Bike recycler

I wrote some months ago about having been cycling along the Tamagawa river and passing a few people on bikes carrying piles of soda and coffee cans to the recycling plant. These aren't the greatest shots of such an activity, and the piles of cans aren't as tall as some I've seen, but this is a representative set of shots, anyway.

When ya gotta go...

Sometimes, things just aren't as intuitive as you'd think they'd be. That's when you need the signs out there informing people of stuff like this.

Cosmode

Cosmode is a cosplay supplies company, and they apparently decided to sponsor an event at the UDX a couple of weekends ago. I could see the spill over from the UDX from the window of my office building.



It cost money to get inside ($8-$20), and I think it was only open to advance registrations, so I didn't bother trying to get into the event space. At the back of the building there were signs all over the place saying "no cameras", and in among the signs were professional photographers shooting what looked like professional cosplay models. Go figure. I've been to cosplay events before (mainly Comiket) so I didn't knock myself out trying to take photos this time.



Initially, the weather wasn't too bad, but later in the afternoon it started raining heavily and everyone escaped into the building to continue with the event.




(Stormtrooper from Star Wars)


(The guys in the red baseball outfits are from the new "Rookies" movie.)

Aircon

I just thought that this was an interesting shot. Air conditioners sitting on the landings at the back of an office building on Yasukuni Dori (Yasukuni Street) in Tokyo.

Dragonball Kai Chicken

Back to the short, single-photo posts...



Lawson's banner ad for spicy chicken, promoted by Dragonball Kai. I don't know which is more disturbing - that this was an approved Dragonball tie-in, or that the chicken has gone Super Saiyajin.

Along Yasukuni Dori, Tokyo

(Communications relay tower)

Yasukuni Dori (Yasukuni Street) runs just north of Shinjuku train station, east through central Tokyo, to Ochanomizu and beyond towards Chiba. It actually parallels the Sobu and Chuu-ou train lines. My regular commute on the Chuu-ou line takes me from Shinjuku through Ochanomizu, and after changing to the Sobu, on to Akihabara. I've visited the end point stations many times, and have seen many parts of the city to the north and south along the Yamanote train line, but I'd never walked along Yasukuni Dori through central Tokyo before.


(Steps leading up to Yet Another Temple)

Finally, a few weeks ago, I found myself in Shinjuku after doing some shopping and with a few hours to kill before needing to go back home. So I decided to take the opportunity to make the walk. I didn't push myself hard this time, so the 4-5 mile trip ended up taking about 2 hours.


(The Ministry of Defense has its offices in the middle of the city, on the north side of the street)

Around Shinjuku, the street is lined on both sides with department stores, restaurants, and various other shops. After about a mile, it turns into featureless office buildings . Then, just outside Ochanomizu, it encounters part of Music Instrument Street and the shops and restaurants start showing up again. There's a dental school next to the Ochanomizu train station, and the monument to the old Confucian school next to that.


(Example shops)


(Ad for Action magazine and Crayon Shin-chan)


(Fishing on the "river". The Chuu-ou and Sobu line train station can be seen on the other side of the river.)

Most of the bigger rivers running through Tokyo are just stagnant ponds; concrete-lined ditches with no water flow. One such river runs between Yasukuni Dori and the Chuu-ou/Sobu train line. At one point on the river, someone set up a service allowing people to fish for (what I assume are) farm-raised fish thrown into an area enclosed by mesh wiring. This is as close as many Tokyo fishermen get to actual fishing.



For the most part, there's not a lot worth paying attention to in this section of the city, and it's really just something that you pass through to get from point A to point B. However, I should mention that when you get close to Ochanomizu, you pass by Tokyo Dome and the amusement park there. If I ever go back to the Dome itself for a ball game or something, I'll take photos of it.

Takao City revisited - The Tower o'Mystery

Back in May I wrote about a cycling trip out to Takao, and I had a photo of a strange brown-ish tower on the other side of the train station.



A few weeks later, I decided to take another trip out to Takao, and this time I set a little time aside to try to visit this tower. Amazingly, for something so big that it dominates the city, it's really hard to get to. There are a lot of little windy roads when you get to the hills, and not a lot of signs pointing the right way.



Eventually, after my third try, I went up the left side of the high school (instead of the right side) and I found the entrance to the grounds of a (I think) Buddhist temple. It's peaceful, removed from traffic, and with no other visitors. One building held the offices for the place, and the tower was at the far end of the reflecting pool, facing the back of the high school a few blocks away.



The main entrance is at the back side of the tower, and it costs 200 yen to go inside and ride the elevator to the top. I was pretty grimy and sweat-covered by that point so I decided to put off going in until next time. But, Takao makes for a pretty good destination for 5-hour rides, so I'll definitely be back out here again at some point this Summer.