Japan - Kamakura

I went on a day trip to Kamakura, which is a small beach town about 60 km south of Tokyo. It's a popular tourist spot because of it's beaches and many Temples and Shrines.


The Tsurugaoka Hachimangu Shrine in Kamakura.

Japan - Ginza Line Subway Tunnel

Normally if you look down the tunnels at the end of the subway station all you see is darkness. But I setup my camera on a tripod and did some long exposure shots down the tunnel. Because the exposure are so long, I was able to get enough light for the photos to turn out and to reveal what you would not normally be able to see.

Japan - Ueno Park Cherry Blossoms

The difference between Morning and Night at Ueno Park.

Japan - Tokyo Tower

Japan - Cherry Blossoms in Yanaka Cemetery

Japan - Fish on a Stick

No, I didn't try it.

Japan - Cherry Blossoms

Japan - Kids Think I'm Cool

Japan - Kanamara Matsuri (Festival of the Steel Phallus)

Japan has many interesting and amazing things to see and do, some are even a bit strange...this is the strangest thing I've seen so far. This past weekend I went to the annual Shinto fertility festival held in Kawasaki called Kanamara Matsuri (Festival of the Steel Phallus).

The festival dates back to the Edo period (1603-1867) when prostitutes prayed for good business and protection from disease.

Somewhere behind all of the guys with cameras is a lady sitting on a giant wooden penis.

Unfortunately this is the best photo I have of someone riding the giant penis.

She's feeling the power of a giant penis.

Yes, that's a gianormous pink penis sticking up out of the crowd. What's even stranger is that the pink penis's name is Elizabeth.

This kid is going to need lots of consoling when he grows up. He'll have strange nightmares about giant black penises and he won't understand why.

The penises head out of the shrine for a parade around town.

The penis parade heading down the main street of town.

These guys were carving penises out of vegetables. The vegi-penises were later auctioned off to raise money for AIDS research.

These two are obviously impressed by the skilled carving.

This guy is just a little bit too weird.

Japan - Punk Spring

This past weekend I went to the Punk Spring, punk rock music festival at Makuhari Messe in Chiba. Some of the bands that played are Sum 41, NOFX, Bad Religion.

The music festival was a really great time and I enjoyed all of bands that I saw. It was a huge crowd, I don’t think I’ve seen crowds the huge at a punk concert before. I was up towards the front most of the time and it was pretty packed. The crowd was doing some shoving, but not too crazy. I went into the mosh pit a bunch of times and it was pretty mellow compared to some in the US. People were just banging into each other and having a good time. Sometimes the mosh pits in the US get a bit hard core with people trying to hurt each other…those are no fun.

But I still managed to get banged up a bit, I think mostly because I was taller than most everybody around me, so my head stuck up. This is great for being able to see the concert, but bad because my head created an obstacle for the people who were crowd-surfing to run into. So, I was kicked in the side if the head by one crowd surfer. Smacked into by many more. And I think I broke my nose when another crowd surfer hit me from behind and caused my face to slam into the back of the head of the girl that was in front of me.

Towards the end of the concert some of the guys around me thought it would be funny to see me crowd surf (or maybe they were tired of me blocking their view), so they grabbed me and put me on top of the crowd to crowd surf. I thought for sure I was going to get dropped on my head, but I made it to the front of the stage. I’m way too big to be doing that kind of thing and I feel sorry for all of the people I squished.

Japan - Roppongi Art Night

Japan - Tokyo Marathon

This past Sunday was the Tokyo Marathon and the course went right by my apartment so I went out to watch. It was in amazing amount of people going by. I heard that there were 30,000 runners. The race started at 10 in the morning and at 3 in the afternoon there was still a pretty steady stream of people going by my apartment, which was about 3/4 of the through the race course.





Probably the most entertaining part was that there were quite a few people run the marathon in costumes.

This guy was solar powered.

My favorites.

Japan - Back in Tokyo

I made it back to Tokyo without any problems. I flew Singapore Airlines and this was my first time flying in a 747, my past flights to Japan have all been on 777.

California - Moving

While I was back in Los Angeles, I decided to move out of my apartment and put all of my stuff into storage. I was on a month to month lease and had been wanting to move for a while, but hadn't had time to search for a new apartment. So it really didn't make sense for me to keep renting the apartment if I was going to be in Japan for the next couple of months. And this forces me to get off my butt and find a new apartment once I return to Los Angeles.

Packing up and moving my stuff turned out to be a lot bigger job then I thought it would. It was pretty amazing how much stuff I've accumulated. I barely finished before heading back to Tokyo. I actually took the last load of stuff to storage as I was driving to the airport.

USA - Brighton Ski Resort

California - Long Beach Airport

For my trip to Salt Lake City I flew out of the Long Beach airport for the first time. This has to be the dinkiest airport I've ever been to.

California - Back in the US

I'm back in the US for about two weeks to go on a ski trip to Salt Lake City that I do every year with a bunch of friends.