Some random photos from the weekend...

Lately, at the end of a nice clear spring day, the view from our apartment has been pretty nice. The sun gets reflected back off the buildings on the other side of the bay. Finally managed to grab a photo, it isn't the best, had to push the ISO to 3200, so its pretty grainy...

This is 4 shots glued together, the end result isn't to bad.

And on a completely different subject...

For the last few weeks there has been fire boats in the bay doing strange, choreographed, well, something. Including using the funky water cannons. Interesting.

Anyway's, on Saturday it became obvious why. They were rehearsing for some demonstration of fire boat goodness.

Including shooting fluorescent colored water from their water cannons. Didn't quite grab the camera quickly enough, but managed to catch the tail end of the spray.

Mmm, technicolor... 

Its Cherry Blossom Time!

Air Tower Sakura - HDR
Originally uploaded by k.blueice

The cherry blossoms are out... they are everywhere, and very cool. More pictures on my flickr photo stream, go have a look.

Thought I would have another play with qtpfsgui, yeah, gotta love software with abstract names... sort of fitting probably though in this case. Anyway, this pic is HDR, and I like it. Would probably have helped if I:

1) Used a tripod

2) Didn't take photos while its windy... the branches moved a lot.

It makes it really hard to get good alignment when you stack the images. Oh well. Still turned out ok.

Still snowing...

 

Its still snowing.

This is the front of our apartment building, the grass is all completely covered and there is snow piling up against the little walls. There is a couple of inches of slush on the roads as well. The news is saying that some trains and highways are closed, and even the Shinkansen's are running late (that never happens!).

Might be interesting walking to work tomorrow morning if it freezes tonight...

It's snowing in Tokyo!

It's been snowing here in Tokyo all day. Very cool! Have to go out later, could be interesting...

Has been a while since I posted, but have some more to post later today...

Typhoony... is that a word?

It should be a word if it isn't, because that's what it is outside.

That big swirly thing, i.e. Typhoon Fitow is going over the top of us right now.

Getting home was interesting... a rather exciting taxi ride. People walking down the street we fairing much worse though, some were getting dragged away by their umbrellas, and some people are almost wrapped up in their umbrellas as the wind folds them around them.

Schools and such all closed at midday today, and are closed again tomorrow... unfortunately I don't get a day off work, I have heard that we would have a great view of the "flying futons" from our house. Oh well, maybe it will still be windy on Saturday.

Oh and we cant open the doors to our balcony, the wind is pushing them so hard. Lucky the glass is like an inch thick.

Hanabi ! (Fireworks)

Hanabi is very popular summer activity in Japan and tonight was Tokyo Bay Hanabi. What a show! And really really loud. In fact so loud you could feel the explosions shaking the glass of our apartment. I've put quite a few photos on flickr, in this photo stream. But had to post two favourites here... I love the shapes in this first one, with the cool little white stars above the red circle one.



And another one.



That is a big firework to blow up at ground level, pretty glad I wasn't on the barge they were setting them off from when that happened!

Photos from our new apartment

So like i said in an earlier post, we've finally moved into our new place.

This is our funky new lounge room... Complete with strange swirly rug and funky couches. Oh and living in Japan would be complete without a nice TV!

The view out the window's not bad huh?
And it gets even better at night!

There's more photos in my photostream here.

How fast is a fast internet connection?

So after a week of being offline, I have now got an internet connection again. w00t!

Being that I work in IT, and rely on my internet connection a lot, ive always had good fast connections. Before I left .au I was using iinet's supposed 22mb connection, shame it only had connection speeds of about 1.5mb, but hey, I thought it was still pretty snappy... until now that is!

Now I'm in Tokyo ive got a 100mb (up and down!) connection! with no download limits, how nice.

So, sitting here at my desk, with a sensational view out over the bay (more on this later...), with a blindingly fast internet connection, life is pretty sweet!

heh.