Englanding #16 : Extra Brighton & London Content

Well, it turns out that I have a bunch of good snaps from Brighton and London and it would be positively criminal of me not to share them with your good selves. Thus, the Brighton pier that you can't go on:


God, people must love taking pictures of that thing. I kind of want to write an action movie in while the final punch up takes place on it. Awesome. As well as a burnt-out pier, while in Brighton you may also come across the gentleman with whom I'm drinking here, Robert:


He is a scoundrel and a cad and please treat him as such. We saw Fantastic Mr. Fox, which is very good but I have no idea who it's pitched at. It's essentially an animated film in very much the same vein as Wes Anderson's other movies but made a little simpler and with no swearing... y'know, for the kids. Then again, I don't really care who it's aimed at, I really enjoyed it.

Here's where the spies live in London:


Place on the left that is. And here's my touristy tube snap:


Trains that go under the ground?! Sapristi! There could be a whole civilization down there!

Englanding #11 : Birmingham

Waiting for the last train home.


I got drunk, kinda, and fell asleep on the previous train, missing my stop so that I had to jump off and dash around to catch a train going in the opposite direction. As a side note, I still love the Selfridges building.

Shin-Okubo to Shinjuku

Most of our time in Tokyo was spent exploring parts of the city, and I didn't really snap many interesting shots of the corners we found (you can see what I did take in my flickr stream). So sadly, I can't drag out the Tokyo coverage for quite as long as I'd like to. I did take a bunch of videos while riding on the train though - which is always fun, so here you go. This is going counter-clockwise on the Yamanote Line from Shin-Okubo to Shinjuku :

I could mention shopping too, let's see. I bought new sneakers at the BapeXclusive store in Minami-Aoyama (again, they had my size, I couldn't resist); and this time managed to find something I really liked at the Original Fake store, but I wish they'd stop making everything so darn classy there. I picked up a pretty unique hoody/jacket thing in Daikanyama that was either designed or made or both in some guy's appartment, I couldn't quite follow the store clerk, but he was very enthusiastic. I met up with Conrad and Rose, who I met when I first came here, and who have both stuck around in Japan for as long as I have. We did karaoke, and I have never had a bad karaoke experience with Conrad or Rose, they're awesome. Bunny got her photo taken (unsurprisingly) in Harajuku by some lady with a fashion blog, and made friends with a designer and illustrator in Daikanyama. In Akihabara, some British guy was so excited to be there he asked us to take his photo in front of a famous manga store. He was genki as all-get-out. We had incredible Italian food outside in the sun, and ate twice at the same Freshness Burger because both days when we were shopping in Harajuku it was pouring with rain and our patience ran out when we were near it. I kept up my record of always finding something unusual and cheap at Disc Union in Shimo-Kitazawa, and also have a much better opinion of Ueno now that I've checked out Ameyoko and the park. Still haven't been to the Imperial Palace. I'm sure it's very nice.

Sapica go!

Look what I got!


Babes and Bubbas, that is a Sapica - the new one touch Sapporo subway card scheme that was only started two days ago. Now that I've got one I'm just... I'm like so Sapporo. I'm cho Sapporo.

It's like the oyster in London, or the suica in London but on a much, much smaller scale. Seriously, Sapporo has regular train lines and bus routes which you can't use this on, and only three subway lines on which this is valid. You can't use it for anything else and really, the subway ticket system was pretty convenient already. So to be perfectly honest this isn't all that useful. Still never let it be said that I don't love a gimmick, and I can always hook it up to my credit card so that I never need to use a ticket machine again, or get my name printed on it or something. And now I think about it I do end up running for the train more often than you'd think so this might save me valuable microseconds.

And it's really, really cool too.

Today I ate a Sapporo Black Curry Burger, with a black curry sauce so black and sticky I thought I might be eating tar, or possibly Spider-man's alien costume. It was really nice.

Transit Restrictions

Just thought it was interesting that Sapporo transit are trialling women-only subway cars during the morning rish hour until mid September:


This is pretty common in Tokyo I think, so it's not huge news. For me, I've only commuted at rush hour a few times so I don't really know what it's like at that time in the morning, but I do remember a hundred million charcoal grey suits, all moving as one.

Brrr.

Field Recordings 1 - The Namboku Line

Yeah, I know - daily my ass. Still I kinda had a reason, well a couple of reasons and one was trying to teach myself the internet again. God it's wonderful the stuff you can do, but actually doing it requires apparently more than just making gooey eyes at your computer. You actually have to frickin work at the damn thing, and the more crap accumulates on the internet, the more you have to dig through it to find someone talking sense.

Anyway, hopefully I'm on now, and hopefully this'll work. It might seem banal to the point of narcolepsy, but I'm pretty sure some people will get a kick out of it. I'm going to start recording 10 minute bursts of Japan and posting them here as streams and MP3s to download. It'll be places, events, things like that and will I figure be a little different to just looking at pictures.

To start with, something really basic, the underground train I get whenever I go into town. I live on the last stop of the North - South Namboku Line, and here's the ten minutes it takes to get all the way into Odori, the centre of town.



If blip.tv is as great as it says it is, you should be able to download it here: The Namboku Line

edit 29th August: and now available to download here at archive.org, because blip.tv wasn't as great as it said it was. Here's the Internet Archive full page too.

Get off at 2:30 for the Best Denki superstore, a pornographic video store, and Yuka's appartment. Get off at 4:30 for a load of bars, restaurants and shops, and Matt & Ben. Get off at 6 minutes for the North side of Hokkaido University campus, and get off at 7:30 for the centre of campus. Get off at 9 minutes for Sapporo Station, you're in the city centre and you can go to the cinema, or go shopping, or catch another train from here. Finally stay on until the end for Odori, where all the big shops and department stores are.