More timelapse video gorgeousness from Tokyo. This one really deserves to be seen full screen instead of a tiny little wussey blog window. The planes landing are really cool. inter // states from Samuel Cockedey on Vimeo. via pinktentacle

On our last day in Tokyo we went we went looking for a particular Izakaya that I'd seen recommended. It was a perfect lesson in the strange way Japanese addresses are constructed. We only had the address which I'd quickly jotted down in very bad Japanese and we didn't have a chance to find a map on the internet in the hotel thanks to its expense. Wikipedia gives a fuller explanation but suffice it to say that it's more or less described using smaller and smaller boxes, starting from the Prefecture name down. Street names are rarely used and you're lucky if you have a building number. We had a small Shibuya area tourist map and the address, trying to use landmarks like department stores and train stations to find our way. It was freezing cold and after about 20 minutes we were ready to completely give up when we amazingly stumbled upon the basement entrance down one of a million side streets, under a million neon signs, all with guys outside holding menus. The place was pretty cool, even though most of the staff looked like they were young enough to still be in school. And they even gave us a free souvenir when we left. The next day we got the Shinkansen to Osaka and were to pass by Mt. Fuji during a clear winter afternoon. We got a great view from the train. Osaka was almost how I remembered it - except a whole load of buildings had been torn down and rebuilt, perhaps twice.

Our one day trip while in Tokyo was to Kamakura, a town famous for its giant bronze Buddha, which I'd never managed to visit despite it being one of the biggest tourist draws in Japan (excluding Disneyland obviously). It was an hour on a local suburban train from Tokyo. At least a suburban train by Japanese standards - it stopped only a few times to drop off commuters and sped through to Yokohama at break neck speed. As well as being famous for its giant Buddha, it was also the capital of Japan at one stage and is full of enough temples and shrines to reflect its heritage. Thanks to the power of the intertubes we knew in advance which one to visit, complete which atmospheric bamboo garden.. We also had lunch at a BBQ eel place which was pretty tasty..

Today we did a shuttlestop tour around Shinjuku, Shibuya and Odaiba and saw Tokyo Tower up close for the first time. We've voluntarily given ourselves a tight budget, meaning every meal we've had so far has been eaten alongside all the dour and over-burdened "salarymen" in train station basements. That sounds worse than it is though - train station vending machine places are cheap and very cheerful, even if by the end of the day my lips felt like I'd swallowed a weeks worth of salt. Every train we took everywhere was busy, at all times of the day. The train at 11.30 tonight was full of people who were just leaving work - or at least work drinks. We popped into a Big Camera electronics shop to eye up all the super flat, high resolution screened (and now solar powered) mobile phones. Surprised at how many iPhones i saw on the trains. I saw less half a dozen foreign faces like my own for the whole day. In the evening we went to see the Christmas/Winter lights in Roppongi and Tokyo Midtown. Christmas may not mean much here, but they certainly know how to put on a light display. Its hard to explain to someone back home what the point of Christmas here is though. There's Christmas music playing everywhere, there's Christmas lights up in a lot of places - and in most cases a lot nicer than back home - but that's about the extent of it. And its a couples thing rather than having any family focus. We went to the observation deck on top of Mori tower which offered a very nice (and very expensive) view of the Tokyo skyline.

Well we're back in Tokyo. My first time here in five years. We landed late at Narita airport and it took over an hour on the express train to the city so we didn't actually get to collapse into our hotel until pretty late. Yet despite dragging our suitcases through the cold to the hotel (being in Sydney I'd almost forgot what real winter was) before the day was up I'd bought myself a weird Japanese Pepsi, ate a pork rice bowl at a fast food counter place (while the surrounding Japanese gave me double-takes every time they noticed the foreigner sitting on a neighbouring stool) and bought a few convenience store onigiri. The hotel we're staying at is this huge wonderfully dated place - fit for a James bond villian perhaps. Outside each room is a personal metal gate, painted cream to match the fading floral walls. Inside there's a cheesy Chandelier, blindingly patterned wallpaper and curtains, and wafer thin walls.

Tokyo really lends itself to video, so here's two more I like (both are timelapses): Nice that they use one of my favourite soundtracks in the second one.. both via pinktentacle

Very cool tilt-shift style video of Tokyo .. .. which is surprisingly not connected to this Uniqlo calendar website thingy: via tokyomango.com

Found a link to some of these incredible underground photos of the Tokyo sewer flood control system. These were posted before on some sites but they're cool enough to be mentioned again and up until now I've only seen them in a Flash animation on the photographers own website, which itself is worth a look. Actually I got the photographer mixed up. Seems there are a few people doing this kind of photography. All of which is pretty amazing. The flood control photos are taken by this guy, while this guy has published a series of books called Japan Underground which have some equally cool stuff. via CrookedBrain