Gundam Kyrios

Before and again after work I took some pictures with my trusty D40x towards the Minato Mirai complex in Yokohama.

During the day you can clearly see the Landmark Tower on the right, NTT DoCoMo tower on the left and most importantly, the Gento Blitz building with the Taito Game Park in the centre.

At night I took the same picture from the same standing position.

I couldn't resist and kept on walking to the Taito Game Park. Here it is.

The inviting machines look innocent enough but they have been the fall of many poor boys and yes, I know I'm one of them.

Looking right to the end you can see the machine I won the latest edition to my Gundam robot clan, Kyrios.

I won this one for 400 yen with some generous help from the Taito staff.

I took the grab loop off and ripped a bit of the box label by mistake.

I know that with it still in the box it would be probably worth more, but since I did this, l just decided to open up the box and put the little fella together.

These ones are really cool. They don't bend, but they are made of PVC rubber. It makes me want to get his other two buddies now. *sigh*


All pics on this post are taken at the smallest size, but still they come out pretty clear.

I'm happy with this lens. The auto-focus is great. This last picture was taken in the apartment back home. Lots of detail. Good.

I bought some Ghana, "imitation" Nutella, and strawberry daifuko at Don Quijote. It looks like the gf had a similar idea.

The sweet tooth is getting sweeter.

Join Us, Become One Of Us

The Yamanote line was absolutely packed this morning. 

 I don't know what it is, but lately I've had to really squeeze myself in to catch my train. I guess when in Rome.. There's always room for one more. 

 There was a strange train changeover at some small station along the way. It looks like there weren't enough passengers on the train I was on, so they made us all get off to catch the next one. Great.. 

 I still had plenty of time to get to Yokohama though. I always give myself a good buffer to get to the office. 

 With a bit of time to spare I took a few photos with my new lens.

  I couldn't resist and took some pics of the Joinus signs, and some places around the more populated side of the station.

  The busy street next to the Vivre building.

  The weird "Guggenheim"-like Bic Camera store.

  The "Smoking Area" box next to the station. Too funny.. 

  I'm really happy with the way the pictures are coming out. The pictures are mostly sharp, with some nice out of focus backgrounds. 

 The zoom is keeping me lazy and saving me from walking the small extra distances. 

 I saw this "Chorus Water" in the teacher's staff room. What next? Verse Water?, Middle 8 Water? 

 Before I left Yokohama I went to Don Quijote for some essentials. 

 The Shochu is finished so I bought myself another 4 litres (1880 yen, sweet..) It seems to finish so quickly. 

 I also got some Ghana chocolate for 69 yen, which is a fantastic price. No, I don't say "Ghana money", that's just silly. 

 Only Crunky can be spoken of in money terms.

Nikon A Lens And A Gundam

I'd thought she'd set her alarm early, but it was myself that made the mistake. 

 I accidently set my own alarm clock for 6pm instead of 6am. Lucky that. Today was going to be an interesting day. 

 Yesterday we finally finished the first Di Bella "Mocha and Caramel" coffee blend that my father brought here, what seems like aeons ago.

  Now we can finally begin the Merlo Coffee that I brought back in the New Year. First thing tomorrow. 

 I missed out on my cuppa this morning. Instead I used another of Macca's free coffee coupons that I've managed to get my grubby mits on. They always look on the back now, punching some number into their sophisticated cash registers. 

 I'm sure they have a "Most Wanted" picture of me on their displays to check for overdue coupons. Foiled again! 

 After work I did the rounds of the camera stores to try to coerce the staff into giving me the best price for the 18-200mm lens I'm after. 

 I don't think salespeople here have heard of the concept of "making a sale". 

 Asking for a discount is akin to telling the person that you kissed their mommies. By the look on their faces it looks like I said the most offensive thing possible. They usually say "Best price!" Oh really.. 

 In english, best price means cheapest in my language. 

 Another store basically blocked me straight away when I asked "Eigo?" (english), and they flatly said no. This was going to be a struggle. 

 Yodobashi were the most inclined to discount, but they are usually marked up an extra 10,000 yen anyway to compensate for any perceived sale price. 

  Feeling a bit down in the dumps, I walked into the UFO catcher closest to Macca's in Shinjuku East and tried my hand at another Gundam figure. It looked pretty easy and 100 yen a pop. 

 For 300 yen I got it, but I foolishly tried for his "brother" and lost 200 yen in the process. Dammit! 

 Seeing it was still fairly early, I made the decision to go to Akihabara to get the lens. At the moment there is a Nikon 5000 yen cashback on the one I want. 

 The cheapest price I could find online was 69,000 yen, but on the warranty card it had the date already filled in from the 17th of February, meaning the cashback wouldn't be valid on my purchase. 

 So, after trying Yodobashi here as well, I settled on Akihabara Outlet Plaza which had the next best price for 71,500 yen. 

 A bit more than I hoped for, but with the Nikon offer it's actually quite a bit less than what a lot of stores are selling this lens secondhand. Either way it's still much cheaper than current prices in Australia. 

 I did a few test shots. The focus hunts around a bit. I'm hoping it's just because of the low light in the apartment, or I'm trying to focus on something too close. 

 It's great that I can finally use auto focus, but after the cool fisheye perspectives, I feel like this one is a tad bit unsatisfying. I'll give my full judgement once I've had a good go at using it. It makes the camera quite a bit heavier too. 

 I didn't spend much time looking in Akihabara. The mission was just for the lens. I made my way back home straight after I got it. I was so tired. 

 All the pics on this post are using the new lens by the way. Hopefully I'll have something a bit more interesting to take pictures of.

The Virtues Of P...ography Have Made Me The Man I Am Today

Hi me again.

 Today I'm in the wonderful township of Fujisawa. 

 Now that I am in Tokyo it takes a bit longer to get here than when I used to live in Tomioka. 

 Now don't get me wrong, the school is kind of nice and the kids, god bless 'em are great. (I got them eating out of my hand. Oh, the power I have right now). It's just that it takes quite a while to get here, that's all. 

 The one good advantage, is that I don't have to get out of bed until midday, and that suits me just fine.

 Before I made my way into the office I headed into Bic Camera and decided, since I had my camera with me, to try a "normal" lens on the camera that I'd bought. I also wanted to make sure the autofocus would work with a lens that had a motor. 

 My lens of choice was the Nikkor 18-200mm VR superzoom. The best thing apart from the zoom range is that this baby auto-focuses with my D40x because the motor is built into the lens. 

 While it's not as impressive as I'd hoped, it looks like a pretty good lens. From the reviews on the internet it's highly regarded. Maybe because of that it still has a bit of a high price tag. 

 The salespeople were kind enough to let me take a few snaps before my lessons. What do you think?

  18mm self portrait. You don't want to get too close.

  ..like this. 200mm close up.

  From far away.. (18mm)

  ..and close up. (200mm) You can see the same tripods in the 18mm photo above. Impressive. I guess it saves one from walking the same distance. 

 Decisions, decisions. 

 Right now I'm punch drunk happy with my fisheye. 

 As you can see from the picture at the top of the post, the results never fail to stand out (Look at the warped railing huh?) I'm going to try and hold out before forking over more money for stuff I don't absolutely need right now. I think the fisheye produces more than interesting results. 

 Oh, in the post title the missing word is "photography" Ok!?

The "Lost In Translation" Hotel

Today is National Foundation Day and therefore yet another japanese public holiday. Yay for me! 

 After doing some "100 yen day" supermarket shopping, we went to the Chiyoda library.

  They had a lot of great CDs (and DVDs too) to borrow. 

 I thought I could use the library card I already had, but I needed to get a separate card for this library. 

 Their borrowing card looks a lot cuter with two ducks on the front. kawaii. 

 I borrowed out a "best of" David Lee Roth, Kelly Clarkson and Jaco Pastorius. David Lee Roth? 

 Yes, I'm afraid so. 

 

From there we went to the Yotsuya library where I unloaded the John Mayer, Scissor Sisters and a Rolling Stone magazine. 

 The Scissor Sister's CD really didn't do it for me. I don't know whether it was because the music was gay, or just really samey and well, boring.

 

We'd planned to go to the NTT building in Hatsudai for an interesting (and free) exhibition, but it looks like they weren't open on this public holiday.

 

With my "fisheye" camera I took a lot of interesting photos today including this turtle walking up the side of this building. 

 Until I get a normal lens, expect to see a LOT of fisheye-d pictures.

 Instead we made our way to the nearby Park Hyatt and Metropolitan Government Office buildings. 

 The Hyatt is well known for being the hotel with the great view in "Lost In Translation". 

 We made our way up to the same floor as in the movie but we didn't go into the same bar. Ordering something would have stretched our budget more than I can afford. 

 Still, we managed to get a great view out the window on the same floor.

  On the way back down we were both feeling really hungry so we stopped into Macca's for Big Macs, chips and drinks. Even with all that our hunger was not satisfied, so we had a choco pie and an apple pie. That didn't really help things. Macdonalds bad! 

 In the same building we checked out the Conran shop. What was really bizarre was that they were selling Star Wars lightsabers! This is a homewares store. What the..?

I couldn't resist and gave them a try. They were about 24,100 yen and yes, I'd love to have one. Sadly, it'd be impossible to bring back to Australia though. 

  The line for the Government observatory was too long for our liking, so I took some cool photos surrounding the building.

One of the naked lady statues in the circular courtyard area. THIS is art. Love that fisheye. You will learn to love it too.

  Here are a few more I did in Kabuki-cho, Shinjuku.

I have no idea what goes on in the establishment behind me.

   

An atmospheric shot as it's getting dark around Shinjuku. Here you can see Takashimaya Square and the "Empire State Building", otherwise known as the NTT DoCoMo building.

Jazz Camera

You knew it wouldn't be long before I had to have a camera body to match the lens I bought yesterday.

 Today after work I had in mind to go first to Map Camera and then Miyama Shokai. Apart from your Bic and Yodabashi Cameras, these are the two most prominent camera shops in Shinjuku. 

 Although Map Camera have a sale on at the moment, the prices were still a little high for my liking. 

 At Miyama I weighed up my options. It took ages to decide. One of the sales people put a secondhand Nikon D40x for 30,000 yen freshly on display. I was a little surprised. This is a great price. 

  Kakaku show it for about 55,000 yen, and Australia's prices are about $930. 

 He said it didn't have all the accessories, but the only thing missing is a CD (in japanese) and a USB cable that I already have so it's a great deal. 

 I tried a D80, but for some reason the view finder looked blurry no matter how much I adjusted it. A D80 has more features, most of all an autofocus driver for the lens I bought. 

 This may turn out to be it's greatest weakness. But at more than double the price I can't justify it. This camera has the same 10 megapixel quality and it's smaller and lighter.

  The fisheye is a cool lens. Check out this picture. The picture cover all FOUR walls of the living area of the apartment! 

 I will also get a proper lens that autofocuses from the lens sometime. Maybe a nice 18-200mm VR superzoom. I think the manual focusing is going to drive me nuts. Good practise I suppose.

  From Shinjuku I hot-stepped it to Ginza for a free jazz show INSIDE the station. 

 There was quite a big turn out. It would have been better in a larger viewing area, but the singer and guitarist were pretty good to listen to. 

 

We walked around Ginza. We got some Azuki, butter bread and the gf got some expensive tea. 

 My back was killing me from carrying around my teaching material and camera stuff. I couldn't wait to get home.