in die ähren schiessen… April 27, 2007

When aliens like we are, walk trough the streets of Tokyo and have time to do some window shopping, we usually have a lot to laugh about. Since “the foreign” became fashionable in japan, you can see a lot of T-shirts with prints in a foreign language or signs, stores or advertisements which try to mimic a certain style with western writings. Below we have a first batch of most hilarious translations and T-shirt designs on display. Its a bit like dadaism… (Of course japanese people also laugh about japanese signs and designs in Europe. But still… :-)

震災 earthquake training April 27, 2007

In japanese schools, earthquake and disaster prevention training is a common thing. About three times a year an earthquake-simulation car visits the schools and the pupils can experience the shaking live. The car has a “classroom”, which you can enter. They start very slow and then increase the magnitude of the “earthquake” until – at magnitude 7 – you have to crawl under the desk to save yourself from (imaginary) falling debris.

A curious discovery April 27, 2007

When we walked into a 2nd hand store in shibuya the other day, we suddenly spotted this traditional dress from the bernese “tracht”. The shop assistant told us that she got it from the U.S. and that she thought its an American piece of clothing. She also said she put it on display since its “kind of a fashionable item” in Tokyo. You can get it for a mere JPY22′000 (~SFR220). Well…

yes we are aliens April 24, 2007

We are not ordinary tourists…we can proudly call ourselves aliens! What it takes to be an alien you can see on the picture below.

commuter pass (Pendler Abo)

Pointo Cado (Supercard)

Mitsubishi bank account (leise, kraftvoll…ah nein das ist Toyota :-)

Student ID (to big for my wallets…I have to create a japanese student ID edition)

Keitai (Cellphone, Natel, Handy, MP3 Player, Internet, Digicam, Playstation…

Alien registration card (goverment proof that we belong to a different planet or so)

Swiss inspiration April 22, 2007

We love to entertain you…OK this might be not the best try.
But hey! We did not go to the movies for over one month, so let’s call this output a kind of “withdrawal syndrome” (Entzugserscheinungen).

PS: We could go to the movies, actually there is a multiplex just around the corner…
but we saw already all the english spoken movies back home. And of course it takes some time until I will be able to pay real money for watching a movie :-)

heimelig

Odaiba artificial island April 15, 2007

Odaiba is a so calld “reclaimed area”, as reclaimed from the sea. Its located in the bay of Tokyo and host to amusement and science parks, shopping malls, museums and a couple of apartment blocks. When you go there, you will most probably feel that the whole island is planned and artificial – the streets are mega-wide, everything is clean and new, the buildings are shining and designed by top architects. odaiba connects to the mainland through a highway bridge (as seen above). Also “yurikamome” – a fully automated transit system (there is no staff at all in the trains) – uses this bridge to bring tourists to the area.
(btw: the sky is not “rainbow-colored” in Japan :-) I used a polarisation filter for this shot to get a clearer picture – unfortunately it interfered with the window glass…)

Below you see basically the same scene – in the evening, and from groundlevel. Its impossible to get correct exposure levels everywhere, since you have to take all the pictures with exactly the same parameters.

Yoyogi Video April 12, 2007

As announced we finally made it to upload our yoyogi video. On youtube you can have a look how a ordinary Sunday looks through the eyes of two ordinary Swiss.

Yoyogi video

best of sayonaara-paati April 11, 2007

Wir haben unter den vielen Teilnehmen am diesjährigen “sayonaara-paati Abschiedsvideo Contest” den unserer Meinung nach für das Publikum dieses blogs sehenswertesten Beitrag ausgewählt. Um ihn zu sehen, klickt in eurem brauser bitte auf den untenstehenden link, und schon braust das video an eurem Schrim vorbei. Eh… anyway:

Best of sayonaara paati video

Besonders bemerkenswert finden wir die mannigfaltige Koloratur des Liedes und den interessanten Text, welcher gleich in mehreren Versionen gleichzeitig gesungen wird…

strolling through yoyogi park April 8, 2007

Today we took a stroll in yoyogi park and the adjacent “realm of cosplay” – harajuku. “Cosplay” consists of the words “costume” and “to play” and describes in this case the japanese subculture of young teenagers (mainly girls) dressing up in fancy clothes and posing for the many photographers present near harajuku station on a sunday afternoon. There are other subcultures as well: The “elvises” for example – middle aged men dressing up like elvis and dancing a kind of breakdance-inspired dance to the music of elvis – which is played of couse with authentic, acoustically terrible speakers from the days of elvis himself. We will post a video of the elvises soon :-)

When you walk through yoyogi park, you can easily spend a whole sunday afternoon yust looking at people playing music or performing some kind of talent. Besides the bands of youngsters which play their music on the streets of the park we saw people training some kind of japanese martial arts with swords, step-dancers, breakdancers, a guy drawing pictures as a kind of action show, a guy playing magic with a transparent ball (it seems like the ball floats in the air), a guy “walking the dog” – except the dog was actually a rabbit, and so on. I posted some pictures, mainly close-up shots (since my 18-70mm lens is broken and being repaired by yodobashi camera at the moment). Its hard to make a selection, there are so many curious things to tell – but you’ll see… gradually

The guy on the upper right must be part of the “free hugs campaign”. See www.freehugscampaign.org for more info (thanks maria)

short trip to nagano April 7, 2007

We are back form Nagano, where we spent an awesome time at Aoki sensei’s place, a big country-style house with lots of history (it used to be a silkworm-farm, was then turned into a restaurant serving original Nagano specialities). We made many trips to the japanese alps surrounding the Nagano basin. Unfortunately, some high-altitude areas were still closed due to snow. Below you find a link to a youtube-video, showing Romana at the Togakushi shrine in the mountains:

Romana at Togakushi temple video

We also went to a lot of onsen – japanese style hot spring bath’s. More on that later…