Surfing in Shonan

I’ve got a new hobby. One of my friends with whom I went snowboarding in Hokkaido this winter lives in 湘南 in a cool house 300m from the beach, right in front of 江ノ島.

surfing in front of Enoshima

Since the last month I go surfing there almost every weekend. I can check the weather / wave size on Yahoo! Weather and hop on a train. I got my mother to send me my wetsuit from France by mail, so all I have to pay is the ¥3,150 daily rental fee for a longboard and off I go riding the Pacific’s waves.

Additional flash

Sigma EF-500 DG STYou 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…

Shibuya at 4am

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.

construction in Shibuya at 4am

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…

Shiodome 42nd floor

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.

good. meat.

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.

tokyo tower view

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…

Back from China

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.

snozing outside the taxi

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…

Kani-shabu

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.

the crab on the plate

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.

cooking it shabu-shabu style

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

The wonders of mashups

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.

my photos in tokyo

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.

Huge rice scooper

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

bigass rice spoon on flickr

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.

Hiroshima Report

I’m back home, in good old Saitama. As usual, the trip went like a breeze, I arrived 20 minutes before my flight, checked in, passed security and boarded my flight all in one stride. Not the shadow of a line anywhere, a wonder for french guy used to american and european airports. Then once I got to Haneda, I still had 2 hours of train to reach the hell-hole of Saitama where I live… まあね、しょうがない!

a-bomb dome in hiroshima

In the 4 days I had left, having lost 3 to the flu, here’s what I managed to accomplish:

  • Visited 平和公園 and the Peace museum, as seen in the attached photo of the A-bomb dome.
  • Went to 宮島 and got to see all the sights. However I missed the monkeys at the top of the island since the ropeway was not open yet and the fast road by foot had been destroyed by a typhoon and they were rebuilding it.
  • Checked out the Hiroshima Museum of Contemporary Art.
  • Shopping in 本通, the little Shinjuku of Hiroshima.

You might say “It ain’t much!” but the purpose of the trip was to spend time with my girlfriend who moved out 2 months ago, not sight-seeing. That mission was accomplished. I’ll post more photos of stuff I saw in the coming week.

Cerulean Tower – 34th floor

Last week, since my girlfriend was moving, we had no place to stay in Tokyo for her last night (after the movers took everything and we gave back the keys). So since she didn’t exactly looked forward to the idea of staying at my place, Saitama being far from romantic, we looked for a hotel.

Her ex-company had a special Christmas hotel package going on and since she was still technically an employee, we got to book a night in a City-view room of the Cerulean Tower Hotel in Shibuya for a very decent ¥20.000

We ended up getting probably one of the nicest room of the hotel: 34th floor (top non-private-suite floor) with view of Fuji-san. I had to whip out my camera.

cerulean tokyo view on flickr

Funny thing: the guy with the room next to ours had ordered a call-girl, she rode the elevator with us going up, stopped in front of the door, checked the email order on her keitai and her skirt and fuck-me boots before knocking and entering…