Tokyo Graffiti

People often ask me if Japan has graffiti. The answer as you can see is yes. The graffiti above can been seen in several places around my neighborhood and was likely done by some bored teenagers. The Kanji can be translated as, "Hoax" and I find the meaning kind of amusing.

December 31, 2009

December was an unusal month this year. Not only were there two full moons, but the second full moon fell on New Years Eve.

Coffee Break

Forex trading can involve long hours. That's why we use "For Business Use 50" coffee at our office. Though I have no idea what "Business Use" coffee is, I'd imagine it has some sort of Japanese productivity enhancement in it. Which would in turn explain why I now only need 5 minutes of sleep a night.

Strange Signs II

"Please abstain from abandoning your stoned pets here."

Tokyo, Japan

A Sexual Harassment Space and its only $100, awesome.
Ikibukuro, Japan

And that would include?
Vietnamese Train, Vietnam

Yes, I would like the green pizza please.
Halong Bay, Vietnam

It's hard to see, but it appears as though LG is donating Sony flat screen TV's to Vietnamese Museums.

Hanoi, Vietnam

2009 Adventure, Vietnam

The Vietnam, Laos mountain boarder crossing.

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Downtown Saigon

A lizard and I at the Cu Chi Tunnels, Near Saigon

dNo, for once I didn't try it.

Halong Bay
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Halong Bay

Halong Bay at sunset

Monument to Confucius, Hanoi

The dragon was made from individual plastic flowers.

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Hoan Kiem Lake, Downtown Hanoi

A typical Hanoi Apartment Building

Somewhere in Tokyo

The organized madness of Tokyo never cases to amaze me.

Every two minutes a train arrives at the station. Pedestrians spill out onto the sidewalk in every direction. On the street countless taxis rush their passengers about. Above innumerable office workers pound away on computers and flush unimaginable amounts of water through the sewage system. All the while pipes and wires endlessly rush along the vital staples of the metropolis bellow. Yet somehow the trains run on time. People know where they are going. Taxi drivers navigate the unnamed streets. And all that dirty water and data gets to where its going.

Go Go Curry II

Say you just met a girl at a party. Now its time for your first date. How could you test this girls level of "coolness"? Well you could take her bungee jumping or sky diving or rock climbing.

OR, you could attempt to convince her to down $10's worth of curry rice, tonkatsu, tempura, and cabbage in front of you.

Cardboard Christmas

When your Mother and Sister send you Christmas presents, but you don't have a Christmas tree what do you do? You use the cardboard from the box the presents were sent in and some twist-ties you had in the closet. Then to add some Christmas cheer, you attach a piece of last years Christmas tree to the bottom. And walla, you have a Christmas tree, or at least something that functions as a mildly suitable stand-in.

Oji 駅

Correction

Please scroll down past McModel to view pictures that were previously not viewable. Sorry for the inconvenience.

McModel

Part of it was curiosity, part of it was vanity, and part of it was the lure of an easy paycheck which lead me to sign up with a modeling agency.

After weeks of the agency sending out my picture, I finally got a reply; McDonald's was looking for a model for a new Western themed ad campaign. My agent met me at the train station and escorted me to where the test shoot was being done.

Once inside it was quickly obvious I was out of my league. However it wasn't my looks that were soon to fail me, it was my lack of modeling experience. Though it is true that you just stand there and let them take your picture, the skill lies in how you stand there. I was soon to be a deer in the headlights, but it really didn't matter, because I really wanted was to see what a modeling shoot was like.

My test shoot was done in less than a minute and I soon found myself walking back to the train station in the company of one of the "professional" models who showed up to the shoot. As we talked it turned out that we had a great deal in common. He had spent is 20's bumming around the world making money by modeling, while I had spent my 20's bumming around the world making money by teaching English.

As we parted ways at the train station it dawned on me how similar we were. Though our jobs were different in the end we were using some aspect of our westerness to pay for our adventures around the world.

Minato Incineration Plant 港清掃工場

Minato City, Tokyo