Long time without posting…

It’s been way too long since I last wrote something.

But, in my defense, we’ve been pretty busy. Highlights?

• Yoko’s cousin’s wedding in Niigata.
• Work, lots of work.
• Yoko’s brothers wedding.
• More work.
• Moved house.

And Mia has teeth now! She is very chompy.

Two weddings in the space of about 5 weeks, both out of town, so we were away for the weekend. Both great though, took heaps of photos, really happy with how they turned out. Will think about posting one or two on Flickr. Weddings in Japan are quite the event, very impressive.

Also, I finally got around to getting a new camera… I’m back with the Nikon brand again! One shiny new Nikon D90. Am most pleased with it. Have been really enjoying Black and White again…

And we’ve moved.

We’re now living in Kachidoki, only been here about a week, but loving it so far. It takes a bit longer to get to work, but it’s a much bigger apartment, in a really great part of Tokyo.

It’s on the 57th floor – second from the top in this photo.

The view is great, maybe even better than the view from our old place in Shibaura.

We went for our first good walk around the district today, had lunch in Triton Square, then walked around the parks there, then walked up to Tsukishima and explored some of the backstreets near “Monja Street”. Very cool, great way to spend a Sunday. Posted a couple of photos from the day on Flickr.

 

Anyway, will try and post a little more frequently.

On my desk...

On my desk...
Originally uploaded by k.blueice

I noticed how reflective the iPhone really is the other day when I put it down on my desk... so I thought I'd take a photo of it. I really don't like taking still life photos that much, so I don't really do it that often. Usually I don't really like how they turn out, but am reasonably happy with this one. It also reminded quite a lot of one of my friend's photos which I really liked.

So how is the iPhone? I've had it for quite a while... its damn good. In fact, to not clutter the internet with more of the same, Thomo has already summed it up pretty damn well.

What else is going on? Not much, hanging out at home for a while (I'm on holiday!), playing with Mia, catching up on some sleep, trying to avoid reading Bloomberg, and going snowboarding this week, so it better start snowing tomorrow, because it's a bit lacking at the moment. The forcast is for a white Christmas which will be fun :)

A Mango, A Bridge and a Crane.

Like the title says...

A mango, an expensive mango. A $157 mango.

And on a completely different subject, a damn big crane. Have been wondering all week about what the thing was parked over the other side of the bay, it looked like a large piece of roadway on a barge. Turns out that's exactly what it is. It is part of a new bridge, and this huge crane is going to lift it into place. To give some scale, the little boat in the foreground is actually a ferry, not a small ferry either, if you look closely you can see quite a lot of people standing on it's roof.

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... 

How do you take your coffee?

With "Creap"... obviously.

Yep, "creamy powder" goodness. And it's even on sale...

Send me enough money, and I'll be happy to send you some "Creap" to call your very own. A great way to win friends and influence people I'm sure, especially when combined with some cheap ass, freeze dried, instant, decaf.

Heh.

Twitter...

Twitter... have been thinking about having a play with it for a while, so finally signed up and added an RSS feed from my account to the sidebar on this blog. See what happens.

tasty...

i certainly did savour that elaborated chocolate taste ;)

<edit>: w00t, I can post from my mobile phone! heh. just need to sort out that strange image rotation...

Day trip to Yokohama

We went on another day tour, this time to Yokohama. On the way we stopped off at the man made island / parking lot / attraction, called Umi-hotaru, that forms the intersection of the tunnel and bridge sections of the Tokyo Bay Aqua-Line.
This thing is an engineering marvel. 10km long tunnel, and 4.5km long bridge (I guess they couldn't decide which to build, so they did both).


If you've got google earth check it out ( 35°27'45.93"N, 139°52'36.55"E).
We can actually see it from our house, on a clear day, and there is a ventilation shaft / tower half way along the tunnel section. This vent thing is actually another man made island that is very strange looking, from our balcony it looks like a huge disk shaped thing out in the middle of the bay. You can see it in a photo here.

We also went to a place called SeaParadise just south of Yokohama. The pic in the previous post was taken there in an area called Dolphin Fantasy. Really cool place, we only had a couple of hours there so we will have to go back again to see it all. And I wouldn't mind seeing the Aqua Stadium show again, dolphins and seals doing cool stuff.

Ive also just posted a couple of new photos on flickr. This one of the moon over Daiba, and this one of the Hanabi (fireworks) in Asakusa on the weekend.

As promised

Well as promised when i left .au i've now opened up a public blog, and a photostream on flickr. So with a bit of luck, you should be able to keep up with where we are and what we're doing.

Stay tuned for photos and ramblings from Japan.