Chasing After Rainbows

It has been exactly a year since the large earthquake happened in the Tohoku region. I remember a year ago when people were calling and messaging me to check if I'm okay. I'm relatively unscathed, and I don't have relatives affected by this. Tokyo was relatively unaffected, and buildings remain standing as they are designed to withstand strong earthquakes. Although, food supplies, and things like radios and batteries were mostly empty shortly after due to people rushing to buy this and/or supply routes/factories were affected by it. Outside Japan, and most foreigners inside Japan, the situation at that time was kind of exaggerated by the lack of knowledge (and spreading their misinformed knowledge to others) of what is happening, and the areas affected. The fear in these people seem to imply that the whole of Japan is affected. As for the radiation, yes there was dangerous radiation around the Fukushima 1st nuclear plant, and, yes, radiation levels in other parts ...

Nothing happened. Just that the Comiket 73 at the Tokyo Big Sight or 東京ビックサイト (International Exhibition Center; 国際展示場 ) had took/is taking place from the 29-31 Dec. The crowds are like crazy. How crazy? Well think of it as a subway train in the central area of the city fully packed with people. Photos were forbidden there except the cosplay area. Also, to get in, there is an extremely long line and had to wait for an extremely long time to get in. Had to head there early to avoid the crowd, though the earliest train to there is already crowded (note that the Taxi fare rates there are the 2nd most expensive after London). The image on the right would give you some idea on how crowded it is from the previous comiket. Below is an overhead image from Google Maps/Earth showing the location. It's just next to Tokyo Bay. The Big Sight is just on the right of the text 国際展示場正門 in red.

Shinjuku Station (新宿駅) is one of the busiest station located somewhere near the Shibuya area. So busy that it recorded an average of about 3.31 million per day last year (2006). Since it serves that many people, of course, there are about 25 train platforms served by 5 different operators along with about 200 exits. It's so large that you can compare it with a small city. Of course, like any other station there is an automatic fare gates (except in towns and villages which may not have any). The card used to enter is called Suica (based on Sony's Felica, which is also used on the Octopus Card in Hong Kong and some card in Singapore with an uncreative name). It can also be embedded in mobile phones (Keitai denwa / 携帯電話). That's why there you can see people putting wallets, handbags and keitai on the card reader to enter. Of course, there are machines to purchase tickets. (Near the New South Entrance/Exit (新南口). The train station is that short long building on the right of ...

(Note: Photo taken in November 2006 (13 months ago); all the things in this picture had moved quite a lot since then.) The black part near the top you see in the picture on the left broke some time ago when I was moving boxes up there. As I had removed the mattress below earlier to do stuff under the bed, I managed to grab hold of the closet to the right (not reflected in the image) in time. The frame of the bed looks like its falling apart (it's made of wood) and could break at any moment. The furniture set is quite old. It's been around since I moved in in Dec 1996 (11 years ago). Anyways, I now have images taken from yesterday (24 Dec 2007) and today (25 Dec 2007) that would (probably) help with my school project, which I haven't started. More would come soon from the same place until 2 Jan 2008. Of course, not all of the images would appear in the final version. I'll try to do it differently from other people (that are around me). Since it's most likely to be Ja...