That was Duck Liver? I see...

Another weekend of Tokyo awesomeness! I wish I lived there :/

This time, I met up with some of the co-ops in Japan from other cities! Pretty fun people!
I decided to start my day early on Saturday, and ended up arriving in Tokyo at 9am. Since they were coming in from another area, and took the Bus instead of the train, I was there by myself for the morning. I went over to Kinokuniya (huge bookstore) in Shinjuku to buy myself the second Kanji practice book (woo! I finally finished the first one!) and just to browse around in the Takashima Times Square.
Since the shops opened at 10, I had to wait around for a bit. It's pretty funny watching people get ready to storm Takashima mall at 10. Everyone is gathered by the doors standing there while all the sales clerks were getting their daily briefing. And then once the doors opened a mad rush of people just rushed in!
Anyway, after I got my books, I went to the mall only to be sent on a wild goose chase.
Here is the transcript.
Me: Hi, I'm looking for a gift shop. Is there one in this mall?
Information Desk: Yes, there is one on the 8th floor
I go up to the 8th floor. The place she pointed out as the "gift shop" was a kimono store (Let me add Kimonos are ridiculously expensive. over $1000 just for a basic one). A bit puzzled, I went over to sales clerk and asked the same thing.
Him: Yes, it is on the 11th floor
So up to the 11th floor I go! Look around, see a bunch of electronics shops. Good time killer. No Gift shop.
Me: Excuse me, where is the gift shop in this building?
Sales: 5th floor!
Alright then... 5th floor it is.
Or not... The 5th floor was men's formal wear. So after that I just gave up and moved along :P
Over to Shibuya to walk around and check some of the stores before we met up for lunch. Found a new wallet and found that there was a second Apple Store in Tokyo! Couldn't get in though, because some U.K. artist was in there performing or making a fool of himself... One of the two. Anyway, I then headed to roppongi for lunch.
So, this took two subways (which confused me because Shibuya is a decently large hub and roppongi is pretty popular) and let me just say the Toei Oedo line is buried deep within the bowels of the earth. It took three flights of stairs just to get to the normal subway's track! THREE!
Anyway, the restaurant we went to was in Roppongi Hills, which is a very very classy neighbourhood.
We ate at L'atelier de Joel Robuchon.
As you probably guessed from the name, it was ridiculously expensive (but awesome none the less ;).
Apparently this guy is one of the world's best French Chefs... and the service and food was amazing.
I wasn't sure what the first soup I had was (It was all in French. I don't remember my French!) but it was good. But my second course was La Foie Graux on Risotto, which I found out was Duck Liver after I finished eating :P
Amazingly tasty, though!
The rest of the day was pretty uneventful, just checked out the rest of Roppongi (read below), checked into the hotel, walked around some more, went for Dinner (which was good, not as good as lunch though. haha. Apparently the place we ate was where President Bush and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi ate) , walked around some more, and then went to bed.
Next day also pretty uneventful, walked around more, had Starbucks (mmmm), went for lunch with a Waterloo grad working in Tokyo, went to shinjuku then headed home. Unfortunately, I left Tokyo earlier than I wanted to on Sunday. It was raining and just overall a not so pleasant day, so I just went home :/

Oh well, still a fun time!

Roppongi: Other than Roppongi Hills, complete trash. Roppongi is one of the most "foreigner friendly" parts of Tokyo, except its more of a hub of all things wrong with the foreign countries. It's just really nasty atmosphere and felt not like Japan. I hate it. Roppongi needs to be leveled and rebuilt! Except for Hills ;)

edit: changed wording. I didn't mean anti-Japanese. I meant doesn't feel like Japan.

Japanese Dinner

Japanese Dinner
Originally uploaded by mkeoshkerian.

Well, I decided today I was going to make myself a half decent dinner. And it turned out pretty darn good! :D
And believe it or not, but that picture was taken at my place, not a restaurant ;)

Today was pretty cool. I had a voice chat with my aunt and uncle back in Canada... now that I finally have my high-speed internet so It works :P
I WAS planning on going to Karuizawa to spend the afternoon, but the train scedule didn't work out. So instead, I decided today I was going to make an awesome dinner! I started off by going to the grocery and houshold stuff stores. Went and got myself a Soba plate, Japanese teacup, Green tea, Soba-soup cup, and some random groceries.
Now I went to an interesting store (where I got the teacups and tea) where it was kind of like a kitchen-home store aptly called "Home Bazaar". It was like a Japanese specialty store (except that here its not so much a specialty as it is an everywhere thing ;). So it was pretty neat.
So yea, got my things and headed back. Boiled up the soba, microwaved the shuu-mai (not the most Japanese of foods.. but I have yet to find a good heat-up tempura! haha), boiled some water for the tea, and yadda yadda.
Turned out pretty darn good! I'm impressed with myself. I give this meal a 10/10 based on whatever else I've made so far :P

Tea Notes: A very nice green tea, with sakura leaves. 10 packages for ~$3 Canadian. Not bad :D
Better make a note to take 20 boxes home with me ;)

Tokyo-Yokohama Pictures!

Ok, so I uploaded all the pictures. But I haven't tagged them or anything, they are just sorted in order. Thats for doing when I'm bored at work ;)
Also, I don't have the two video clips up yet (one of the sumo, and one of something really cool you'll just have to wait and see ;)
Enjoy!

Oh yes, I am also planning to take some of my better pictures (like of some of the temples in Kyoto and cool attractions in different cities) and make wallpapers out of them like I did with the Tokyo one. Stay tuned for more details!

Access to pictureage.
写真でございます！

High-Speed Internets

Oh yea, one important thing I completely forgot to comment about.

I now have high-speed internet! And this time its actually high-speed, not like that false hope nonesense last time!
So now I can surf the web at high-speedy goodness!

I'd live on an island made of trash

Tokyo Skyline
Originally uploaded by mkeoshkerian.

I'm Back from my awesome weekendy goodness that was a trip to Tokyo-Yokohama (also called the Keihin[京浜] region).
For those of you that didn't know, I went down to Keihin on Friday morning to attend the Yokohama Techincal Show 2006. My company, more specifically my group's product (which I wont name here because it could possibly end up first on a google search), was at the show.
So all the group members of R&D had a chance to go down and check it out. Pretty cool I'd say, I liked hte part with the robots the most, but for hte most part it was decently boring...
Although the "survival questioning machine" was pretty interesting. It's a machine that probes disaster areas for signs of life (such as a building collapse).
Anyway, after the show I visited fake-China. When I stop being lazy and upload the pictures, you'll see why I called it fake-China... Mostly because the streets and shops were ridiculously clean... Guess my Japanese teacher was right about it being the cleanest China town in the world.
Anywhoo, I wandered around there for about 2 or three hours checking stuff out, looking for a place to eat... Didn't find a place to eat because everything was so ridiculously expensive and I just never found a place that had the chinese food I like. It really is true that the Chinese food we get back in Canada is completely different than the real thing.
So after leaving Chinatown, I did that long walk from Yamashita park to Queens Square/Landmark Tower like I did the last time I was down in Yokohama. Except this time I stopped over at the World Porters and checked it out... Decently cool mall, 5 floors of imported clothes, sports equipment, home decor, food, cooking utensils, and so much more. So after leaving there and going back to Landmark Tower, I continued searching for a place to eat with no success (sigh...). I was hoping to eat at one of those restaurants looking over the dockyard garden, but it didn't happen. From there I decided to go back to Tokyo, in particular Ginza! For those of you who remember, you can probably guess where I went to directly from there... Thats right, I went to the Apple Store :P It's a REALLY cool store! While going up, I was fortunate to see they were having a seminar run by a musician from Britain (or something.. he had a british accent! so there) about making music with Logic and a couple of neat pieces of hardware. I was impressed and considered buying a system like it... until I found out it would cost about $800 canadian dollars ($300 for Logic, $200 for soundboard/controller, $200 for mini keyboard) so clearly that was out of the question (I'm probably going to get a lecture on saving of money after my parents read this). Anyway, after the session I played around with some more appley goodness, and was really really impressed by the new iMacs. They really do run a lot faster and smoother than the older models, makes me want to go buy one... But I have to keep reminding myself that Apple is probably going to be launching new Tablet Laptops sometime within the next few years, so thats what I really want ;)
Anywhoo, that was pretty much the end of that night. Everthing in Ginza started to closedown around 9, so I just went out and ate some dinner (at a Japanese fast food restaurant... so typical) and went to the hotel. This hotel was pretty cool. You have to see the pictures once I upload them.

Day 2 (oh yes, there's more)
A decently lazy morning of sitting around and not doing too much while surfing the web in my room at high speeds (I hadn't had high-speed access in forever. This was like a breath of fresh air ;) and planning my day. First thing first, I decided to go to this cafe in Yokohama by Azamino station thats apparently run by some Armenian guy, called Cafe Vartan. 1 hour and 4 train transfers later, I get to the closest station only to find out that the cafe closed down a year ago... Yea, that pissed me off because I hadn't ate breakfast and spent my morning on trains. Disappointed, I decided to take some shots of the Keihin and Tokyo Bay/Yokohama Bay area from the Landmark Tower's 69th floor Sky Garden Observatory. If you remember, I took a whole slew of shots during the night from the same tower, so this time I took morning shots (I'll upload the images when I get home :P). Oh yea, and getting from Azamino to Sakuragicho (near the landmark tower) was another hour train ride... fun. After Landmark tower, I thought a bit more of Tokyo fun was in order. I went over to Odiba (also known as the Tokyo Teleport) to check that place out, and it was definately a cool place. It has the quiet, subrurb feel only a 10 minute train or monorail ride from the Keihin-Tohoku and Yamanote lines in Tokyo, respectively. To explain the title of this post, Odaiba is essentially an island built ontop of trash used as a landfil in Tokyo Bay. Home to Toyota's MegaWeb Showroom, a Venice themed mall, giant ferris wheel, Telecommunication office, and Fuji TV HQ, this island has grown from an old fortress back in the feudal days of Japan to a popular tourist attraction. Anyway, I visited the Toyota showroom, saw some cool cars and a neat minivan that had automatic everything and was designed for long trips (because the captain seats could stretch out and had foot rests!!!!). A video of the automation goodness will soon be up. After the showroom, I went to the venice-themed mall and it was really really cool. It looked like an itallian street market and had a sky and everything!
Next up, the Fuji TV globe observation deck. This was cool... I managed to get some really really nifty shots of the Tokyo skyline and quite a few of the Tokyo Tower and Rainbow Bridge. Quiet a nice treat. If I lived in Tokyo, I'd probably want to live there. From there, I was going to meet up with one of the other Waterloo guys and his friend for dinner, the funny thing was they were also in Odaiba at the time they called and asked where I was. However, I left Odaiba and met them in Ginza infront of the you-know-where ;) But to be fair, I did go to the Sony showroom first so the Apple store wasn't the main reason I went there!
The Sony showroom was pretty nifty, and I want an Aibo. Those dogs are so cool!
But anyway, I also went up to their Playstation area where I was able to play games on my PSP wirelessly by a terminal! How cool is that!? It just downloaded the game (not the full version obviously) and I was able to play, but the closed shortly after so I had to leave :/ Thats when I went to the Apple Store and met up with the other two. From there, we went to a sushi restaurant... the best sushi and sashimi I have ever had... SO GOOD. And I thought the cheap restaurant here was miles ahead of the Canadian stuff, with that scale this was on the other end of the galaxy good... I love Japan :D
So yea, we spent a good two or three hours at that restaurant and eventually went back to our hotel room and so concludes day 2.

Day 3 (more? make it stop!)
So another decently lazy morning. Got home pretty late the other night so I decided to sleep in a bit, take a shower, then check out at 10. From there, we went to get some breakfast near Gotanda station. Looking around for 10 minutes, we eventually decided to get some Denny's. Ah, fast food...Always there when you've been searching for food for long times.
Anyway, after breakfast we went to an Antique show by the Tokyo International Forum by Yurakucho-station. Saw some pretty interesting stuff, like an old samurai suit (picture is in there somewhere). Went and grabbed some lunch, then went to the Tokyo-Edo Museum. This Museum is definately a weird building, because the actual museum part is on the 7th floor, suspended above the city. This museum covers about 400 years of the history in Edo (the old name for Tokyo) and Tokyo. Pretty interesting stuff!
Anyway, after the museum we walked over to the Sumo wrestling stadium and watched some sumo action. I managed to take a few pictures and a crappy low-res video with my camera, even though we were pretty far away. So once I post those, enjoy!

Thats it for now! Sorry for posting this so late :P
Pictures will be up later on tonight, when I have time to tag them all and hit the upload button.
(Yes, I have one picture uploaded already. The one you see above. Also, I made a little modification to that image and posted it to deviantArt. It's kind of a cool shot that can be used as a wallpaper. Thats what I'm doing ;)

Now I can be less productive!

Gmail just added a new feature to its already long list of awesomeness it provides. Now you have the option to chat with your freinds in Google Talk directly in the browser with Gmail+talk.
This neat little feature lets you see whos on (according to your latest e-mailed list or manually entered gmail accounts) and open chat windows with them.
Whats also great, is the possibility of adding your friends on Yahoo, AIM, MSN, and other Jabber accounts directly to your Gmail account (through some convoluted method I read up about a long time ago) so bye bye productivity! haha.

Link to Google Blog | read more | digg story

Asama Shinkansen

あさま
Originally uploaded by mkeoshkerian.

Just a really neat picture of the Shinkansen (highspeed train) I took and modified a bit. If you notice, it's similar to my blog header, except I added some Japanese writing to it using Inkscape.
The top line reads "Asama", which is the only train running on the Nagano Shinkansen line
the bottom reads "Nagano Shinkansen"

I like it.

No Site Move

Yea, if anyone caught my earlier post ignore it.
I'm considering moving to wordpress, but wordpress.com was too restrictive (and I noticed this a little too late).

So for now, I'm going to stay on Blogger.