scene calls for.

Happily limited use can result in photographs that look like they could fairly normal (if a bit intense).

...

...

And so! Today was another pretty eventful day, or, if eventful isn't the right word to use, interesting would certainly fit.

I took my second Hyaku Draw (HUNDRED DRAWINGS YATAAAAA) class today. Surprisingly I have yet to draw a picture yet.

Rather, this time we did a "blind trust walk". YEAH ONE HUNDRED DRAwin... um, what?

So. I was paired up with a girl who could speak english (read, speaking english is used liberally here) and the class was told to take off their shoes. Then, giving us all blindfolds we were told to head out into the Musabi campus and essentially just wander around until the period was over and then come back.

So I start my day (it's 9:30 in the morning) with a blindfold on my eyes, no shoes on my feet, wandering across stones/tiles/rug whil being directed by a somewhat shy japanese girl in another language (I told her not to speak english for simple directions).

I was in complete darkness and the only directions allowed were vocal, so after the first ten minutes I was really starting to lose a sense of connection to the real world beyond the different feels my feet and skin were experiencing.

After another fifteen minutes the fact that my only directions were being given in japanese from an exterior source started to result in me moving almost without direction from my own brain, not having the time to think about what I was told each time I just did what she said, hoping my subconcious knew what it was doing well enough to stop me from falling down a flight of stairs.

After about an hour of this we switched and then *I* became the puppet master, which, while fun, was not comparable to the first part.

Being "blind" for that amount of time, and being completely guided by something that you have no connection to gives a pretty messed up sense of space, time, and self. I honestly think that you would have to do it more than one time to truly be able to remember the whole experience in a usable way, but I will concede that it was a *very* interesting trip, and hopefully something I will eventually be able to use.

After that I did another japanese lesson. I'm learning but the limitations I have on casual speech are just *staggering*. Ugh.

Although there is a guy in the class that can't speak or read any japanese at all. Damn does that have to suck.

The final point of interest of the day was my dinner.
So I cruise into town on my awesome musabi granted bike and head over to my favorite delicious and cheap restaurant. The woman there knows me by now, so I point out what I want and she shuffles away to whip it up. (it was cold soba and tempura if you must know), and when I go to sit down, what seems to be one of her kids (or employees, or somebody that is somehow related to the shop) comes over and sits down at the same table with me.

Apparently he is very interested in learning english (he was *terrible* at it by the way) and tried to ask me about school and where I was from and whatnot. He pretty much failed, but *another* guy who was working at making my dinner comes over and *this* guy can speak perfect english. Immaculate. So with his help I was able to talk about musabi and new york a bit, while we both ate some soba and tempura. The english speaking guy was pretty awesome, and the guy sitting at my table was cool, if a bit of a loser (haha, he really only liked crappy american stuff).

But any case, when I finish with my dinner the guy says that the meal was free, and the other guys confirms it. AWESOME.

I doubt it will ever happen again, but that's not going to stop me from going to that restaurant 200% more often!

2007-10-02T03:02:00.000-07:00

HDR.

A new toy for Harry? Hell yes.

No, not some expensive shiny thing, nor anything all that nerdy, HDR is something I'm going to be messing around with quite a bit for the next few days.

HDR for those not "in the know" is a "High Dynamic Range Image". There's alot of mumbo jumbo involved in the explanation that I won't bore you with (and that I only begin to understand myself), but essentially whenever we take a photo we lose tons and tons of information. Especially so when there are extremes of light and dark, since the camera can only capture so much information, inevitably you will end up with parts both too light, or too dark, or even both.

HDR imaging attempts to circumvent this problem by having you take not one, not two, but THREE images (or more!) of the exact same thing, although each one with differing contrast levels.

So, lets say you want to take a picture of something with shadows and a bright sky behind it. First take it at -2 contrast. The shadows will lose all the information in them and only be dark, and much of the picture will be far underexposed. However, the sky should be allowed to come into a much better contrast range with much more information contained within it. Then you take another picture at a normal exposure range. This means the shadows and the sky should both be a bit underexposed/overexposed respectively, but the majority of the image should contain good information. Then you would take a picture at +2 contrast. This means the sky would be almost completely devoid of information, and most of the picture wil be overexposed, but the shadows should be nicely exposed with plenty of information contained in them.

Now, these photos have to be taken without the camera moving virtually at all so everything lines up. Then, plop them into some HDR imaging and it will pretty intelligently work through and find the best information from all three pictures! haha!

From here you still have to mess around with the values and information for awhile (since computers have no sense of what looks good), but this way you get lots of info in the shadows, mid points and the sky as well! Yay!

if done moderately this can just lead to the picture looking that much more "real". If done a bit more the picture can take on fantastic qualities that look almost like another world.

Also HDR imaging contains far far more colors and information than even the computer screen can accurately display, and if performed on a "true color" monitor can pretty accurately depict the light you might see in the real world, something most photos can only dream of doing.

In aany case, I find this to be pretty interesting, so I'll be sure to try and make some good examples over the next few days.

(Disclaimer: I've only been doing this for about an hour. I'm sure I'm doing it all wrong. But that's ok. Ok?)

Ok. here's a photo I took awhile ago at tskuiji. Because the light outside is failing I will have to do with a "fake" HDR image. I will take this and then make two other versions, one at -2 exposure, and one at +2 exposure. Because I shot in RAW mode this will emmulate the actual shooting environment to a somewhat ok degree. However, although this will demonstrate some of the benefits of HDR, it is not "true HDR". This is because it is not actually increasing the high dynamic range, but it does allow us to see some more information that wouldn't be available otherwise. Ok.

Now here's the same photo with some faux HDR going on.

As you can see things that were previously almost wiped out are clearly visible. Also contrast is increased, and unfortunately, so is noise.

However, if I actually shot three pictures I could do so at a much lower iso, and the end HDR result should have *far* superior amounts of information.

But in any case, cool shit HUH?
...

...

OK!

So, although I just spent a few pages ranting about something I'm sure you don't care about at all, alot of very nice things have been happening here in musabi land!

The classes I'm taking are all pretty awesome (if just a bit strange from a pratt stand point), the teachers are all very nice (and actually seem to like the cute/strange shit I make. haha.), and the students all seem to be enjoy the fact that I'm there taking classes with them (yay).

I also finally know my way around campus, which is impressive considering it is far bigger than Pratt and built like a strange concrete/organic labyrinth.

I'm also constantly happily impressed with how serious all the students seem to be about their work, but seem to do so in a very relaxed and enjoyable way. They work hard, are talented, but recognize that it's what they want to do and seem to be happy for whatever opportunity they get to express their creativity.

Also... the differences between Japan and America continue to amaze and confuse me!

On one hand we have so much in common that it is easy to see a complete blending of cultures and ideals. On the other there are deeply ingrained ideas of societal behavior in Japan that at times to make almost no sense.

Some examples. Japanese subways get *very* crowded. At many points during the day. The Japanese subway system is amazing, but there is simply a ridiculous amount of people trying to use it. So Tokyo denizens have gotten very used to being squished in with other people. This makes sense, and is completely understandable.

What *does not* make sense to me is the fact that when people want to exit or enter the train, the people in the doors will often times *REFUSE TO MOVE*. ??? WHY? They won't lose their space, they could just sidle back in afterwards?

Also, nobody exiting or entering the train gets mad at these people. They seem to be viewed as just another obstacle in life, and so the exiting/entering people will PUSH as hard as they can to get by.

The other day I was in a crowded train and had to get off at my stop. This was a popular stop so about 70% of the train also had to get off. Standing in the doorway were two highschool girls. I swear to god they were literally bracing themselves against the flow of traffic, trying as hard as they could to fight against the tide. In the end they were blown backwards out of the door as the sheer surging force of humanity crushed whatever resistance they had tried to put up.

nobody complained while this was happening. The girls didn't. The people trying to exit didn't. Nobody even seemed bothered by it. It was simply what had to happen.

Another very strange thing is the love/hate relationship with western foreigners. On one hand you have a huge amount of people trying to imitate western culture, eating western foods, and learning western languages. People always seem fascinated with the fact that I'm from New York, tell me how much they want to learn english, and seem to have some very idealized views of america. (they do hate bush pretty consistantly though).

however, many places seem to be designed to keep foreigners out, other places only allow foreigners in if they have a japanese friend with them, and still others may refuse foreigners completely!

It's a strange dichotomy of current japan. They wish to embrace the new and the foreign as much as possible, trying to absorb it into themselves at a fantastic rate, but at the same time there is a rejection of change and outsiders completely, people trying as hard as they can to hold onto an older simpler style of existance.

I understand where both sides are coming from, but it's still a bit of a trip to observe both in action in virtually the same place.

...

...

wow, I just realized how much more I have to say about classes, trips, food, etc etc. Um. I need to update even more huh?

Ok, I'll leave those other thoughts for another day.

RANDOM PICTURE ENDCAP.

2007-09-29T07:25:00.000-07:00

haha... So I told you how hard it was to really know where that lemon camera store was?

This is one of the signs downstairs. One of the few that has english on it to boot. Happily the people upstairs are all very friendly regardless of race, but they don't exactly roll out the red carpet in the lobby...

and speaking of the lobby... yeah. Nice, but how is this supposed to attract customers?

Then again, the store is always pleasantly busy. Never full, but never empty feeling either. Hrm. Guess they sorta know what they're doing.

Also, the ipod touch isn't coming out in japan for another month. Or rather, it is *techinically* already out here, but nobody can see it or play with it in any of the stores for about another month. waaa. I wanna see it already!!

Ginza at night is very twinkly.

So! I spent all of thursday and absolutely all of friday working on homework for this block class I'm taking. A block class you say? "But harry! You are an illustrator! You make beautiful beautiful works of art using tools of line, not of form!"

And to this I respond, "I dunno. it came recommended. *shrug.*"

Also so far it has been all sorts of awesome, so I'm definately not complaining.

But anyways, Yeah. I spend a good solid six hours on thursday, and then another *solid* eight hours on friday.

And I'm not talking "yeah, I spent like eight hours man. oh, and I grabbed some pizza too. And watched a movie. And took a nap. But like, really I worked alot!"

No. Solid. My spinal cord was probably suffering from internal bleeding by the end.

And I wasn't alone either. Because we work with little foam block cutting machines me and a few other students were working solidly the whole time in one of Musabi's many classrooms. And man, musabi students have some *major* work ethic. They just sat right down and worked and worked.

No complaining, no trying to cut corners, just solid work. Made me try a hell of alot harder to live up to the standard they were setting...

And in the end I had a bunch of blocks that all interlocked and went into a ridiculously overly complicated box I also had to make to put them into.

The whole purpose of this was just to get us accustomed to the foam cutting machines for our *real* assignment this upcoming week. Yeah. 14+ hours to get the hang of a machine. AWESOME.

But the point of this story isn't to bitch, but rather to PRAISE!!

So I come into class with my little box of blocks. I'm pretty happy, no major failings had occured, and I had worked hard. Everybody else had their little boxes too, and so we all seemed pretty happy.

Now what I was expecting was for the teacher to come around and carefully inspect every tiny little block for flaws, and then give a critique and then yadda yadda yadda etc. Like at Pratt. You know, you do the work, then spend the rest of the class doing critiques.

NO. He told us to dump the blocks out on the table in front of us... *AND THEN HAVE A RACE TO SEE WHO COULD BUILD THE TALLEST TOWER FIRST.*

FUCK YEAH! haha, while we did this he came around and inspected them, but in a very friendly way. He also had us make designs with the blocks, portraits, and elements of musabi.

Everybody had worked their asses off and they had *known* that they were just doing it for themselves. Not because there was a fear of getting yelled at. I found this to be awesome.

now what I'm going to do with all these blocks I have no idea...

and to end! A semmi.

I love semmi! Even though they are loud, they are also adorable, and very very stupid.

By the way. If you didn't figure it out, a semmi=cicada. But really stupid.

2007-09-27T18:26:00.000-07:00

Well I'm finally getting that familiar feeling of too much to do, not nearly enough time.

Still, this is a good thing. The only thing worse than having too much to do is having too little.

And I do love my illustration class here. It's about as different from Pratt as you can possibly get.

The teacher continues to emphasize doing things in an "unnatural" way. He feels that too many people have a complete seperation from the physical aspect of their work these days, and so tries to force us to feel that connection again.

for instance...

yesterday we put up another giant sheet of paper, and then proceeded to draw ourselves at giant like stature with very unwieldy sticks.

This might sound completely ridiculous, but I found myself surprised at some of the lines I was getting, and in the end the results were very impressive, or at the very least amusing.

I've also been working on a series of interlocking cube things in another class as well. Have yet to take any pictures of the chaos that is that room, but I'll try and remember to do so today.

um...

I've also decided I want a macro lens. It is *way* too hard to take photos of tiny things with a zoom lens, and there is a ridiculously large amount of spiders around here.

I MUST CAPTURE THEIR SUBLIME BEAUTY.

also... clouds! Just taken while wandering around the Musabi campus. Because of work I've been a bit restricted from going into the city. But, oh well. Maybe I can be a good boy and get a bunch done today?

And this big beautiful building is also a part of the Musabi campus, (again, this place is huge), but I really have no idea what's inside of it.

Clubs maybe? A gym? I don't know, but I like it.

ALSO!

haha, almost forgot.

So the japanese LOVE festivals. I mentioned it before and I'll mention it again. THEY LOVE THEM. So it's not very suprising that Musabi has a big ol' student art festival just for itself every year. No real reason, they just do.

The big art event that Pratt has every year is survey. And that's only really for a part of the school as it is. And it only takes up one building. And it's all very academic. But still, we get to look at other peoples art work, and that's a pretty cool thing.

And it is completely put to shame by what Musabi does.

According to students here, musabi's art festival is HUUGE. It takes up every single room in every building, has over *500* completely seperate galleries all with at least three or four students in each one, all with original work.

They have lightshows (use to have fireworks but the cops kept getting called), parades, wrestling matches (apparently sometimes nude...), rows and rows of alcoholic venders, rows and rows of food stalls, a huge student run and made fashion show, esteemed famous japanese artists come in to give speeches and again, more original artworks that you can shake a stick at.

Over the course of THREE SOLID DAYS.

And all of this is not only allowed by Musabi, but both teachers and students collaborate to bring it together each year.

needless to say, I'm quite excited by the whole thing.

it happens at the end of october so it's still a way away though.

Ok. well I've got work to do, so ja ne and whatnot!

2007-09-25T06:24:00.000-07:00

well I more or less figured out what I want to do. A massive scene featuring crazy shit.

Very surprising for me I know.

Anyways, here's what I mocked up to use as my reference. In the end I'm going to make a completed colored illustration, but I figured I should have a solid idea of what I wanted to do with it.

Pictures are a crazy of collage of pictures I took, google image searches, and photos from photo forums I lurk at.

Hopefully they won't mind me using them...

And that's that! I'll update with drawings later.

Mmmmyup!

2007-09-24T00:31:00.000-07:00

MRGMGM....

procrastinating.

I have a very interesting assignment for my illustration class.

And it damn well *SHOULD* be an interesting assignment since I was given absolutely no restrictions over choosing what I wanted to do the assignment on.

What I have to do (and what I chose to do) was to find interesting elements in technology, machinery, etc, and combine it with organic life forms (animals, humans, plants...).

I proposed to do this through taking pictures of both sides of the equation, and then to draw out these new combinations in interesting scenarios using the pictures as references.

I thought this was a fun and interesting idea. The teacher thought this was a fun and interesting idea.

But now I find myself against a mental block.

It's *too* fun and interesting!!

I have no idea where to start!

ha...

oh well. I'll manage.

(maybe these two would go together nicely?)

And uh, here's some pretty pictures too![

Yeah, landscapes are boring, I know. But I like the coloring on this one.

Natural lensflare! Woo!

Baby jesus and a tombo! (hint, tom bo means flying stick).

Oh, so I went out with Cilian and a girl we both know from Musabi into the city yesterday to go check out Musabi students friends boyfriends gallery. Yeah.

The artwork was really pretty incredible. Large, strangely nightmarish, and yet almost cute. Sadly they didn't allow photography inside or else I would have very happily documented the whole thing.

But on the way out of the building we ran into the artist himself! A very nice guy who was suitably embarrassed when complimented, he happily showed us around the area.

Anyways, I said I was into strange japanese paraphernalia so he took us to this strange little hole in the wall store on a side street that led to down twisting dimly lit stairs.

And like all things in Japan, the harder it is to find, the better it's going to be.

This place was very very cool. I managed to buy a very strange and beautifully drawn artbook, and almost bought an evangelion kewpie doll. (it was very cute. maybe a little too cute).

I always get this feeling that there is so much more in the city that I'm not seeing, things hidden just one floor away, something that I would find so incredibly cool, but would be impossible to find anywhere else.

This can be a little aggravating, but at the same time, there is always the knowledge that I *haven't* found everything yet.

I'm absolutely sure the same applies to N.Y.

2007-09-20T18:15:00.000-07:00

So I finally got around to "developing" (haha, putting them on my computer) the pictures I took around Musashino's campus...

Ok! So this is the sight I see when I park my bikes. Um. Yeah.

Ok, these pictures are pretty self explanatory. I'll pop in when you need help kay?

yup.

Oh! So in illustration class the other day the teacher pulls out a huge stack of large white sheets of paper and tells us to tape them all together. So we do so. Resulting in a very very large sheet of paper. Hmmm?

What are we going to do with such a huge sheet of paper?

RUN BACK AND FORTH DRAWING ON IT LIKE THIRD GRADERS YAAAAAY!

but no, seriously. We also put on some *tape* before hand, so that when peeled back would reveal fantastic negative shapes. CAN YOU SEE MINE HAHA CAN YOU??

Anyways, here's the cafeteria. Home to some very tasty and VERY VERY CHEAP (usually around 3~4 dollars american) japanese foods.

Seriously though. Pratt cafeteria? Your food isn't too bad. But really, lower the prices down okay?

Outside of the cafeteria! Haha...

*Everyone* has a bike at this school. I mean it. There are so many places to park your bike I have yet to find them all. And they are always full too.

I'm really growing to love biking here though, very very relaxing, and very convenient too!

And after class I decided to head over to Ginza to check out some camera stores. And so this is the view from where I park my bike. It's a nice little park area, and it's free too!

(photo taken on my rebel with the stores 60mm macro lens)

Okay, so the reason I'm going to camera stores is to try and find out where I'm going with my own camera.

Do I buy a prosumer point and shoot (and sell my rebel?), do I find a good cheap lens that's lighter than the one I currently own? Do I just wait to see what comes out?

egh... maybe the questions don't seem hard to you, but I've been mulling, *MULLING*, over them for quite some time now.

I essentailly have it worked down to the canon powershot g9, a 60mm canon macro lens, and a IS canon lens that isn't out yet.

All of them are in relatively the same ballpark. (I'd buy the powershot new, the 60mm lens used, and the IS lens new if I bought any of them at all).

Still, I have time, so It's better to wait and know exactly what you want than to blindly spring forwards and regret it later.

But I did find an *AMAZING* camera store! So good, so cheap... It thoroughly *trounces* B&H photo video in price and quality. (like, by a hundred dollars or more. damn.)

Unsprisingly however, it has a very high turn over rate so it's hard to find the used lens you want, and of course it is like an hour and a half away by train. It's also ridiculously hard to find. (Located on the eighth floor of a building dedicated to some japanese shrine or something? There is also no sign directly outside, and all of the signs are in japanese.)

But it's definately worth it. Whatever I buy, it's going to be from there. hoo yeah.

That night I went out for a delicious sushi dinner. And as usual at sushi dinner that are out of the normal tourist walkways, this one had quite a few business men lounging around inside.

But not the sort you see in the U.S. No sir.

These are a very special brand of Japanese business men. Designer suits. Expensive cigarets hanging *just so* out of their slightly wry lips. A feeling that not only could they mop the floor with everyone in that room, but that since it's so obvious they won't even have to.

THESE ARE SOME VERY COOL BUSINESS MEN. The ages vary too. Go from high twenties, to high fifties.

And not all business men here are like this. Only a few. A select few.

Damn. I have to go train under one of these guys or something. Seriously, they look like something Spike would draw.

2007-09-17T07:12:00.001-07:00

*bloob*

...

It's a picture I could take anywhere in the world, but I took it here. So that makes it special.

A pretty fountain right by where I park my bike when I go to the train station. I put a high shutter speed to freeze everything.

Why you ask? Why not I reply.

Ah, the place where they sell very fine, and *very* cheap anime cells. And lots of other nerdy things too. Mmm.

Sadly it's almost overkill. I only let myself buy one or two small things when I go out shopping, so it's like being at a buffet and not being hungry. Luckily it's always there, so I'll keep pecking at it.

My japanese peeps getting off a station. Bought my rice cooker from a giant camera/electronics/etc store right near here. Yodibashi camera. Very nice store. A+. Will shop again.

And the usual nightime crush. I mean, this is at like, 7:30 or something. It's still this crazy at 11:00. Every freaking time there's this many people when it starts getting late. I don't even live in a very populated area! Where do they go?

Oh yeah! So today I finally socialized a bit! For one of my classes I was supposed to go to a (fancy and expensive) toy shop over the weekend. Happily the girl that translates for me in the class invited me to go along with a few of her friends.

They were all very pleasant and friendly, and I probably chatted their ears off (and the fact that they only sort of understood english certainly didn't stop me!).

The toy shop itself was very nice and cozy, and more german than japanese. Though still quite cute.

I saw this bunny at the toy store and was very keen on getting it for v. I picked it up, put it on my hand and waggled it's little paws and thought to myself "That's it, V would love this and I'm getting it for her." So I looked down to see how much I should shell out, "Surely a fine bunny like this will cost 15, NAY, 25 dollars, but so be it, for I am a kind and loving boyfriend."

IT FUCKING COST 120 DOLLARS. THE FUCK.

So I put yon cute bunny down upon the little wooden pedestal it had come from, backed away slowly, and took a picture instead. Enjoy V!

and speaking of cute furry creatures, remember stitch? From that disney movie awhile ago? Sure you do. It was a pretty decent movie. Good even. Also, the guy who designed the characters? Freaking amazing artist. Really, take my word for it. I've seen his sketchbooks on the interwebs.

Anyways, my point is, Stitch is a character from an american movie from a few years ago. In america, the land he originated in, you will no longer see this character virtually anywhere. Probably not even that much in disney world. Sorry stitch.

HOWEVER. In Japan it is a *completely* different story. You see this little bugger EVERYWHERE.

I mean it. I probably see him twice a day if I go into the city. At the very least. Backpacks, cell phone charms, puzzles, posters, gacha gacha machines (like gumball machines for toys. Very very very popular), t shirts, action figures...

EVERYWHERE. I don't know. Maybe disney found the perfect character to worm its way into the japanese heart, but seriously, they must be making a mint off of it. Freaks me out man.

phew. Well, anyways. I ended the day on a nice note, as the friends of the translator girl showed me a very pretty park located in the midst of tokyo. Actually I had gone here before with Cilian, but It was still very nice.

People enjoy parks here. Parks are nice. Nature is nice.

yay nature!

2007-09-16T07:45:00.001-07:00

Oh jeezus I'm tired.

I have some pictures I took yesterday that I keep meaning to upload, but I reaally cannot be bothered right now.

I have spent all freaking day in my very uncomfortable chair slouched in front of my computer.

WHY YOU ASK????

BECAUSE I LOVE YOU AND I WANTED TO MAKE YOU SOMETHING NICE OOOOKKKKKK????

...

and here it is!

tada!

...

what.

you don't like it?

a;lkdjfa;ldsfj

2007-09-13T01:25:00.000-07:00

7000000 HOURS IN MS PAINT.

Yay, I colored it.

And I found a new way I think I can improve on.

But I'm also pissed because for some reason when I save it out from photoshop all the colors get diluted.

WHAT. WHY.

rg.

Also, a new sketch I hope to flesh out...

He's chewing on meat.][]

2007-09-12T08:18:00.000-07:00

Agghh...

when it rains in new york it usually lets up. eventually.

haha, well not so much in japan. So, I've been hesitant to bring my camera outside and have it's insides completely fried.

In any case, I've had a few classes and they've been great so far, but sadly I don't have photos of the campus to show off yet.

Hopefully it will clear up soon.

Oh yeah! Fun little story!

So I've got class at 9:00 this morning. It's pouring outside, and I don't have the control or the time to hold up an umbrella while riding.

So I throw on my grey hoodie sweater, somewhat limiting my peripheral vision, and start pedaling through the rain towards Musabi. I'm going down one of the dirt(ish) roads to the school, and I see a business man is biking in my direction on my side of the road. Figuring I'll be polite I'm going to ride over to the other side, but first I look back to check for cars and such.

I see a car is in fact coming up behind me, and the business man is still on my side of the road. No problem I think, I'll just slow my speed down a bit and wait for the car to pass me. The business man is still coming directly towards me, obviously reading my mind (or something).

Just when I'm getting ready to go to the other side of the road, as the car passes by me it hits a *massive* puddle, absolutely drenching me with water. I'm momentarily blinded by this, and I believe the business man was too, so I collide head on into the business man and his bike.

Luckily both of our bikes locked into each other and we didn't go sprawling into the mud, but ugh.

Happily I dry out fast.

...

But anyways, the classes over here are coming along great. I've been very busy the last few days between final adding classes and trying to make my schedule work, but hopefully things will work out fine.

Everyone over here has been incredibly helpful and friendly so far. Hopefully this isn't just a newcomer syndrome thing, and they'll be able to keep it up for the whole semester, but it's made things very pleasant so far.

Um... and since I don't have any camera pictures...

uh, drawings?

Just two that I really ought to finish...

Um. With classes starting I should be getting a bunch of new work soon, so hopefully I'll be able to give both photos *and* drawings!

Opening membership fees to this website will start at a very reasonable 4.99, and perhaps as it gets more popular might see an increase to 6.99 in order to stave off rising bandwidth costs.

2007-09-08T08:04:00.000-07:00

Ergh... reaally sleepy, I'm just going to do a photo dump and edit explanations in when I wake up.

This is the area around my house/dorm/apartment thing.

See if you can guess what I'm going to say about the pictures before I do! No Prize!

Ah, so more or less what I see when I walk out of my room each day. I say more or less because there is a plastic divider that is also between the door and this view as you'll see in the next picture...

I mean it *has* to be here. Cause otherwise it would be unsafe and all. blah. Maybe they could have made it out of glass? Or for less clarity, but more awesome, ulexite even? mmm...

So the area I'm in is most definately *not* like the inner parts of tokyo. More suburby, but the houses are are close to eachother (no backyards). It's a very quiet area with a lot of bikers and a every once in a while a slow moving car.

And speaking of bikes... Musabi in it's infinite kindness allowed me to have one! Thanks Musabi! It's got a lock, and pedals and a seat and everything!

Also because I'm biking everywhere here and enjoying it so much I'm really thinking about doing it more when I get back home too. There's something about hoping on a bike that's very satisfying. I think it's the combination of you getting to sit down, while at the same time moving about as fast as a normal run, while getting to feel a bit healthier too. Laziness, increased productivity, justification. A holy triumvirate of sorts!

Biking to buy some groceries... dum de dum.

Yeah, I don't know, I like seeing this sort of stuff as I bike along. I'm like, "YEAH. JAPAN. WHAT NOW.".

Groceries! A very good little store. Um. yeah. Not that exciting.

An area of fenced off wilderness. Why does it exist? It's got barbed wire all around it...

tanuki breeding ground perhaps?

bike bike bike... home I go.

Oh yeah, the Japanese love detail work. Behond, a manhole cover.

Every manhole cover I've seen has beautiful decorations on it, and they have different ornamentation's every time as well.

Some have been painted though. I don't like them as much.

I'll drag my carcass down to the area I usually eat food at later, and hopefully I'll be able to whip up a drawing or two today as well.

2007-09-06T04:29:00.001-07:00

Wow... when it rains in Japan... it doesn't do it half assedly...

It's been raining solidly for almost three days now. Yesterday it was pretty weak, but all of today has been a downpour.

I've used up my stash of instant soups and snacks... ergh... hopefully it will let up by tomorrow. Don't want to melt.

Today I *was* planning to go into Ginza to check out the apple store because, you probably already know this, the new ipods were released! Huzzah!

Mmmm... ipod touch is exactly what I want. Wifi, flash based hardrive, full body screen, touch sensitive, slick interface...

Still don't know if I'm going to buy it or not, but I definately want to check it out.

Also they kept the older form ipods and bumped the hardrives up to crazy high levels. Yay apple.

Aaanyways, since classes are going to start let's get the rest of the photos out of the way shall we?

(note: When I say "get the rest of the photos out of the way" I mean the few that I chose to give an idea of what I've been up to. I have hundreds... upon hundreds... of pictures. I'm just lazy. You can see them later. If you want.)

Yay, temples and turtles. The temples were very pretty, and were located in a large park area. Secluded and beautiful. The turtles were in a feeding frenzy because some little girl was throwing piece of bread to them. Seriously, the water was almost frothing with how into it they were getting. All the ducks were pretty freaked.

A japanese cemetary. Some of already know this, but japanese cremate the dead. This means they can pack the tombstones very tightly together. Space is a premium after all. (note, they don't cremate for space reasons. I think.) Stil, large cemetaries look almost like cities. I'll try and find one later.

So we also went to tsukiji (the worlds largest fish market. By like, a lot of times.) Now, normally back in america land, you wake up in the morning, 8:30, 9:30 ish... break out the cereal and milk, maybe some waffles, if you're feeling *really* peckish you slap down a few eggs and crack open a pack of bacon. But in Japan? In japan you've got to do it HARDCORE.

So we woke up at *5:30*, get on a train to Tsukiji, arrive at 7:30, line up outside of one of well respected sushi restaurants, and go inside and order plates of raw fish, rice, and miso soup. Oh yeaaahh... tasty.

Why did we do this you ask? especially at such a god forsaken time? Well! The sushi chefs all go out and buy the best they can at around ~4:00 (I believe), start preparing it, and start serving as soon as they can. This way they get the absolute freshest fish they can to the customers, and the sushi just about melts in your mouth. Also! They close very very early. Like, at normal lunchtime. Because, hey, if you're not hardcore, no sushi for you.

By the way, those big steaming blocks of red fish meat you see up there? That's whale. Oh yeah.

This picture obviously needs no explanation. I'm not going to insult your intelligence like that.

Japanese in the mist...

Cool sculpture called "the turtle" (or something). Spews out mists pleasantly for the majority of the day. Japanese business men reflect, children play, all very soothing.

um... and then, at the begginning of every hour, for about 20 seconds (it says twenty minutes on the signs nearby. haha...) it BLASTS out the loudest and most startling jets of water like, twenty feet in the hour, thoroughly freaking out anyone nearby and causing all nearby babies to start crying. *Really* fast and *Really* loudly. I... don't understand the logic. I'm sorry.

I feel bad for nearby restaurants. And people. And birds.

Also! The japanese have lots and lots of parades/fairs/celebratory stuff. Why? Eh, just because. Also there are many many minor holidays and such.

Some cosplayers. I don't know. Meh.

Also... THE CREEPIEST TREE EVER HOLY SHIT JUST LOOK AT IT. I boggled at this tree for a good ten minutes. Probably more like three. eeegh.... so strange.

and finaaally... saving the best for last....

Holy crap! Is that? Omigawd it is! An original evangelion anime cel! hooooly crap! Either you will appreciate this or you won't, but these things are craazy rare, and I got it for virtually nothing. The store I bought it from is completely legit too (don't worry).

mmm...

And that's that! by the way, my orientation was cool enough, but then again, I only understood about a tenth of what was going on. My classes start soon though! I'm very excited about that!

Luckily I don't have to take any liberal arts classes while I'm here, (besides a japanese class), so that gives me a bit more room to take another illustration class.

Yay.

I'll try and get on ichat more too! Miss all of ya'll!

2007-09-04T06:53:00.000-07:00

Wah... tired...

Sorry for missing the last two days, orientation started (meaning waking up much earlier), coupled with a few other things meant I had to choose between blog and sleep.

Sleep is good.

Anyways!

The japanese night life is *insane*

I have not gone clubbing, bar hopping, partying, or any other sort of alcoholic "ing" during my stay in japan.

But just from walking around at night and then returning home (and remember, the subways here stop running at twelve so I have to head back fairly early), you get this sense that every single person that can be outside and on the streets is.

I find myself to somehow be without photos of these sort of events (something I will remedy), but the streets at night here (in a place like shinjuku for instance) are busier than almost any place in new york *any time of the day*, save perhaps time square at it's busiest. Then they'd be about equal.

And most of the shops are closed too! What are they all doing? Where are they all going?

haha... wall of photos...

Oh yeah. You know cicadas? Well they call them semmi over here. And they exist in HUGE NUMBERS. At night they are very very loud. In the daytime... they are also very very loud. Maybe sometimes at dusk they quiet down a bit? Maybe? I don't know.

Oh well. I like em anyways.

Oh, yeah, also you can't walk and smoke at the same time. There are designated smoking areas for that. Also you can't walk and eat either. I mean, you can, it's not illegal or anything, but you're considered to be a bit of an ass if you do. I want to walk and eat... *sigh*.

One *really* cool thing about walking around tokyo is you get to see these spider sentinels from time to time. Really big, sometimes piloted from the inside, or by remote control, these are the newest toys of the tokyo police. Mostly used for monitoring the population, they also can administer stun gas, rubber bullets, and help in the event of a tsunami, earthquake, or any other natural or man made disaster. Sadly civilians can't buy them. tch.

Up up upupupuppupupuppp.... aand...

Tokyo! As seen in the dusk of a hot day in a settling sun. Not setting yet, just sort of settling.

Tokyo is gigantic. It makes me feel very tiny. It also makes manhattan seem very tiny. HOW WILL I SEE IT ALLL??

Ok. sleepy. I shall inform you about how orientation went tomorrow. Or something...

Miss everyone! Alot! Japan rocks alot though! Night!

2007-09-01T08:54:00.000-07:00

Next stop...

Japanese Pirate Adventure!!

YAH!~

In order to get to our next desination, a peaceful mountain top area, we had to cross a big lake. In a strange japanese recreation of a pirate ship. Little known fact. European pirates, although rare in the seas surrounding japan, were actually quite plentiful inside of it's many small lakes. Tossed there by typhoons they raided nearby fishing villages and over time eventually become fossilized.

It's not rare to pass by small statues of buddha along any wooded path, and this one was no exception. Small one yen coins had been placed by previous travelers on the heads of these buddhas. I placed a *five* yen coin. Because DAMMNIT I'm an american~!

These paths were very peaceful. However... I did have to wait for the occasional hiker, families, school outings...

(aww... they really were cute and well behaved though.)

more peaceful, meticulously arranged, zen things. Ah... japan, you have such an appreciation of the calming path of the mind... Then again the cities on the other hand...

Dun dun DUUUUUNNNN!!

Harry returns from the wild to voyage forwards into Japan's great cities. Being from New York this should bring familiar grounds... Or will it??

(twilight zone theme song... aaaand cut.)

2007-08-31T03:21:00.001-07:00

I'm going to try and speed through a bunch more pictures this time, the better to catch everyone up to date with what I'm actually doing.

Still going to stay in the past for a little bit.

... inclined to make some sort of corny joke involving time but nothing is coming to me.

Ok!

That night, just walking outside and through the town. Really serene man made river cuts through the town, somewhat symbolically dividing our shabby (but still pleasant) hotel from a monstrous luxury hotel on the other shore. I believe Cilian said the other hotel cost three to four times what ours did for the cheapest rooms...

The next day we decided to go deeper into hot springs country, having already taken a skin removing hot spring dip earlier that morning (men and women were seperate, also no cameras allowed), so we got aboard a tram style thing that wound its way up the side of the mountain towards where the hot spring waters were harvested from.

Pictures don't quite adequetly capture it, but still a very cool sight. We're cruising along a sort of mountain tram trail at the moment, and every once in awhile we get to glimpse out off the side of the mountain.

Having transferred to a ... air ferry? Forget what they're called... um... on wires. Up high. Anyways, now that we're in that thing (you know), we get to cruise directly up above where the extremely hot sulfer laced water comes pouring out of man made holes in the ground. Normally it would probably be coming out anyways, but man is always there to speed mother nature along. I believe the channels were quite a bit dryer than usual, have no idea why however.

We actually get to land and walk among the hilltops where the sulfur naturally comes out. Supposedly this whole area used to be filled with very large trees until shifts in the land resulted in the creation of multiple hot springs. Some plants can still live here, but not forests.

Yeah, I'm looking a bit scruffy here. Without V around to remind me to shave I do it a little less than I should. haha... I'd say that by the time I come home I'll have a beard, but more likely than not if I didn't shave for the remaining 4 months it would stay at that same length.

This area smelled pretty heavily of sulfur and there were multiple warning signs saying not to stay too long lest you keel over from the multiple roaming clouds of poisonous gasses. However that didn't seem to deter the many japanese families that seemed to all have multiple thousand dollar cameras, energetic little kids, and the occasional elderly patriarch/matriarch.

Also there were black eggs (cooked in the hotsprings!) for sale *everywhere*. Supposedly eating one gave you seven more years on your life. I had one. Meh.

...

Tune in tomorrow for the next update! Somewhat similiar time! More than likely the exact same place!

バイバイ！(pronounced, bai bai. An informal way of saying goodbye. Guess the root!)

2007-08-30T05:05:00.000-07:00

So... Hey!

First post on a new blog from japan.

I've already been here for a few weeks, and I would start off by showing you the airport I arrived in, the road leading to my house, and my building, but...

I accidentally deleted my initial arrival pictures. whoops!

(don't worry too much, it was only like ... fifty or so pictures, and none of them were very good)

In any case, I've been doing a lot of traveling around Japan, and for my first post I'll do a few pictures about the first place I visited, a hotsprings area outside of tokyo.

Because of internet annoyances I'm only going to upload a few pictures every day, but I will try and do it every day.

Hey! A toy robot museum! One of the first things to greet us as we (me, cilian, and a friend of cilian) as we get off the train and head to our super cheap mini hotel. This is JAPAN!

Cilian spots the sign up ahead for our hotel. Hmm... makes a little more sense why it was so cheap. ha...

Into the abyss!

The receptionist at the desk was nice, sweet, and could only speak a bare minimum of english. Luckily for all of us we had reservations, so it wasn't unbearably complicated. Always good to plan ahead, very glad it wasn't me doing all the arranging...

Our luxurious room! haha... little cramped... Still very nice though. They also set us all up with futons later and even gave us tea! (well, actually they gave us hot water and tea powder, but it was close enough)

... speaking of tea just reminded me that I need to go eat dinner.

I *promise* to update this blog every day... or every other day if I have to... And I have hundreds of photo's ready, so there's no shortage of materials.

Hopefully I'll get through the first few weeks fast and be able to catch you all up with my life on a more daily basis...

... um... yeah!