Day out in Tokyo

I made my way over to Tokyo today to meet up with an old friend of mine, Asami. She recently found out that she is pregnant and is expecting her new arrival in November. A big congratulations to her!! Well, we met up around 11:30 in Shinjuku. We then walked over to Harajuku and had lunch (cold soba to be precise). I wanted to visit Yoyogi park, as it fills up with some of the most interesting people on Sundays, so we walked over after lunch. As expected, there were a lot of things going on...people dressed up in cosplay, live bands, skateboarders, dancers, and my personal favorite...The Greasers!

It was Asami's first time to visit the park on a Sunday and to see the crazy sorts that hang out there. We had a great time hanging out, walking around Harajuku, and catching up with each other. It's been about 3-4 years since we saw each other last. We first met way back in 1998, when she visited her good friend Wakako, in the Philippines. We've had some pretty funny and memorable experiences together in Manila (Halloween Party) where she disappeared by the end of the night and ended up sleeping on the street, and also in Bangkok where we somehow found ourselves in Patpong , and probably the most disgusting/disturbing experience either of us have had...NO DETAILS!!

Man...were does the time go. The older I get the faster it seems to go, which is true for pretty much everyone else too, I guess. I don't want to get myself too depressed so I'd better go ahead and post the pictures from today. Enjoy!
the sea of people in Harajuku
cosplay 1
cosplay 2
hmmm...well...errr.....I dunno!
Doo-wop dancer





a pretty cool shop sign on a wall in Harajuku

I like.....to play with.......dolls!

Hahahaha! Well, not exactly.

Last weekend me and a friend went over to a museum to check out a special display it had going. You see, every March 3rd here in Japan, every household with a daughter puts out a doll display to bring good fortune and happiness to her. The average display is about six levels with around thirty dolls. The World Folk Doll Museum in Suzaka City had a display of thirty levels and a thousand dolls!! Here is what it looked like:

.....and a couple of other dolls

Although I'm not a huge doll fan, I thought it was quite impressive. I wanted to visit the snow monkeys afterwards, monkeys that are famous for coming down from the mountains to bathe in the hot springs, but the weather suddenly turned nasty and we had to cancel that part of the trip. I'm determined to see them this winter though so keep posted for updates.

As for other news, well there's not a whole lot to tell. Work is going along nicely, the weather is still cold over here, my car is running fine, and life in general is good. I'll leave you with some more pics I've taken over the past couple of weeks.

Enjoy!!

Bogged Down

It's been snowing pretty steadily over here the past few days...as you can see from this pic I snapped just minutes before posting.The last couple of weeks have been fairly nice with temperate weather and some really beautiful sunny days. I've been going down to the lake recently to photograph some of the wildlife that shows up around here in winter. There are large groups of swans, ducks, hawks and other birds that migrate down here...I guess.




On the work front, things have been going good...nothing out of the ordinary to report on. I can't believe I've been here for over seven months now, time has seemed to fly by. I'm not sure about my future plans come June (when my contract is finished), but it's probably something I should start thinking about now.

I went to a small town two Sundays ago with a friend to take some pictures of Fuji at sunrise. Well, we met up at 6am and headed for Fujimi. The roadside thermometer read -16.6 C so it was slightly cold that day. Unfortunately, there were a lot of thick clouds at the base of Fuji and I wasn't able to get any great shots (to my satisfaction at least). Luckily, on the way home, we ran across a hot-air balloon that was plowing the skies and got some nice shots of that.I hope you enjoy the pics.

Oh, and congratulations to my brother and his girlfriend, who just had a baby last month....welcome Hunter Charles Sattler.