So, what do you do when you have to park a lot of cars, but land is very expensive and hard to come by? If you live in Japan, there’s only one way to go: grab a bit of space and double up!
Here are two examples of how people in Tokyo deal with parking, one a parking garage in an apartment building, the other a space for a fleet of company cars. If you don’t have the space to put up a dedicated parking garage, if you have room in your space for two cars, all you have to do is get one of these things, hook up your electricity, and boom, now you’ve got room for four! A little corner that would hold 4 cars in a US neighborhood can now hold all 8 company cars just as easily. I’ve heard there are some clever ways of using space in New York City and probably in other cramped US cities, plus there’d be no need of them in the rest of the US, but it seems like these things were everywhere in Japan. Like a lot of Japan, it’s simple, efficient and convenient!
I’m a big fan of Japanese Enka music, which is an original Japanese style of music often called “Japanese blues”, because it was influenced by American blues, and because it’s usually about the same types of subjects that blues covers: Lost loves, old friends long gone, “the good old days”, drinking. Older enka songs tended to be accompanied by a few instruments, including traditional things like shamisen and flutes, but after the 70’s they became more “Las Vegas”-like. In some ways some of the songs remind me of country songs, at least for the songs of “lost love and drinking”!
“Rhythm”, the enka store, in 2007
On my first trip to Japan in 2007, I learned about an enka store in the Ameyoko shopping district of Ueno, near Tokyo, called “Rhythm” （リズム）. At the time I was pretty deficient in Japanese and only knew of one enka singer by name, but the shopkeeper was very helpful in finding a couple of CDs of the singer. I thanked them as best I could, and promised myself I’d come back. I didn’t get a chance to in 2010, but in 2012 I went back with my friend John, also an enka fan. This time I could communicate much better, and talked to both the owner, Kazuhiko Kobayashi and his wife, and was able to tell them things like where I was from, how much I liked certain singers, and to tell them in more detail what kind of enka I was interested in. They were very surprised to know that there were Americans who had even heard of enka, much less being fans of the music, and they happily let me and John get pictures made with them. Even better, they took pictures of John and me and posted them on their wall of photos.
The reason I know this, there is a cable channel called NHKWorld, which is an English-language re-broadcast of select NHK programs from Japan, and one episode of “Tokyo Eye” covered enka. The TV crew went to Rhythm and interviewed Kobayashi-san, who told them of how surprised he was that foreigners would come to his store. The cameraman happened to pan down the wall of photos, and I saw part of the photo of me and John. Needless to say, it was quite a feeling to see a picture of oneself, in a tiny store in Japan, broadcast literally all over the world.
At any rate, this is Kobayashi-san and his wife, with some ugly foreigner! My next trip, I will go back to visit them again!
After many years of dithering and dawdling and otherwise procrastinating, I finally have a new book out! Hopefully the first of many, its photos cover one morning and early afternoon at the Kiyosumi Garden in Tokyo, Japan, on my first full day there.
In case you’re interested, I have both print and ebook versions available, although not through the Apple iBookstore. I’m using the software and website of Blurb.com, which is a print-on-demand service that provides book composition tools, as well as a marketplace and promotion utilities (such as the preview below) to help people create and sell books. Their model is quite reasonable, they establish a base price for paper quality, number of pages, and size of book, and the creator (me!) adds a small amount of markup, to keep once the book sells (hopefully!). I want to take more of the photos that I took on my Nerdtour 2012 trip and make books from them, because I saw and photographed some interesting sights and activities in the Tokyo area, as well as in the Touhoku region of Japan.
I named this book “Kiyosumi Garden Tour” and it’s basically a walk-around through the park, in pictures, with some occasional explanatory commentary in captions. The ebook version can be previewed and ordered here, while the print version (much more expensive, but batteries not required!) is available here.
If you want you can preview a few pages in this viewer (click on the “view fullscreen” icon to see a larger version:
Here’s a photo from the “star” of my upcoming book, Kiyosumi Garden! I went there on my first full day in Japan in 2012, and even though it was a mixture of sun and rain during the hours I was there, it still managed to be very beautiful, quiet and serene, even in the heart of Metropolitan Tokyo.
So, I finally have a few tools to help me with the workflow, the process of making a photo book. I decided to work on a few books from my Nerdtour 2012 excursion, one each on a different place, topic, or a single day. I took so many photos that it was hard to work on them individually, selecting each one, adjusting lighting, selecting which to use and not use. Fortunately technology has kept advancing and getting more affordable, so now with Adobe Lightroom and Blurb BookSmart I think I can start creating the books I want to write! Of course, the hard part will now be writing up stuff in the books, the photo part was easy! By the way, the first book will be about the Kiyosumi Garden in Koto Ward, Tokyo, which just happened to be a couple of miles from my apartment, and one brief subway stop away!
Here’s a couple of screenshots of the “work” in progress:
Okay, even though I’m no longer over there, I still have a lot of things that I did in Japan that I haven’t posted about, so once more into the breech! Continue reading “Nerdtour 2012: It’s the future!”
Okay, so, I’ve been home now for two weeks, but I’ve still got a lot of stories to tell and pictures to show from the trip, so I’m going to still call them “Nerdtour 2012”. Just so you don’t get confused and think I’m still over there (even though I kind of wish I was…) I’m also going to split some of these up, to keep down the boredom of endless scrolling through text, looking for the pictures! ^_^ Continue reading “Nerdtour 2012: Asakusa matsuri, pt. 1”
Well, that’s it for the trip, back home in Alexandria, in my newly remodeled apartment. Feeling major post-trip letdown, dealing with a new sore throat and my body telling me it’s 12 hours later than it is, and trying to figure out where to put stuff in my apartment that won’t fit anymore. I did manage to find where they put my car keys, and made it to the grocery store at 3:00 AM, plus retrieved all my mail (including the “Vote for Me!” flyers, heh).
I’ll have other posts from the Nerdtour, but chronologically these were the last few pictures I took on the trip. More to come as I work through the other 12,000 pictures!
The last day in Japan was spent wasting time riding the rails, since there was about 7 hours between checkout time at the hotel and check-in time at the airport. I suggested to John we take a quick trip down to Chiba city, which is about half-way between Tokyo and Narita, so we could use up a day on the 4 day JR East Pass we each had, and maybe see some last sights.
[one_half]Such perfect weather to brighten one’s spirits. Narita station in the rain…[/one_half][one_half_last]Narita station platform number 1[/one_half_last]
Naturally, it was rainy and cold, but the train ride was uneventful, and we pulled into Chiba proper, at the JR station downtown. Chiba, like Tokyo has a monorail system, but unlike Tokyo this one is suspended from the rail, and goes much further. It took a bit to find the actual station, but when I did, I was impressed by its beauty and functionality, as well as its little quirks!
[one_half]The main plaza outside the Chiba station.[/one_half][one_half_last]There are maps to local places all over Tokyo and other cities, mainly because they don’t name or number the majority of streets, so you need to know where the local landmarks are. I noticed there are a lot of places in stations where you can go to donate blood, as noted here at the top of the photo.[/one_half_last]
[one_half]Yes, it was this gloomy under the station looking out at Chiba city…[/one_half][one_half_last][/one_half_last]
[one_half]At the station, you have your choice of stairs or escalator, but look closely at the stairs…[/one_half][one_half_last]… you can find out just how many calories you can burn by taking the steps! They even have helpful, supportive cartoon characters to urge you on![/one_half_last]
The monorail itself only runs two cars at a time, suspended from tracks about 50 feet in the air. The stations are also up in the air, naturally, and are located at many important and popular places in town, such as City Hall and the Sports Center. On the way to Chiba, I noted that one of the stops on the JR line also had a monorail stop, in the town called Tsuga. So, I figured if we took the monorail to one end, in Chiba-minato, we could take it back out to Tsuga and catch the JR train back to Narita, while seeing a lot of Chiba in the process.
[one_half]There goes the monorail…[/one_half][one_half_last]… out over the city …[/one_half_last]
[one_half]… with no visible means of support! ^__^[/one_half][one_half_last]Downtown Chiba in the rain, with railroad tracks…[/one_half_last]
[one_half]Even in the rain, a bit of fall color…[/one_half][one_half_last]Aw, puppy! An ad painted on the sides of the monorail cars in Chiba….[/one_half_last]
I figured Chiba-minato, down by the docks and near the port, would be somewhat picturesque, despite the weather. What I didn’t know until we got there was that the annual Chiba Ekiden was going on, which ran on the street directly below the Chiba-minato station! In Japan an Ekiden is basically a relay race combined with a marathon, where teams of runners take turns following a 46 kilometer marathon, broken up into segments. The course has certain segments for women as well as men, so that you enter as a co-ed team to race. We were at about the half-way mark of the second mens’ segment, where it looked like there were only a handful of teams, since I only saw about a dozen men running under the station. I managed to exercise my Japanese to find out what was going on, by asking one of the staff who had blocked off the side streets. Communication!
[one_half]Japan is a big bicycle culture, as well as a train culture, and all stations have a large area to park bikes…[/one_half][one_half_last]Monorail and JR lines. Technically I could have ridden the JR line all the way back to Etchujima, near Monzennakacho![/one_half_last]
[one_half]Chiba-minato station…[/one_half][one_half_last]“Hey, I’m a bird, I have to be out in this mess, what’s your excuse, human?”[/one_half_last]
[one_half]Waiting for the Ekiden runners…[/one_half][one_half_last]The Chiba Ekiden passes by[/one_half_last]
[one_half]Ekiden race participant[/one_half][one_half_last][/one_half_last]
Once the race had passed by, they quickly and efficiently re-opened the street to traffic, and I figured I’d wander around the station area for a bit, looking for quirky and interesting things. Didn’t really have much chance, since time was passing, but I did manage to catch some local “wildlife” as well as a neat shuttle bus!
[one_half]Pretty interesting design, kind of 30’s style. For no other reason than they can, and it makes it stand out![/one_half][one_half_last]O Japan, that has such quirkiness in it! I really like the style they added to this plain shuttle bus design![/one_half_last]
[one_half]Wasn’t sure if this was an actual church or not, but it’s possible.[/one_half][one_half_last]Sure, you could have a plain information map, but why not touch it up with a bit of class, throw on a golden sculpture of birds taking off![/one_half_last]
[one_half][/one_half][one_half_last][/one_half_last]
Once we finished taking the few photos, it was time to catch the monorail out to Tsuga. We managed to ride the cars that had won the “Good Design Award” for 2012. They were definitely stylish, and apparently could be run automated, but we had a driver on this one. The trip back to Tsuga was fairly quick, even given all the stops, and we caught the train in Tsuga back to Narita.
[one_half]Winner, 2012 “Good Design Award”. It shows…[/one_half][one_half_last]There are definite advantages to building a suspended (or otherwise elevated) train, since the only real footprint of ground use is the area taken up by the pillars.[/one_half_last]
[one_half]Rainy Chiba, from the monorail, a view out the cockpit up front…[/one_half][one_half_last][/one_half_last]
[one_half]Coming in to a monorail station can be a bit unnerving, but also kind of exciting, in a “sci-fi movie” kind of way…[/one_half][one_half_last]Wonderful downtown Tsuga, in the rain…[/one_half_last]
[one_half]The Monorail station at Tsuga[/one_half][one_half_last]They put up little shrines just about everywhere, for various local gods…[/one_half_last]
[one_half][/one_half][one_half_last][/one_half_last]
Getting back to the hotel in Narita to pick up our luggage, I started getting a bit concerned about how long it would take to get back to the airport. Finding out that we had just missed the airport shuttle from the hotel, John and I used our 21st Century technology to find out the next train from Narita to the airport. It turned out we had about 8 minutes to get to the station, fortunately the hotel was only a 4 minute walk away! We made it to the platform with minutes to spare, got to the airport about 3 hours before the plane was scheduled to leave, and spent that last time wandering the airport.
The flight back from Japan was… eventful. But I’ll have more on that in another post.
[/one_half][one_half_last]
[/one_half_last]
