studionebula.com

I just put up a set of photos taken in the Asakusa area of Tokyo here. There are brief comments on some of the photos. (Yes, I said I’d put up this set yesterday, but yesterday I was a complete wreck from jet-lag).

[Bonus points to the synth geek who can name the artist whose song I'm referencing with the title of this post. No fair using a web search if you don't already know the answer.] We got home yesterday around 6:00PM, I think. I say “I think” because after about 20 hours of traveling and sitting [...]

This will be the last post from Japan, and it’s just a quick one to say that we’re about to start the long journey to home. I’m trying to not think about how it takes about 24 hours to get from here to there. I’ll post a bunch of photos over the next few days, [...]

Today’s our last full day in Kyoto. Last night we came up with a plan to make a mad dash by shinkansen to Tokyo to look for a particular JR souvenir that Adam thinks he saw somewhere in Tokyo Station. This morning, however, the notion of spending six hours (round-trip) on a train the day [...]

I’m completely in vacation mode now. I tried to come up with something to post last night but I couldn’t convince myself to sit at the computer (since sitting at computers is what I do for a substantial amount of my non-vacation time). We’ve been having a great time and have been putting in fairly [...]

Tracie’s plushie shinkansen is probably going to retain the title of Most Bestest souvenir, but for the synth geeks in the audience today’s purchase would be the clear winner: Yes, it’s a Gakken SX-150 Analog Synthesizer, possibly the world’s most famous ultra-cheap synth. Yes, you can get them in the US, with some effort, but [...]

I’ve put up a couple of sets of photos on my Flickr site. This set contains photos taken of/near the Daibutsu (Great Buddha) near Kamakura, and this set contains photos from the ramen museum in Yokohama. Some of the photos are duplicates of ones I’ve posted in previous entries, but the Flickr-hosted copies are available [...]

We’re now in our room at the Hotel Granvia in Kyoto. Tracie is delighted because we’re on the side of the building that overlooks the train tracks, so she can watch the shinkansen go to and fro. I’m delighted because I just found three new origami books at the bookstore in the station, including a [...]

We’re in Matsue now. There’s some game show on prime-time TV that involves brush calligraphy. Try to imagine a game show in the USA that is based on competitive handwriting. On our last afternoon/evening in Tokyo, our friend Rafael ignored the jet-lag of a 30-hour journey ending the day before and joined us at our [...]

I’m writing this on an express train we boarded in Okayama, bound for Matsue. It’s not as smooth as a shinkansen but it’s roomy and comfortable. Since this will be a 2.5-hour ride, I grabbed a bottle of tea from the nearest vending machine. It wasn’t stocked with teas with which I am familiar, so [...]