Category: Miscellaneous

A Bridge Too Far

  • June 3, 2013

Predictably, we couldn’t sleep much our first night, and took advantage of this to plan a trip to the famous Tsujiki fish markets. We left the ryokan around 5:30 am and headed over…

…only to find it closed to tourists until 9 am! So, at about 6:30 am we were loose in a city that wouldn’t wake for about 3 hours 🙂

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That was taken at a fox shrine near Tsujiki, as we debated our next move. Eventually we decided to stroll over to the imperial gardens before heading to another attraction around 9. The walking had begun!

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Bernard’s camera is stupid-impressive, but also stupid-heavy! Here he is self-portraiting during a break we took after finding the imperial gardens closed! Asakusa here we come!

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That’s a look back along Nakamise-dori from within the famous Senso-ji temple. It was about 11 am by now; the day had barely started yet we’d been gallivanting for hours already. Senso-ji was great though, with lots of people and the tourist shops selling everything a man could want…

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Our first lunch (Burger King!) over, it was time for Odaiba. While no Alihabara or Nagano, it was here that Bernard would be introduced to the wonder of the Japanese arcade 🙂

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This photo was taken while I was still in the late stages of shock after just coming across a Monster Hunter shop in Decks mall. Since I believe in supporting the economy, I made some modest purchases and was awarded with a special bag, Airu (the cat mascot) hat and even a sticker!

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That’s a real scale Gundam outside Diver City mall at Odaiba. Note KLS for scale. This was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen!

It was about 2 pm when we found the first of 3 major arcades in Odaiba. Oodles would be spent UFO catching and redemption machining, and a great time was had by all! Among other things Bernard won himself an AKB48 mouse and mousepad set:

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I won, from a single Y500 (~$5) credit, three super cute Airu’s from the same machine:

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But alas, the wonderful Rilakkuma hand puppets were cursed with a ‘weak claw’ machine and were unwinnable:

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We eventually left Odaiba around 6 pm, all in a state of advanced ruination. We’d been going strong for about 13 hours, and my pedometer registered over 40,000 steps. We had bags of loot and dying feet when we got back. Delirious, I even ate a convenience store hot dog for dinner…

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…before collapsing – corpselike – onto the bed! What a first day 🙂

  • Posted in Food
  • Robert

Japandemonium

  • May 30, 2013

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In a little over 48 hours we’re off once again to Japan. The trip will take about 6 hours in airports and 18 hours in planes and we’ll meet my brother in Tokyo.

As usual, I’ll be blogging (assuming I have internet!) and tweeting, so follow for all the fun. I’ll be renting a SIM card when I arrive, so if you get an iOS message from an unfamiliar number, that should be me!

See you there!

  • Posted in Blog
  • Robert

Battle of The Cameras!

  • May 16, 2013

The other day, we purchase two new digital cameras, both because of our upcoming trip. They are the Nikon Coolpix S-01 and the Sony DSC-WX80. Here is a photo of me holding both on my palm:

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As you can see, they are both very small. Even the Sony is about as small as any camera we have ever owned, and the Nikon is just tiny! Both cameras are smaller than and weigh less than an iPhone.

Nikon Coolpix S01
This 10.1 megapixel camera is remarkable for it’s size, and is indeed so small you could easily take it with you anywhere. It is rechargeable, and the 16GB of memory is internal and non expandable. Some may view both of these as negatives, but considering the size and cost (under $100) I don’t. The camera has 3x optical zoom, a touch screen and can record up to 30 minutes of 720p video.

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This camera is 16.2 megapixel and can record full HD (1080, 60 fps) video. It has 8x optical zoom and a whole host of shooting modes including burst mode and full 360 degree panoramas. It also has built in wi-fi which turns the camera into a wi-fi transmitter than can then send photos or video to my iphone via a (free) app I have already downloaded and tested. And then there is the beauty correction, which I will get to later 🙂

Let’s compare shots from both cameras:

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Two shots of my dinner last night. The first is the Nikon, second is the Sony. Aside from the slight difference in focal length, both cameras performed well in low light, with the Sony perhaps capturing more detail. I didn’t notice until doing this blog that the Sony had defaulted to 16:9 mode, which can be changed. As an aside, that food looks delicious doesn’t it? I may have it for dinner again tonight 🙂

Here’s another subject, this time using three different cameras:

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From the top, the Nikon, Sony and my iPhone (also a 10.1 megapixel camera). Hard to tell any significant difference in these scaled down to 1000 pixel versions is there? At full resolution, the Nikon had more noise and the Sony was clearest overall. But for all intents and purposes the cameras all perform very well.

For all intents and purposes both of these cameras take remarkable photographs under various conditions. They were inexpensive (the Sony was under $150), easy to use and easy to get the photos off. Both will be used to take many hundreds or thousands of photos in Japan in a little over two weeks!

And so I move on to the bushel in Sony’s basket, the beauty correction mode! Take any photo of a human face, and built in software can make them more beautiful. For instance, take this dour shot of yours truly:

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Ugly isn’t it? Well, through a miracle of modern technology, the camera magically makes me look beautiful:

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AMAZING!

Here’s a few other examples, showing how the camera can remove blemishes, make eyes more attractive and even change skin tone:

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What’s that you say? We went overboard, posing in unnatural ways and cranking all the settings up to maximum and effectively making us look inhuman? Furthermore – detractors may claim – these photos just look like bad use of a Photoshop blur tool and this technology should remain in the ???? machines where it was pioneered.

To me, saying such things is tantamount to saying “I hate beauty”. But if you insist, I will present a more subtle example. In this case I eschewed most of the beauty options, and allowed my vanity to permit only one. I think you’ll admit the effect is striking…

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