w00kie’s ramblings

You never see a photo taken with the flash on in my flickr photostream. That's because I hate flashes, and my GR Digital's flash in particular: it burns everything.

So yesterday, as I was on a day-off and had nothing else to do than watching season 2 of House M.D. and browsing flickr, I got to contemplating buying an external flash like the ones you pt on big SLRs. My camera has a shoe for it and it would let me swivel the flash up to bounce on the roof for a softer effect.

I got my eyes set on a SIGMA EF-500 DG ST as is recommended by my camera's manual. It goes for ¥16,000 on kakaku. I've talked with a friend of mine though, he pointed out that the flash with batteries would weigh around 500g, considerably more than the 200g of my GR.

I can't really visualize like that what it would feel like to have such a bulky contraption sitting on top of my slim camera. I'll try to drop by a shop in Akihabara or Shinjuku and find a nice salesperson to let me have a try...

A friend of mine is leaving Japan tomorrow, coming back to his girlfriend in France after 1 year here. So we had a little sayonara pub crawl for his last weekend in Tokyo.

We started out in 高田馬場 and took one of the last trains to 渋谷. Hopped around 5 different bars and izakayas until the early morning light told us it was time to say goodbye and go back home. Even at 4am, Shibuya never sleeps...

This weekend, a good friend of mine invited me and his girlfriend to dinner for celebrating his yearly bonus. We went to the Oregon Bar & Grill, on the 42nd floor of the Shiodome City Center.

The dry-aged charcoal-grilled steaks were extremely good, but came with just a small piece of mashed potatoes, nothing else. I wished there was a little more fantasy in the plate (vegetables anyone?). But anyway, we were there for the view, we had a table facing Roppongi Hills and the Tokyo Tower.

One weird fact: all the tables around us were birthday parties, and when I say all, I mean all 5 of them in our corner of the restaurant. Maybe they had a birthday discount or something...

Maybe I missed the drunken parties under the さくら, but I still got to see cherry blossoms in Tokyo before leaving for China. Here are some photos that I took around 表参道...

So I'm back from China and it wasn't as bad as my colleagues led me to believe. Of course, I stayed only 5 days there and he spent 4 months. I doubt I could've stayed sane more than 2 weeks over there.

Anyways, it was cold, filthy, totally disorganized and did I mention it was cold? See this photo of the snow from the taxi bringing me to work. I thought I was going to die 4 or 5 times during this ride...

What's better than the snow in Hokkaido? The food of course! Every time we've hit the restaurants over there, it was like we were discovering a whole new level of Japanese food.

Say to a Japanese person you ate 蟹しゃぶ (crab legs splashed in boiling soup) in Hokkaido and you will see them shed a tear of jealousy every time, I guarantee it.

Who can blame them, it really was the best crab I ever had in my life...

Not much to talk about this week. Working a lot, preparing some business trips for next months. So I thought I should show you a little gadget that I've been playing with for almost a year now.

I've been geotagging as many as possible of my photos on flickr and with this great mashup by Sumaato Labs, you can all see them on a much better map than the lousy Yahoo! Map flickr offers.

Here is my girlfriend in front of the biggest しゃもじ in the world:

If you ever go to 宮島, you'll see those wooden rice paddles everywhere. They are used to scoop the rice out of the rice cooker, at least before the wooden type was replaced by newer plastic, non-sticky ones.

Souvenir shops sell big lacquered and engraved versions as a goodluck charm since anything can be turned in a lucky charm here in Japan. I guess one of the store owner wanted to be very lucky so he made that giant one and displayed it in the street.

Still in 大聖院 temple, this gate was covered in these paper stickers. I don't exactly know what they are for, my girlfriend told me it had something to do with sumo... Anyways, it looked really neat.

Taken in 大聖院 temple in Miyajima, I have no idea what they were doing there: