Japan - Energy Drinks

Energy frinks seem to be pretty popular in Japan. Every convenient store has a big rack of dozens of different kinds of energy drinks.

Display rack at a convenient store.

Since they are so popular, I thought I should give one a try. I have to say that it was impressively bad tasting.

I was walking around one day and spotted this recycling bin in front of someone's house. This guy seems to be living entirely off of energy drinks.

Japan - Book Vending Machine

I was in a train station when I spotted this vending machine. It sells books, which makes sense for a train station, buy a book to read on your train ride. But what was a bit strange is that the books were waterproof for reading while in the bathtub.

Japan - Tokyo Game Show

Recently I went to the Tokyo Game Show, a huge video game expo at the Makuhari Messe convention center. The major video game companies were there to show off their latest videos games.

Entering the Tokyo Game Show

The XBox Booth

Booth Babes

Like at many conventions and expos, most of the companies at the Tokyo Game Show believed that Sex Sells (especially to video game nerds) and most of the booths were staffed with lots of pretty booth babes.

Strange combination of a Star Wars Princess Leia outfit and a Gladiator Helmet. I'm not sure what game she was promoting, but she always had a huge crowd whenever she came out.

Photographer feeding frenzy over some cute booth babes.

CosPlay

One of the other interesting things was all of the cosplay going on. Lots of people in some pretty interesting and elaborate costumes.

USA - I'm back in Los Angeles

I've returned to Los Angeles. But I still have a ton of photos to post from Japan, so I'll keep posting those and I'll start posting about some of the hopefully interesting things I'm doing here.

Los Angeles Sunrise

Japan - Hamburger

Here's some strange food I found at a convenient store in Kyoto. It's hamburgers, what's strange is that they are setting out on a shelf in a non-refrigerated area.

Japan - Coolest Van Ever!!

I had seen a web site about these crazy customized vans before going to Japan, but this was the first time I actually saw one in real life. All of those fins have to make the van do some crazy stuff if they get driving very fast.

Japan - Food

Sashimi

Snails

Fish

Japan - Food

In Tokyo Station and the surrounding area there's hundreds of restaurants, everything from quick to fancy. I was at one of the restaurant and this is what we ordered.

Fried octopus on a stick.

Tuna

Eggplant

Fish and mushrooms.

The main dish, crab legs!

Japan - Public Bathrooms

Can you spot what's missing in these Japanese public bathrooms?







One fairly annoying thing about Japan is that in many public bathrooms there is no way to dry your hands after you wash them. Some bathrooms have the blower style of hand dryer, but many have nothing, no dryer, no paper towels, nothing.

Japan - Vending Machine

I was walking through Tokyo Station on my way home and I spotted really cool vending machine. It's a vending machine for making your own business cards. There's a touch screen where you can select a design and enter all of your information, then your cards are printed out. All for only 400 yen ($4.00).

Japan - Bike

I've seen this strange bike a couple of times in Akihabara. The owner is always careful to make sure the back tire is rotated so that the graphics is straight.

Japan - Tokyo Statue of Liberty?

I must have taken a wrong turn in Albuquerque. Actually Tokyo has it's very own Statue of Liberty on Odaiba.

Japan - Very Public Bathrooms

For some reason many public bathrooms for men in Japan have been designed so that there's not much privacy.

Japan - Stair Safety

Japan seems to go overkill on safety sometimes. Here's some stairs that anybody can see has half of the stairs blocked at the top by some construction. Just in case anybody going up the stairs and has not noticed that one side is blocked, there's a little barricade of stanchions and a sign directing people to us the other side of the stairs. And in case someone has not noticed the construction, the stanchions, and the signs, there's a security guard standing there to help direct confused people to use the unblocked side of the stairs.

Japan - Fireworks

Taiwan - Time Lapse Taipei

Some time lapses movies from around Taipei.

Japan - UFO Ramen

Japan in preparing for the upcoming alien invasion by making food specially for our new alien overlords.

Japan - Train to Hell

The 3:05 Kodama Shinkansen (Bullet Train) makes a quick stop in Hell on the way to Tokyo.

Japan - Ham Sandwich

I was taking the Shinkansen (Bullet Train) back to Tokyo and wanted to get something to eat, so I bought a ham sandwich from the food cart. This is my sad, mostly meatless sandwich.

Where's the Wendy's lady when you need her? "Where's the Beef!" except in this case it's where's the Ham!

Where's the meat!

Hong Kong - Curved Buildings

While in Hong Kong in order to take photos of some of the really tall buildings I started playing around with shooting vertical panoramas, taking several photos of a building to capture all of it and then combining the photos in the computer. Because the combined photos would be a wider angle view then is actually physically possible, showing both looking up and looking down, there had to be some distortion added to the photos which I though makes then more interesting.