T Shatsu

I like a good t-shirt.

Being in Japan, I'm always on the lookout for cool shirts in bad english, but I haven't seen ones I've wanted to buy lately. Nevertheless, if I see a shirt that catches my eye, I'll break the piggy bank and get it.

A place that has some good contemporary street wear is Jackpot in Shinjuku. It's where I bought my first pair of red docs.

On the 23rd of August I got this Tuesday Night Band Practice shirt. It says, "If I wasn't born already, rock'n'roll would have to invent me". It looks like something someone in a band would wear. It was only about 1,000 yen, marked down from something like 7,000 yen, so I decided to get it.

A long time ago I saw this "Let Go" t-shirt by Imaginary Foundation. It has some really cool graphics that remind me of Ryuji Otani's artwork. At the time it cost over 5,000 yen so I hesitated. By the time I went back it was gone. Fortunately I saw it again on the 13th of September at half price so I snapped it up for 2,520 yen. Lucky I found it too, as it's been discontinued.

The shirt on the right with the dog is a Grinspoon t-shirt that I won on the 17th off the local radio station, InterFM. They posted it to me and it just arrived yesterday. I think it's pretty hilarious winning an Australian band's t-shirt in Japan. (I'm easily amused though). I really like it. It saved me $40. The "Grinners" are a cool band so I'll happily wear it out.

I highly recommend 76.1 InterFM, especially Global Satellite with Guy Perryman and Sayoko, and the Dave Fromm show, that plays a nice mix of hard rock. It was on his program that I deciphered puresento T shatsu, and shot off an inquisitive email to win the shirt.

While I'm on the subject of t-shirts, I saw online this line of interactive shirts by Noto Fusai. Strangely cool huh?

Tokyo Photo Exhibition 2010

Today is "Respect for the Aged" day. To me it's another Monday off ("Yippee!"). I'm pretty sure most Japanese people are thinking the same thing. Usually when I ask what these national holidays are about, they are as clueless as I am. This is how I find out these things. Click here.

Like most of my days off when I have nothing in particular planned, it means a wonderful day of sleeping in, and dreaming of things I wished for in reality.

So I can tell people all the exciting things I get up to in my free time, I actually sometimes have to get off my ass, and go places. Today's place had to be Tokyo Photo 2010. I say had to, because today's the last day.

This photo exhibition was held at the Mori Tower in Roppongi Hills. I didn't think I'd need my SLR, so I left it at home. As soon as I got there I regretted it. Being on the 40th floor, the view from the windows is great. At times it distracted me from looking at the photos of the exhibition.
As expected there were a few gratuitous shots of full frontal naked girl photos. It's funny how in these surroundings it's classed as "art".

There were photos that I thought weren't that impressive. Anyone could've taken them, and mounted them in framed glass. I really liked the city montages from Sohei Nishino though. The Tokyo one looked great. The cheapest was 70,000 yen for a small one. Yikes.

Yesterday I missed TGS, which by most accounts was a bit of yawn. I did want to try out, "Gal Gun".

Only in Japan.

Serengeti Via Veneto Sunglasses

Anyone that reads my blog knows that I like my Oakleys, especially those wonderful 80s vintage Frogskins.

Before I came to Japan I also had, and still do, a pair of Serengeti Via Veneto sunglasses. While I prefer the Oakleys, and the $20 cheap Polaroids do the job fine here in Tokyo, I saw a pair just like my Serengeti's back home.

In Australia this brand retails for up to $300. I didn't want to bring mine here, in case I lost or broke them.

I went to Bingo in Shibuya, a recycle shop that's part of the Book Off chain. I saw them for 9,900 yen. I asked the sales guy if he could bring them down to 9,000 yen, but as usual he refused, so I let it go for the moment.

The following week they had a 30% off sale (6,930 yen!). I was really surprised they were still there, so I snapped them up. They look practically new, the lens and frame are unscratched, but the nose pads are slightly yellowed.

This model (6732) has been discontinued so I think I'm quite lucky to get a second chance to find these again. The lenses are photochromatic and I think they look great.

Zushi Beach

Out of all of the beaches I've been to, Zushi is definitely my favourite.

Zushi is located in the Kanagawa prefecture. From Tokyo you'd be looking at about hour, to an hour and a half on the Keikyu, or JR lines. I've been to Shonan and Enoshima not too far away from here, but to me Zushi looks cleaner and more beautiful with it's nicely curved cove-like shape. I regret not coming here when I lived a whole lot closer in Tomioka.

I always intend to go more often in the Summer, but it looks like this will again be a one-off for the year. The temperature was about 35 degrees, and the water was very warm. Once I was in there, I didn't ever want to get out. There weren't any waves though. The few windsurfers that were in the vicinity looked like they were going nowhere. I saw fish jumping out of the water. Maybe it was too hot for them too!

I came prepared with sweet potato, and pizza flavoured chips, two cans of my cheap chu-hi and my guitar. The others were thinking to buy food and drink there. We looked around to find only one AMPM convenience store that didn't sell any alcohol. That's quite unusual when just about every other combini sells it. So, I was the only one drinking. Bringing the guitar was probably more hassle than it was worth, but it was kind of nice banging out some music while looking at the sea.

Being the middle of the week, there weren't too many on the beach. It was sad to see workers pulling down the beach huts that were lined along the sand. I envisioned the awesome evening beach parties I must've missed.

I didn't bring my SLR for fear of sand getting in, so I just took some snaps for a sweeping montage that you can see at the top. It was going to be a panorama, but I couldn't find enough control points to make it all match. Still, I think it looks pretty cool this way, don't you think?