These past few weeks turned out to be one of the most busiest periods since the start of Mirai Inc. Interviews, TV filming, events, networking, beta launches, iPhone apps and preparations for the Tokyo Figure Show. Wont be anywhere near the scale of the Wonfes but then again we are catering for a different audience.

So its been a whole month since the last A Week in Tokyo. Had to make a decision to blog a bit less so that I could get more of the bigger significant changes out to Mirai Gaia which you can see under beta at figure.mirai.fm.

Starting off with a photo session for a future publication.

I think this is the first time that we see Patrick out of his cosplay gear - the author of the Otaku Encyclopedia.

Haven't seen a manual camera for ages. The film for this particular camera costs a bomb apparently.

Back from a round of shopping at Costco.

Hiyashi Chuka - cold sour noodles with a few ice cubes.

Flicking through some mags just before grabbing some milk. Some convenience stores tie up the mags and some don't.

In the evening watching one of my fave TV programs - Gaia no Yoake. A business trends show. Today they talk about how tidying up can save money in these economic times. For example, one of the companies featured had employees who spent a few hours each day looking for stuff.
Those few hours were added up in cost and they worked out that the salary of 2 employees were going to waste.

While both of my parents are notorious for keeping a load of crap around the house, I tend to get rid of as much as possible to save time. For example, while the figure and gadget samples are free - there is a cost of keeping them - my time.

I could stock them in the retire cabinet but when its full I then need to make time to find/make space to put more "free" stuff. If I spend an hour sorting out boxes of stuff that I don't really want then I've wasted X yen. And the more stuff I have, the more difficult it is to find stuff - thus even more time is wasted.
Get rid of the things you don't want so that you can find the stuff that you do want.

Filming with BBC World - being sent a DVD copy and will upload as soon as I get it.

After over 10 years, SPEED is back - used to listen to their tunes when I came to Japan as a visitor.

At Lalaport having some Laksa.

At many shopping malls, the more you shop, the more free stuff they give you. In some cases they give you goodies...

...and in some cases they give you monies.

Looking through the glass into a smoking chamber.

At night when shops close up at Lalaport, some shops are left like this - with just a rope at the front. I' sure all of this would be gone if this was Hackney in London.

Ramen and Chahan set.

Out n about by day in Gakugei Daigaku - another bustling area which we discovered recently. About a 20 min walk from where we are.

Gegege no Kitaro goodies at Mc Dees.

Gakugei Daigaku station.

A newly discovered lake that comes complete with row boats and huge carp fish.

Got hold of more Clear Racks for the figures - available at Amazon Japan for 2,480 yen each.

Some freshly make Omusubi for dindins. Also called "Onigiri" - rice with a filling wrapped in dried seaweed.

Spent an evening actually learning aperture and other SLR settings. Do an image search with the word "diagram" on the end like aperture diagram - the diagrams may help you absorb the knowledge quicker than just a block of text - helped me a lot.

Looks like its that time of year where politicians grab their megaphone and shout out loud on the streets.

Some health food is good once in a while.

The lads playing around with the iPhone Mirai Clock app.

Just before visiting the 1/1 scale Gundam in Odaiba. Having some Indonesian food with the lads while browsing on the Leopardized Dell Mini 9.

"Oshibori" are the wet rolled up towels that many restaurants hand out to customers. They always remind me of a restaurant that I previously worked in where one employee used them to wipe his armpits and shoes! Those oshibori would then go in the wash and then be served up to customers again - so if you see a crinkly hair in your oshibori then you know where its been ^^;

Katsu and my fave Japanese soup Tonjiru made from swine stock.

At the launch party for the Otaku Encyclopedia.

Frankie and his moesome Nice T-Shirt.

Picking up some Mr Donuts.

A Ramen place filled with manga for the customers to read.

Shio Ramen. "Shio" = "Salt."

Picking up my armor from dry cleaning.

Tis the jolly mosquito season meaning that the Mosquito Defense Systems need to be activated. The bottle of liquid goes into the dark purple dome thing which heats up the liquid. When mosquitoes come into the immediate area, the hole at the top shoots out a 200.5volt bolt of electricity at the mosquito - a burning smell remains in the air until the liquid perfume absorbs it.

Minced up cow with nasu.

The coffee shops over here like to make their logo look as similar as possible to Starbucks.

BLT Sand served up my Mikuru. "Sando" (sometimes written as "Sand") is short for sandwich.

Slice of eel on rice - some love it and some hate it.

Katsu to take out from Saboten.

Some places at lunch time do crazy deals. This place sells a bowl of seafood on rice for 100 yen (1 USD-ish) but usually costs 1,200 yen (12 USD-ish). Available to the first 10 people only.

Getting rid of that PC that I've had for many years. Nice case that alone does not warrant keeping it. Chris carried it home with him on the train!

This van patrols the area watching out for folks who steal recyclable materials or dump rubbish without permission.
Throughout Japan, we can only throw certain rubbish out on certain days. For example, in our area, we can only throw out combustible (burnable) rubbish on Wednesday and Saturday. We would be in toraburu if we threw out stuff on another day or try to hide combustible rubbish with non-combustible for example.

Occasionally see TV crews out n about getting opinions from the public about things like what they thought about some famous person having an affair with the nextdoor neighbor etc.

Chahan for dindins.

Been spending a lot of time on Mirai Gaia over at figure.mirai.fm. We need to upgrade the Good Smile website, dannychoo.com and otaku.fm too.

My old Fujitsu laptop which I've been trying to get rid of. The thing about getting rid of computers is that you cant give it to a novice user because they will ask you stuff about it all the time - the point of getting rid of it is to save time and space. But all the experienced users who I asked to take it away (for free) didn't want it!

When I was a PC user, I couldn't understand why Macs didn't have floppy drives.

Choosing which games to get rid of. Have not finished any of these!

And this is where I take my second hand games - Book Off. The prices displayed here is what they pay for these games.

Back in England, I used to drill holes all over the house to put up shelves. So when we bought our house in Tokyo, I got hold of a wireless drill - used it a total of once! Houses in Japan are generally not made of brick but of wood meaning that you can easily drill holes with a manual drill - or just push and twist a screwdriver through the wall.

Also bought myself an electric saw at the time which I used only once too - need to get rid of both.

The step down transformer is an interesting story. When we moved to Seattle from Tokyo (which you can read about in the Working at Amazon and Microsoft photo article), we bought 2 (count em) heavy duty step down transformers which were powerful enough to power a fridge or washing machine. Amazon shipped all our stuff to Seattle but little did we know that apartments in America came with dishwashers fridges and washing machines! Most apartments in Japan are pretty much empty when you move in.

For the 5 months that we stayed in Seattle, our fridge and washing machine stayed outside on our balcony. Before coming back to Tokyo, we gave the fridge to a comrade and brought back the washing machine which we still use today. Have no idea why these step down transformers came back to Tokyo with us! Need to get rid of everything in the photo.

Haruhi snaps some pics of tempura and zaru udon lunch.

Some places display plastic representations of food and some just use real food wrapped up.

Walnuts are supposed to be good for the brains and some folks say that its because they look like brains. They also taste like brains too.

Olympus E-P1 - The Lumix LX3 killer? Currently costs about 90,000 yen.

When buying electronics in Japan, look for the cheapest price online of what you want and make a print out and then take it to Bic Camera. More often than not, they will match the price.

Playing around with the Gundam Fix Figurations that I dug out which reminded me how cool they are. Did they stop making these since their Robot Tamashii line?

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Taken this Thursday at the official Softbank iPhone 3GS launch event just past midnight.
On the left of the photo is Masayoshi Son - CEO of Softbank. On the right is tech journalist and consultant Nobi Hayashi. The chap in the middle is some git who realized that he should not be standing in the middle ^^;

A few bits n pieces about Masayoshi plucked from Wikipedia below.

Masayoshi Son (Japanese: 孫正義, Korean: 손정의; born August 111957 in Tosu, Saga Prefecture, Japan) is a Korean-Japanese businessman - whose grandfather came from Korea to Japan - and the founder and current chief executive officer of Softbank Capital, and the chief executive officer of SoftBank Mobile (the renamed, effective October 1, 2006, Vodafone K. K. ). According to the Forbes magazine, his net worth is 7 billion dollars and he is the richest man in Japan, despite being the single person who has lost the most money in history (approximately 70 billion dollars in the dot com crash of 2000).

A third-generation son of a Korean family in Japan, Son was not considered a Japanese citizen until his family adopted the Japanese surname Yasumoto. Son pursued his interests in business by securing a meeting with Japan McDonald's president Den Fujita. Taking his advice, Son began studying English and computer science.

At age 16, Son moved to California and finished high school while staying with friends and family in South San Francisco. He then enrolled at University of California, Berkeley in which he majored in economics and took some computer science courses. Enamored by a microchip featured in a magazine, Son at age 19 became confident that computer technology would ignite the next commercial revolution.

Convinced that anything related to microchips could yield a fortune, Son decided to produce at least one entrepreneurial idea a day. He patented a translating device that he eventually sold to Sharp Electronics for $1 million. Applications of the patent include the Wizard series of Sharp PDAs.

Flush with cash, Son imported Space Invaders video arcade systems and dispersed them about the UC Berkeley campus. Soon after graduating from Berkeley with a BA in economics in 1980, Son started Unison in Oakland, California, which has since been bought by Kyocera.

Read the rest of his story so far at Wikipedia.

During the day on the 26th, folks were lining up at the Softbank store in Harajuku but unlike last year, this year they gave out pre-order tickets so that folks didn't have to sleep in the streets.
This lady here is waiting for her turn to pre-order and giving out free pokening's and hugs at the same time.

Before we continue, I must mention that these photos are mixed with photos from myself and the following sources who covered the event:-
http://getnews.jp/archives/20146
http://mitaimon.cocolog-nifty.com/blog/2009/06/iphone-3gs-pree.html
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevenagata/sets/72157620409450091/
http://www.kenleewrites.com/2009/06/iphone-3gs-pre-launch.html
http://ascii.jp/elem/000/000/431/431214/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/masakiishitani/sets/72157620413718725/
http://tamegoeswild.com/words/2009/06/stormtrooper-meets-softbank-ceo-masayoshi-son/
http://ameblo.jp/hfo/theme-10011408558.html
http://nobi.cocolog-nifty.com/nobilog2/
http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2009/06/25/from-tokyo-iphone-3gs-queue-and-japans-official-pre-launch-event/
http://www.appbank.net/2009/06/25/iphone-news/33897.php
http://ipodtouchlab.com/2009/06/iphone-3gs.html
http://www.good-design-review.com/archives/864298.html
http://mitaimon.cocolog-nifty.com/blog/2009/06/iphone-3gs-pree.html
http://journal.mycom.co.jp/news/2009/06/26/024/index.html
http://plusd.itmedia.co.jp/mobile/articles/0906/26/news052.html

Its about 19:30 and there are a few folks at the front of the Softbank store mingling with each other. We stop by to mingle too before moving a long.

Then its off to the iPhone 3GS Japan private launch event at Appliya Night. I invited you to come along and was great that some of you could make it!

Comrades from Circus came along too dressed up - here we have Asakura Otome cosplay - from the Dacapo series.
And what is this she has with her?! For me? ^^;;;

Guests from all over the world attend and we had out first Dollfie come to enjoy the festivities.

Photographer, consultant, producer and gravure idol Amano Ai-chan - love this outfit of hers!

Folks from Gizmodo Japan with their iPhone hat trademark.

After Appliya Night, we head to Quest Hall just around the corner where the big event was being held. Initially wasnt sure about how many from the Appliya Night party could get in but we managed to bring in everyone!

The staff at Softbank where great. And for those who dont know - Softbank is one of the major mobile carriers in Japan who currently exclusively own the iPhone. We switched from AU to Softbank just for the iPhone. We get to call other Softbank users for free (for most of the day) and also get to use Yahoo BB wifi spots all over Japan for free too. What sort of deals do you get with your iPhone? I heard that Canadians are stuck with 3 year contracts?

A bottle of Te Pika Gell - its a disinfecting gel which you rub into your hands and dries up immediately.

Been planning on painting some marks in orange on the armor - a bit like the paint you see on the Clone Troopers.

Its about 22:15 and the festivities are about to begin. I head to the front to check out the hall. The place is filled with media folks and those who want to get their iPhone at 7am - Softbank arranged for this hall to let folks stay in until the morning.

Begin!

Nobi Hayashi is the MC and organizer of the event.

The hall is packed but slowly empties out as the last trains start to depart at midnight.

Nobi talks about the iPhone Japan launch event a year ago which leads to my introduction - I get up on stage to talk about what I do.

The girls from Circus are my supporting officers and they get up on stage to help he out. Here I'm about to talk about the first dannychoo.com iPhone/iPod Touch app that has already been submitted to Apple for approval. You can see the first part of my bit below - but I still has the bad habit of saying "etooooo" which the equivalent of "errmmm" or "ummmm" in English. And you can see the app in action below in the second part of my bit - both of these vids taken by Steven Nagata.

Unfortunately the iPhone does not work well with gloves on which was a concern I had for the last iPhone as I cant make calls while trooping. The new iPhone 3GS however comes with voice recognition so I can dial and accept calls just by speaking at the iPhone. See the video below on how this works. For the presentation, I had to remove the glove which troopers should only do in front of others in emergency situations only.

The first app is Mirai Clock which will be available for download soon from the App store for 1.99 USD or 230 yen. Ken is the developer and Appliya is the publisher.

The description of the app that we submitted to Apple is as follows:-
Features:
- 48 pictures of Mirai and Haruka (portrait and landscape)
- Clock can be moved and positioned anywhere (just touch the clock and move with finger)
- Orientation of clock can be horizontal or vertical (double tap clock)
- Time shown can be 24hr or am/pm (double tap anywhere on screen except clock and info button)
- App remembers "last position/orientation/time mode" so users will always come back to what they set earlier
- Orientation of iPhone can be horizontal or vertical (just turn the phone)
- Orientation of picture gallery can be horizontal or vertical (shake phone to go to gallery)
- Flick left/right to show next pictures (works anywhere on screen except clock)
- Info screen can be rotated as well and shows buttons with links
- Battery indicator on bottom left of screen. if power is plugged in, nothing shows. If operating on battery, green for more than 60%, yellow for between 30-60% and red for below 30%.

My fave backdrops are the Sukumizu and the Dakimakura pose - as as you saw from the video above, looks like the audience liked them too ^^;

I've only just discovered the possibilities of the iPhone and we already have a few other apps in the pipeline.

The girls at Circus have stuff to give out!

And there is no better way to give out goodies than the traditional Junken (Paper, Scissors, Stone).

Kotobukiya are with us in the audience too and they throw these at me to give out ^^;

A snap on my Lumix from stage.

A few minutes before midnight, Masayoshi comes through surrounded by folks in the hall who get up and crowd around to take photos.
Here you see him telling us that we all get a Softbank mascot dog which talks when you squeeze or bite its tail.

Just before Masayoshi walks off stage, I nab him and suggest that we have "Kinen Shashin" - or "Memorial Photo" and is an excellent word to use when you want to take photos of just about anything!

Masayoshi takes some video footage. You can see what happened from the moment he got on stage in the video below taken by fellow Brit Joseph. My bit is at 4:47. Was happy to see the empire make it to most of the tabloids and a few TV sots in the morning ^^;

Caption that photo.

For the iPhone developers who decided to come to Appliya Night, we managed to get most of them up on stage to show off and demo their apps.

I left at about half past midnight but the rest of the folks had some Katsu sandwich bento handed out by the Softbank staff.

Masayoshi gave not only gave out the softbank mascot dog but also some monies in the form of iTunes vouchers.

Some of the presentations covered the features and speed of the previous iPhone and the 3GS. The improvement is vast and now close to loading speeds that you experience on your PC or Mac browser. Been using my 3GS for a few days now and love it - just incredible!

You can go over to the development version of figure.fm and click on "Danny Choo iPhone" to see pics that I'm posting from the 3GS. Will enable me to bring you more of Japan in real time and include videos too. The formatting of that page will change. Thanks to all who have been helping out to test the syetem and welcome more testers - just use your DC credentials to login.

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Went along with comrades from the web2.0 Tokyo scene to attend Tokyo Transformers Night held at The IMAX cinema at Lazona in Kanagawa.

In this photo we have:-
Zuco Pietro (+waifu) - Linux Specialist (AXA), Photographer.
Joseph Tame - Pod Caster, Photographer.
Frankiebit - Journalist, Tech Specialist.
JonnyLi - Photographer.
Steven Nagata - Photographer, Tech Specialist, Writer.
Mika Ueno - Pro Investor Relations & Corporate Marketing, Photographer.
iMorpheus - Photographer.
Ryan Pipkin - Sales Executive, Entrepreneur.
Florian Von Bock - Software Dev.
Danny Choo - Grass Cutter (Mirai Inc)

For those who are planning to watch Transformers "Revenge of the Fallen" - bring spare underwear - at least 20 pairs. Its that good! Have still not seen Star Trek to compare yet but Transformers is a must see for Sci-Fi fans.

On the way into the cinema they gave us this certificate to show that we were the first to watch the first public screening of Transformers Revenge in the world ^^;

Zooming back in time to the end of the office day. Been working on the figure.fm relaunch. Here is the avatar creation screen. Now you dont need to worry about making your own - just upload any image and drag/resize the box.
UI needs a bit of work.

Just before six, some of the lads come over. I take the opportunity to get rid of my unwanted rubbish - I mean useful stuff.

Ryan in my chair came over to Tokyo as part of the Geeks on a plane tour - Tokyo, Shanghai and Beijing - Tech company visits and networking.

Then its off by car to Kanagawa - about 30 mins drive.

T'was a lovely evening's drive while listening to Ridge Racer R4.

Was just before 6pm so the roads where relatively clear.

Arrival at Lazona - a huge shopping complex that opened recently-ish.

At Bic Camera to check out the transformers goodies.

Mass produced so the quality in terms of detail isn't really there - looks decent though. Would probably look better with some weathering.

Was thinking of picking this up. Want to spray it gloss white and wear it with my armor - TransTrooper ^^;
The Bumblebee voice mixer below. There is also Bumblebee's plasma cannon which looks quite good if painted to match my armor - love the recoil action. The helmet available at Amazon.com for 44USD and the Plasma Cannon also available from Amazon for 39 USD.

Have you seen these Robo Q robots before? The worlds smallest robots with some sort of intelligence apparently. Steve Nagata just happened to have one on him. You can control them with the remote and if they spot obstacles they they will walk around it. 3,150 yen.

After looking around in Bic Camera, its time to look for dindins.

Didnt have time to explore this time round.

Prawn with menchi katsu. Delicious.

T'was one of the more traditional places where you get a bowl to crush your nuts. Sesame nuts.

Dinner done and as we near 8pm, we hear more Transformer noises. How would you spell the transforming noise? I make it out to be something like Kuewchukukukoo ^^;

Optimus Prime and Bumblebee in sight! So thats what the Pyramid was all about! Opens officially tomorrow. When does it open in your neck of the woods?

Grabbing some grub.

I've heard a lot about these IMAX cinemas and didn't expect too much apart from a bigger screen - completely exceeded my expectations.
The screen is a bit curved and the whole cinema rumbled with the explosions - a completely different experience and well worth it.

If you are tempted to watch a cam version then don't - you will completely ruin the experience for yourself. You should feel most satisfied with the money you pay to see this flick. Our seats were 2,000 yen each.

In the first film, we had to watch until half way though until we saw Transformers action - in Revenge - its right from the beginning - a ton of it! Trailer 1 below.

This time round, there are many varieties of Transformers - many surprises in store. The things that they can transform into are very surprising indeed ^^;

I did find some of the action hard to see - combination of the fact that the screen was huge and that you had to move your head left n right to catch the action, and also because of the designs of the transformers - some of the battle scenes ended up looking like scrap clumps of metal flying about - hard to distinguish what was what at times.
Trailer 2 below.

The battle in Eygpt was full of intense action. They had this huuuge Decepticon which was formed by many construction vehicles. Optimus Primes extra "Super Parts" where kinda Macross-esqe.

Not going to talk much about the plot but I loved it - liked this one more than the first as we were blessed with Transformer action from the start. The film is 2 hours and 40 mins but never has those boring bits so you are pretty much wide awake for the whole show.

Many laughs to be had too - LOL at "Humping Decepticon" ^^;;
Would love to watch again but this time sitting further away from the screen so that I can catch any action that I missed.

Cant wait for the 3rd film...

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Organizing Tokyo CGM Night with Andrew Shuttleworth has been a great learning experience. We've had 5 episodes so far and they seem to get better each time. Last nights CGM Night was the best ever!

The venue for the evening was at the offices of KDDI Web Communications - their main business is the CPI web hosting and Jimdo - a free online tool that easily enables one to create websites.

Before the event - a bunch of Google Product Managers came over from the US to mingle including Marissa Meyer - Vice President of Search Product and User Experience at Google.

I didn't manage to take any photos so nabbed them from the CGM Night Flickr Pool:-
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevenagata/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lhuga/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevenagata/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mika/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hkdmz/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisgaunt/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/shibumi/

Prepared this post before Jim and Jonny uploaded their pics - check them out too:-
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimgris/tags/cgm/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jonnyli/sets/72157619750455267/

My co-host Andrew Shuttleworth.

Emerging coverage as follows:-
http://ameblo.jp/findmehere/entry-10281382124.html
http://www.flickr.com/photos/drzuco/tags/cgmnightepisode5/
http://www.zuco.org/cgm-night-episode-5/
http://blog.gamersweb.it/post/1207096565/Tokyo+CGM+Night+EPISODE+5+-+Geeks+in+a+office#more
http://hk.dmz-plus.com/a-news.cgi?date=2009.06.15
http://www.good-design-review.com/archives/853245.html
http://www.thewesternworld.net/2009/06/tokyo-cgm-night-episode-5-the-otaku-strike-back.html
http://www.lesterho.com/blog/?p=939
http://www.wotagei.net/info.html
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/cgmnight/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/shibumi/sets/72157619718946689/
http://www.nihongonotes.com/2009/06/16/tokyo-cgm-night-5/
http://www.kenleewrites.com/2009/06/tokyo-cgm-5-5-shots.html
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimgris/tags/cgm/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jonnyli/sets/72157619750455267/
http://www.cutanews.com/00000023.html#20090616230217

My iPhone developer and photographer Ken Lee.

Pokens were being sold at a huge discount too. For those who don't know, these are like electronic business cards. All you have to do is touch your Poken with another Poken owner and your info is exchanged digitally. You plug the USB Poken into your Mac and then you can see that persons info online.

The official launch of Poken in japan was at Tokyo CGM Night and is becoming a huge success over here.

Photo session taimu. All fingers pointing to the giveaway by Circus who came along - t'was their recently released eroge Valkyrie Complex.

Social Evangelist Paul Papadimitriou - he takes the force with him back to the Philippines. Tokyo web2.0 scene is not the same without him.

CGM Night is a great place to find interesting subjects to take photos of. Going to try to get a case for Dollfies as there are 4 Dollfie daughter owners who attend CGM Night.
As you can see from these photos, CGM Night has a great international mix.

The lovely ladies from Circus. Girl on the left as Koko-chan. Will be visiting their offices in Saitama soon. Azusa on the right.

The folks from Moeyo.com.

Lovely lady from KDDI who helped out at the reception.

Mr TAK who arranged for us to use his office. Thank you TAK-san!

We also had a few idols too ^o^
First up is comrade Amano Ai and Mayu-chan from Cutie Pie. They should be performing at the next CGM Night.

The folks from Google thinking what on (Google) earth is going on. They got here before doors opened.

Went along in Vader evening wear - tis what the dark lord wears when wining and dining without his armor. Here I'm struggling with business card exchange while trying not to drop my goodies from Circus ^^;

Catering was provided by comrade Sunil who runs many restaurants in Tokyo called Swagat.
Sunil has been in IT for most of his career and opened up his restaurants as a side business - done very well for himself.

Asahina Marin-chan who calls herself a Hetalayer - compound of "Heta" meaning "Bad at" and cospLayer meaning that she refers to herself as being bad at cosplay ^^;

Expect to see more from Marin-chan but for now keep up with her shenanigans at her burogu.

Mika Ueno - Pro Investor Relations & Corporate Marketing. Quite sweet too.

We had huge CGM Night posters provided by Focal. Gave some out at the end too.

The Web2.0 version of NicoNico - Twitter Fountain. Excellent for events like this. Twitter Fountain pulls in tweets and Flickr images tagged with "cgmnight" in real time.

People following the tweeter will learn about CGM Night too.
Also with our Eye-fi SD card, photos are uploaded via wifi real time from the camera as soon as they are taken and also appear on the projector screen too which are also tagged with "cgmnight" creating virl waves around the web2.0 social media community.

We are in the rainy season in Japan now and the rain last night was horrendous. Despite that and only two days notice, we had a great turn out of well over 100 top bloggers, Vloggers, producers, media, entertainment and tech folks mingle and create bodacious harmony.

Reception hard at work processing the queues of people waiting to get in.

Another Idol - Takahashi Miho.

Heather - CEO of Rinkya.

Kevin Cooney - writer, actor and comedian.

Jim Grisanzio - Sr. Program Manager, OpenSolaris.org Portal Development.

Hector - the most famous Spanish Japan blogger.

Gen Kanai - top man at Mozilla.

David Shackelford - exchange student who worked for Six Apart Japan for a while.

With Yang Yang from Appliya who we are working with on iPhone apps.

Fumi Yamazaki and Satoka F. You may remember Fumi from my first Japanese TV appearance on Blog TV below.

Popular otaku blogger Hisagi-san wins the Circus eroge - t'was my copy but decided to give it up for grabs. Besides - I'll pick one up when I visit their offices soon ^^;

Author of the Otaku Encyclopedia Patrick comes along with Kodansha too.

Jonny Li and Hinata Ise.

And a look at some of the goodies that one can potentially get hold of at Tokyo CGM Night!

At each episode of CGM Night there are always exclusive goodies up for grabs ^o^

Foxkeh stickers - official Firefox mascot in Japan.

Valkyrie Complex postcards.

Foxkeh face towel.

Somehow the folks at Circus knew that my fave Dacapo girl is Koko and they brought a long a few of her goodies - just in time for Summer. As I use glass tables, the grimy smelly sweat from me grubby paws goes all over the glass. In the Summer, I usually rest my arms on a towel to keep the table clean.

Koko-chan T-shirt!

Gorgeous Koko oppai mousepad! Some Koko anime action below.

More Firefox 3 stickers - these ones are made of a plasticy material and are reusable.

The folks at KDDI were handing these reusable plastic stickers which are used to hold memos and wot nots around the desk - a wash in water makes em sticky again.

CD from the Cutie Pai girls.

We also had singer KAT come over too.

Foxkeh likes his new poo mat. Dont have any pets at home yet and we'll probably go for a dog first but have always wondered whether even trained pets occasionally poo or pee at home on the carpet? I can imagine - you drop some chocolate on the floor and pick it up to eat - only to nab a hardened chunk of dog poo. Could taste better than chocolate though.

All the other bits n pieces collected. Includes a preview booklet by Remo at White Wall Studios - will speak more about some of his work in a later post.

Japanorama came along too - picked out this postcard from the stash that he was handing out.

Folks from Akiba Kei came along too and brought some Wotagei Dancers to spice up the evening.

More Firefox bag filled with more goodies?!

And the CGM Night posters - large ones are A1 and the smaller ones are A2. Focal have a huge printer that they use to print posters for their shop.

The folks from Sansai Books where there too - they publish Moetan. Managed to steal this most awesome Moe Satellite illustration book from Frankie at Hobby Media.
More pics from this book in a separate post.

And the pile of business cards I still need to go through.
If you are in the IT, Media, Entertainment industry or are a regular blogger and want to meet the best in the industry like yourself then contact Andrew or myself through any of the following networks:-
http://hq.andrewshuttleworth.com/
http://twitter.com/AShuttleworth
http://www.facebook.com/dannychoo
http://twitter.com/dannychoo
http://www.linkedin.com/in/dannychoo

Regarding my Facebook - hit 5000 friends which seems to be the limit so unfortunately cant approve anymore ToT. I think you can still send me mail though.

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Just got back from Odaiba to see the 1/1 scale RX78 Gundam. WOW. Seen pics of it by day and wanted to see it by night.

While its mostly completed, the fence was still up and I guess they still need to work on some small bits n pieces including the base that Gundam stands on.

It was very dark and had a tough time getting good shots. Brought the tripod along but it was too dark for auto focus to work properly.

The detail on the RX78 is just incredible. I want to see what it looks like on a sunny day too!

The official opening is not until the beginning of July but you can bet that there will be loads of people there this weekend.

If you are going then here is the spot. You can get off at Odaiba station or park at Aqua City and walk to this spot.

Went along with the following folks - they got better photos than me so check out their burogu too:-
Paul Papadimitriou - http://www.paulpapadimitriou.com/
Steven Nagata - http://www.thewesternworld.net/
Ken Lee - http://www.kenleewrites.com/
Zuco Pietro - http://www.zuco.org/
Lester Ho - http://www.lesterho.com/
Jonny Li - http://www.jonnyli.com/

Updates with their posts:-
http://www.thewesternworld.net/2009/06/rx-78-11-scale-model-complete-but-where-are-the-leftover-plastic-mold-pieces.html
http://www.zuco.org/gundam-in-the-night/
http://www.papadimitriou.jp/2009/06/11/gundam-attack/
http://www.kenleewrites.com/2009/06/odaiba-gundam-at-night.html
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jonnyli/sets/72157619577241458/
http://www.lesterho.com/blog/?p=918

Feel like making a gunpla all of a sudden ^^;
Gundam Wing!

When the Gundam is officially open to the public, it will be lit up with steam shooting out from some of the joints and I think it has limited movement of bits of its bod.

It was a bit difficult to see all the detailing due to the lack of light - recommend that you go in the day time if you want to see it before the opening.

Would be most cool if they had a Char Zak to join the RX78.

So from what I've read, it looks like the RX78 is only going to be up on display until August and then it gets pulled down after. Will work with folks to pull together a petition to keep it up ^^;

Is going to look awesome with the eyes lit up and a load of Gundam noises going off in the background.

And for those who have not seen any of the original Gundam - English dubbed. And the original Japanese OP below. Question for you Gundam fans out there - have you seen any of the original stuff?

As we near the end of the photo article, the photos are becoming crap ^^;

A truly most awesome sight - see it with your own eyes if you have the chance.

Didnt really get decent shots from the back but do check out the burogu of comrades who I went with to see what they have.
if you have not seen it yet then also check out the post at Punynari's burogu and leave him a kudos message for his fab photos.

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Has been a while since the last Photo Walk. Todays walk includes photos from Ebisu, Nishikoyama, Musashikoyama and Gakugei Daigaku.
First photo taken at a newly built park nearby. The Lumix LX3 is incredibly good at taking pics at low light. This shot was f/2.0, ISO 100 with a 1 second exposure - no tripod. There is some sort of image stabilizer thingy inside.

Before I forget, some of these in the Wallpaper Pool.

Occasionally go on photo walks with other pro photographers in Tokyo. Here I'm with the Nikon Tou group but one does not have to be a Nikon user to join ^^

This and the following few snapped on my Canon Kiss 2.

The last photo walk I went on was one at Ebisu.

Fellow Brit Jonny Li - pro photographer from Peterborough. Who also helped film Salaryman Trooper and K-ON Trooper.

Gohsuke Takama - strategy developer and entrepreneur.

Florian - Programmer.

iMorpheus - Photographer.

Chris Gaunt - Web Developer Mirai Inc.

Jim Grisanzio - Sr. Program Manager, OpenSolaris.org Portal Development.

Erm, forgot who she is ^^;

Daiji Hirata - former VP of Technology at Six Apart, CEO of News 2 Net.

A security gaurd comes and gives is the "No Photos" message. He is ignored and he runs off to get backup ^^;

Exposure time of 0.4 sec with ISO at 1600 but I still had to hold the Canon Kiss 2 against a rail. Lumix LX3 performs much better than the SLR at night.

Roadworks always seems to look good over here.

Test B/W shot.

f/3.5, ISO 800, Exposure 0.8 sec. Canon Kiss 2.

And the rest of the photos taken on the Lumix LX3.

At Nishikoyama.

Another Nishikoyama.

We usually go for walkies after dindins and take a different route each time ending up discovering new places.

Folks ask me about the greenish lighting in my photos - its not the actual light but my Lumix settings - kinda like the green ^^;

There was a festival near our station to celebrate the completion of the construction work.

They also had a few idols come along to sing n dance.

Apparatus for doing pullups - I manage only 3 ^^;

While we don't have any homeless folks (yet) in our park, in some parks you will see them washing their clothes, brushing their teeth and generally trying to keep clean by the water source.
I've seen homeless folks in many different countries but many (not all) of the ones I see over here seem to be trying their best to make the most of life. They wash down at the parks and take part time jobs like distributing leaflets or collecting plastic bottles/used newspapers.

As we take a look at the last few Lumix LX3 photos, I'm going to talk about how one chap went from being homeless on the streets to running is own IT firm which went public in 2006.

At the age of 26, Kanemoto-san (who is now naturalized to being Japanese) got married and was earning 280,000 yen per month as an industrial designer.
Apart from his main job, he was doing some sort of volunteer work which he had been doing since his days at university. Most of his salary ended up being poured into his volunteer activities and before he knew it he had a few million yen worth of debt and his wife wanted a divorce.

Kanemoto-san told his wife that he decided to go to Tokyo and make it big. He managed to leave Nagoya for Tokyo without going through the divorce.

In 1997, with his laptop computer and a few thousand yen in pocket, Kanemoto-san arrived at Tokyo bus station and soon after headed to see his friend in Akihabara who had always said to him "why don't you come to Tokyo and work for me?"
But after meeting up, his friend said to him "I didn't think you would actually come..."

Without a job, Kanemoto-san went around to friends places in Tokyo and managed to live under a roof for 20 days - he was then homeless after that.
His first homeless place was Tokyo station where there was a load of construction going on. He sheltered himself in the nooks n crannies of construction sites. He kept warm by buying a 300 yen small bottle of warm Japanese rice wine which he would then wrap in newspaper to keep himself warm.

Kanemoto-san would get on the Yamanote line train (which goes in a circle around Tokyo) to keep warm.
There was a park in Omotesando where he based himself and was fortunate to meet a shop assistant who would pass him some sell-by-date food.

When I started to talk about that water fountain in the park, I recalled Kanemoto-sans story which is why we are talking about it today.

Despite being homeless, Kanemoto-san had always been focused on his dream of making it big in Tokyo. Even though he only had water at times to fill his stomach, he never let go of his laptop computer.

He visited a client that he had previously worked with and asked for work. "I'll design business cards - whatever. I need work."

Slowly but surely, requests for computer design work came his way. He even managed to find somebody who would lend him their fax and telephone (Japan is still a fax society - even in 2009!). But Kanemoto-san was still homeless.
While he could wash down in the park, he couldn't have a bath/shower meaning that he smelt.
The companies that he was doing design work for was unaware that he was homeless. Some of his clients thought that maybe it was because he was so busy that he didn't have time to bathe ^^;

Kanemoto-san being homeless had all the time in the world that he used to come up with design work which he used to approach companies. As his clientele grew, he started to earn 10,000 yen (100 USD) per month which grew to 300,000 yen (3000 USD) per month. He kept 10,000 yen and sent the rest to his wife.

Kanemoto-san managed to build websites and do design on his laptop computer while being homeless for a few years and during this time gained inspiration for setting up a company through the work that he done.

In 1999, Kanemoto-sans wife gave the money back to him that she saved up together with some allowance that she got from her parents. He used this money to set up an IT company called OK Wave which went public after receiving funding from IT giants Cyber Agent and Rakuten.
OKWave currently has 962,521,500 yen of capital with 87 employees. Their clients include NTT, KDDI and Microsoft.

Apart from running his company, he has also published many books about his experiences.

In the Yomiuri interview with Kanemoto-san, you can see a photo of him standing by a wall of empty plastic bottles. He was quoted a few million yen just for partitions and it was then when he had the idea to stick a load of plastic bottles to use as partitions in the office.
Kanemoto-sans story taken from Yomiuri and Wikipedia.

Was inspirational watching Kanemoto-san on BariBari Value a while back. BariBari was a show that covered the lives of CEOs which included many rags to riches stories.

No matter what the odds are, Focus, Determination and Passion will get you through the storm because at the end of all storms are blue skies and calm waters.

If you have hit a wall then climb over it or break it down because if you do nothing then you will be staring at the wall for the rest of your life - and you never know, the wall may fall on you cutting your life short ^^;

While working at Mirai Inc is fun, I do run into a fair share of walls but as I've said before, these obstacles should be treated as a gift from fate which should spur us to improve, learn and make us stronger. Allowing obstacles to consume us does nothing for life.

Finishing off with a snap taken at Lalaport in Toyosu last Friday.

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Ever wished that there was an encyclopedia in English with all things Otaku so that you can impress your GF or BF on your first date with your Otaku knowledge? Well you need to wish no more - Kodansha International brings us the Otaku Encyclopedia!

Am honored to be featured under "C" ^^;

Choo,Danny: Born in 1972 in London. He moved to Tokyo in 1999 and his website (www.dannychoo.com) has become one of the most trusted English-language sources for up-to-date information on Japanese pop culture...

The book also features a photo that I took of Shinozaki Ai a while ago.

An interview with Shokotan.

"D" starts of with these including Dakimakura. That one of Sonsaku looks quite nice.

"Ecchi", "Enjokousai", "Eroge."

They even got "Nice Boat" under "N."

We got in Good Smile Company too!

I was asked to go through the book a while ago and the first thing I tried to do was to think of Otaku words that they missed out ^^; Apart from "Good Smile Company", they managed to include all the words I could think of.

Interview with Hazuki Ako who starred in the Tommy Lee Jones Boss CM below.

Here they cover "Moe" which needs quite a bit to explain.

Some lovely cosplay girls. Not all pages are in color though.

Some more interviews.

"O" snippet. Wota, Otagei, Otakki. A report on Otagei below.

Snippet out of "S." Shoko-tan, Shokugan, Shokushu-kei. Shokushu = Tentacles.

"T" snippet. Tsubo, Tsukkomi, Tsukuba-kei, Tsundere, Twin-tail.

The reason why this book is filled with all Otaku related words under the rising sun is because its written by an expert on the subject - Patrick W. Galbraith is a journalist taking a Ph.D on the subject of "Otaku."
When hes not doing that, he transforms into Tokyo's resident Super Saiyajin. The photo below of him and I battling it out at the Akihabara Liberation Demo back in 2007. Lol at his comment:-

Thanks to Keiko my wife, for her support and bearing with me through it all. You're my best friend and the only flesh-and-blood girl I'll ever love.

And from the looks of things, many married folks registered on dannychoo.com also have one flesh-n-blood partner but a zillion 2D or plastic partners^^;

A few words from me on the back of the book too.
The 252-ish page Otaku Encyclopedia is not out yet but available for pre-order:-
at Amazon.co.jp for 2,100 yen (out mid June)
at Amazon.com for 14 USD (out October).
at Amazon.co.uk for 12.95 pounds. They spelt Otaku as "Taku" ^^;
Amazon.co.jp do ship overseas though. There is a link somewhere to switch the UI into English to get you through the order pipeline (which my team built when I was at Amazon ^^;)

The reason its released so late in the US is because of logistics - takes ages to ship (by boat) to the US and get distributed.
I've heard that Kinokuniya in countries around Asia may get it around June though.

And for those who want to get a load more of Ai-chan, you can see photos that I took of her back in December 2006 in the Ai Shinozaki photo article.
We got permission from her production studios to use her photo and they were most cool about it. Some Ai-chan in action below.

And while we are at it, a few snaps of the most sweetsome Nendoroid Kagami in her Miku cosplay who starred in todays book review.
Caption that photo.

Most sweet!

Size comparison with Nanoha-chan.

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Didn't leave it as late as last time but still two weeks behind for this episode of A Week in Tokyo. About 80 photos to go through so this article will probably balk as usual with Google Reader and Firefox - click through to the article or read this post in your inbox.

First photo was taken last night at Shiodome outside the Softbank offices just after Appliya Night who I'm working with to release some applications for the iPod Touch/iPhone. What sort of apps would you like to see from Mirai and Haruka?

Lovely evening sky. Lumix LX3 shot.

At the Apple store where I like to set the HP to dannychoo.com and watch how users navigate the site when they first see it ^^; They usually end up clicking on something moe.

Andrew Shuttleworth and I was to present at the Apple Store in Ginza today talking about Consumer Generated Media.

But first off its a meeting with Kotobukiya, Apple, Andrew and I. Hmmmmmmm. What could be in store for you? ^^;

Andrew setting up his gear who just recently switched to Mac.
I've been a Mac user since about 2005 when I decided to give OSX a whirl with a Mac Mini - fell in love with it and got myself a PowerBook. Up until then I used to be one of those Mac haters. I couldn't understand how people got things done on a Mac ^^;

The main reason I switched was because I had to give back a HP laptop to Amazon when I left - I used it as my main machine too. Was friendly with the IT department who have me permissions to install what I wanted - other employees who were not so friendly with IT had stick with the Amazon default install packages.

Anyway, I was looking for a replacement Windows machine and couldn't find any decent ones which is why I decided to try Mac and have never looked back since.
Currently only use Windows running in Parallels for QA on IE 6&7.

dannychoo.com currently has roughly 9% Mac users. Are you a Mac switcher and if so why did you jump boat on Windows?

Tried their head mic but it felt like a vice so ditched it...

...and used a pin mic instead.

Gadget Otaku Steven Nagata brings along is portable wifi point. All you do is plug any data stick like the E-Mobile and it turns into a portable wifi access point for anybody in the area to use - brilliant! The iPod Touch is the new slimmer iPhone with this cradlepoint - just leave the main unit in your bag. Costs about 18,000 yen.
Also comes with a web interface so you can filter by Mac Address, add password logins and so on.

Cant wait - another few weeks before ROTF is out. A clip below of the ROFT cars in cruise below. And some behind the scenes filming below.

After the presentation at the Apple store its off for some German food with Kotobukiya and Steven. Need a bit more time before I can make an announcement.

My lovely new daughter Nanoha arrived this week too! Thanks to Japan To Door for the most bodacious gift. Promise to take good care of her.

Her eyes are actually dark blue but is difficult to bring out the shade in them. Member FatB said in a comment that Nanoha looks like Maya from Heroes because of her dark eyes!

Love Heroes but completely missed the last few seasons. Dont even know what the current season is. Some folks said they are getting tired of it. How is it of late?

But I do find that Nanoha eats more than my other daughters - here she is with her fave Jumbo Choco Monaka.

Now UFO catchers come with live Kabuto beetles.

At the local library.

Discovered another shrine nearby on a lovely warm sunny evening.

New house to be built that will cost 63,000,000 yen - about the same price and size as our house. I don't really notice any change in the total cost of a house+land but the price of land alone in this area seems to be going up. What are house/land prices like in your kingdom? I hear the US is having a tough time?

Veggies stuffed with minced meat. About 700 yen.

There is something amusing about this salad.

When visiting folks in Japan, one would usually bring over some sort of food stuffs as a courtesy. Here somebody got us some yummy pastry filled with chocolate and covered in nuts.
This reminds me when I told a visitor that I would introduce my daughters to him > Mai Musume ^^;

Apparently eating food thats red is particularly good at keeping your organs young - does hot Korean food count?

Maguro Don at Sukiya with a Mega Don CM below.

Rica chan is a celebrity doll who does a lot of CM work. Here she is promoting apartments. Cant remember if I showed the below video to you before. As you can see from the Mr Donuts Rica chan CM below - she can move on her own.

Poor crabs trapped in ice as part of some festivities.

Being brought up in the UK, I ate potatoes a lot and still love em. The first thing I want to eat when I'm back in the UK is saveloy, pickles n chips. Whats your fave national dish?

Some more local festivities to celebrate the new development construction around the station.

You buy food tickets for you meal at this vending machine before you eat. If you are finding that nothing happens when you press the buttons then its probably because you didn't choose "eat in" or "take out" first. Do they have these food vending machines in your neck of the woods too? I've only seen them in Japan.

Nothing beats a beef bowl with a raw egg - give it a whip and pour it over the meat.

Back outside to see the festivities going on.

Our morning walk.

More Korean style food - Neng Myon (냉면) at Johnathans.

Some traditional Japanese desert - Green tea youkan.

Picking up some fruits.

For those who wants to eat Kamen Rider Decades fish sausage. My fave Kamen Rider to date is still Kabuto - which is yours? I actually bidded for a Kamen Rider Kabuto costume a while ago but lost. I remember there was a dannychoo.com reader who got hold of one but cant remember who - wonder if he wants to sell it.

At the 100 yen store looking for containers to hold my figure bits n pieces.

A Hello Kitty corner at the 100 yen shop. I used to be frugal with gifts when I came to Japan as a wee lad. I obviously wanted to spend all my hard earned moolah on my own goodies and spent a couple of thousand yen at the 100 shop getting stuff for folks back home ^^;
I notice that many of you post your Japan loot but do you also buy stuff for folks at home too and if so what sort of stuff?

Me lips crack a lot so picked up another Mentholatum.

Seiya do good tasting ramen for 500 yen a bowl.

Love the ads for AG's deodorant. And a trap for the ladies.

Egg shaped toilet deodorants.

Forgot what fish this is - probably Saba.

Tebasaki - grilled chicken wings. Speaking of chickens - can you do this with your head?

All these bicycles are illegally parked!
After a while, these bikes will be removed and the owner will have a letter sent to them asking them to pay a fine of about 3,000 yen-ish. The authorities have your address because most people register their bikes in the event that they ever get stolen.
If one decides not to pick up their bike, the authorities would either recycle and sell or dispose of it.
Do you have to pay a hefty fine in your kingdom when your bike is impounded?

In Japan, many places have an open kitchen where you can watch the chef preparing your grub.
Also very interesting that the laws in the UK were that cigarette smoke and food must never get in contact with each other but over here you will occasionally see the chefs smoking while prepping your meal.

Love this dish - tempura on ochazuke and you read about ochazuke in the Furikake article.

Haruhi occasionally takes photos for me.

Rearranging shelves and retiring some figures. With samples arriving each week, the place does get pretty crowded at times - so many nice figures and want to keep them all on display but its not going to be possible - not until we get our next bigger house anyway.

Figures that I still want to keep then start to spill out into other parts of the house ^^;
Are all your figures in your room or do you have some out n about the house?

This is the worst bit about samples that arrive - dealing with the boxes ^^;

Chinese dish for lunch.

Lunch with Ken Lee and Yang Yang from Appliya. Ken is studying a PHD over at Keio University and also writes some iPhone apps available in the app store.

Back at the office with Chris Gaunt on the far right and Hector on the far left.

On the way to Yokosuka which you read about earlier this week.

At the newly discovered swimming pool. 300 yen for 2 hours. There was no deep end and 1.1 meters on both sides.
One has to wear a cap and remove all jewelry/watches/firearms before they jump in

After swimming its time to check the blood pressure on the machine by the entrance - is free to use.

Japan is in earthquake territory and in the event of a disaster folks will seek refuge at areas designated by the local ward. The 1995 Kobe earthquake - you may not have seen modern day Japan like this before. I stayed in Seattle for a while but didn't experience any earthquakes while I was there. There was a major one just before I arrived though - was in 2003 or 4? Are you in earthquake ridden land?

Out n about seeking some dindins.

Calbi set at Matsuya.

With the Influenza panic still on in Japan, some supermarkets are offering some spray at the entrance to sterilize yer hands or feet. Swine flu panic still on where you are or has died down?

Looking for some yummy Sunday afternoon cakes. Mmmmmmm!

I love Japanese service. Japan post has a service called "Shuka" [集荷] or "parcel collection" where you make a single call and they come to collect any packages that you want to send domestically or internationally.
They even print parcel labels with your sender address on them. They don't charge extra for this service and saves you from going to the post office to queue up and log parcels around. Similar service where you are?

Nagazaki Chanpon for lunch. Huge plate for about 500 yen.

At Kaldi picking up some Chai Tea.

Chicken dish for dindins.

At Togoshi Ginza for our after dindins stroll.

Its not only the ero mags are that are tied up - game mags or anything that kids will spend hours reading at the book store may be wrapped up too. Generally however mags are unbound. Haven't bought a magazine in ages though. If I do pick up mags then its usually Mac related, anime or eroge.
What sort of mags do you pick up and how often?

At a newly discovered local hot spring - where folks get naked and share the bath with the same gender. I know of quite a few gaijin folks who were not keen on sharing the sight of their dangly bits with others and wanted to go in with shorts or pants - this is a no no and one should not do it. You often would see an illustration of a gaijin trying to get into the onsen with shorts on and a Japanese person saying "NO!"

More Chinese food - which alas does not taste Chinese at all. Misses food in Singapore and Hong Kong.

Folks from Niwango (who do work with Dwango (NicoNico)) and Traffic Gate - they also go home with free figures.

Oyako Don and Takunki Soba set.

Another wooden house goes up - only to be probably torn down again in about 25 years which is the average lifespan of Japanese houses these days - you may have read about in the Tokyo Property Purchase article.

LOL at this technique to scare off the crows - first time I've seen these plastic dead crows.

At Appliya Night last night which was held at the Softbank headquarters. Softbank is the only carrier of the iPhone.

I kinda had a giggle with this.

Please put this card on your breast, or other conspicuous body parts.

^^;;;;

Steven Nagata and Japan Podshow at the lobby of the Softbank headquarters.

Johnny Lee and Ken Lee at the lobby talking about all the nice girls who were at the networking party.

The strangest samples arrive from time to time - Rakuwa Neck X50 which are supposed to help the blood circulate better around the body - its worn around the neck and the fabric is produced with some sort of metal in it. Heard a few people saying that their muscles pains have gone away after using this.
Looks like they will be going into the to-be-retired cabinet and given to the next guest to the office ^^;

A new display - the BENQ G2220HD 22" which I picked up from Amazon for 16,980 yen. Decent sized monitors are getting rather cheap these days. Not too bothered about brand names - as long as they perform well at prices that make sense.

The G222HD with the Dell Mini 9 attached. The color is well decent. The base looks a bit tacky but for the price I cant complain. Are you using a HD display too? If so which brand and do you recommend it?

The current setup on this side of the office. Hmmmm. Looks like the new employee likes Mio too ^^; Will announce who it is soon.

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Been living in Tokyo for nearly 10 years but only recently managed to visit Yokosuka last Saturday - inspired to go after member punynari joined dannychoo.com and watching something on Yokosuka on the TV the other day.

Photo was taken in the afternoon-ish in Dobuita street at Yokosuka. A bunch of men carrying a Mikoshi which we talked about in the Japanese Festivals photo article. Video taken below on the Lumix LX3.

Zooming back a few hours after arriving at Yokosuka - the Shoppers Plaza is ideal for parking and immediately shows up after punching in the phone number into the car navigation.

Here they have a few cars on display which we take a gander at.

This car has the gearbox on the front of the dashboard leaving a load of leg room for those who have feet fetish.

The Noah - named from being able to fit a load inside.

Nice interior.

The first time I've seen cars on display inside a shopping center - great idea to get folks to have a look instead of going to a showroom.

Very spacious interior for those who want to get up to some hanky panky inside.

First time I've come across this "Raum."

Toyota also had other models I've never seen advertised on TV.

Some yummy looking crepe.

Feel like some Thai food so its outside to the parking lot.
Here we see folks lining up for tickets for a cruise around the harbor to see the military ships. The last cruise is at 2pm I think (?) and lasts about 45 mins.

Reading up on the history of a location before visiting it will give you an enlightened view of the area. Some Yokosuka facts plucked from Wikipedia below.

The adventurer William Adams (inspiration for a character in the novel Shōgun), the first Briton to set foot in Japan, arrived at Uraga aboard the Liefde in 1600. In 1612, he was granted the title of samurai and a fief in Hemi within the boundaries of present-day Yokosuka, due to his services to the Shogun. There he founded a family with Oyuki, the daughter of Magome Kageyu, a noble samurai and official of Edo Castle. William and Oyuki had a son called Joseph, and a daughter, Susanna. A monument to William Adams (called Miura Anjin in Japanese) is still visible in Yokosuka.

In 1853, United States naval officer Matthew Perry arrived in Tokyo Bay with his fleet of Black Ships and came ashore near present day Yokosuka, leading to the opening of diplomatic and trade relations between Japan and the United States.

Yokosuka became the first modern arsenal to be created in Japan. The construction of the arsenal was the central point of a global modern infrastructure, that was to prove an important first step for the modernization of Japan's industry. Modern buildings, the Hashirimizu waterway, foundries, brick factories, and technical schools to train Japanese technicians were established.

Yokosuka was to become one of the main arsenals of the Imperial Japanese Navy into the 20th century, in which were built battleships such as Yamashiro, and aircraft carriers such as Hiryū and Shōkaku. Major naval aircraft were also designed at the Yokosuka Naval Air Technical Arsenal. The only preserved pre-Dreadnought battleship in the world, the Mikasa in Yokosuka.

Between 1938 and 1945 more than 260 caves in more than 20 separate tunnel/cave networks were built throughout the base. There are 27 kilometers of known tunnels on the base. Many more tunnels are scattered throughout Yokosuka and the surrounding areas. During the war, these tunnels and caves provided areas in which work could be done in secrecy, safe from air attacks.
A 500 bed hospital, a large electrical power generating facility, and a midget submarine factory and warehouse were among the many facilities in caves around the base. During the war, more than 800 personnel actually lived in these caves. Each naval base department was ordered to dig its own caves, which accounts for the lack of an overall organization to the cave and tunnel system. In 1992, a complete survey of all known caves was conducted, and all the caves except for three still in use were sealed up for safety reasons. The cave that is currently used as a command bunker by the US military was used for several years after the war to grow mushrooms, which were sold in the commissary for three yen per box.

The base has been used by the US Navy since 1945, and is the largest naval facility in Japan.
Yokosuka now is home to one of the biggest military seaports shared by the United States Navy and the Maritime Self-Defense Force of Japan. The US Navy nuclear powered USS George Washington is currently in its home port at Yokosuka Naval Base. On October 28, 2005, the US Navy announced that in 2008 the USS Kitty Hawk will be replaced by the USS George Washington, a nuclear powered Nimitz class carrier.
A US Navy spokesman said the decision was a mutual agreement between the United States and Japan. Hiroyuki Hosoda, a top spokesman for Japan's government, said, "We believe that the change (of the carriers) will lead to maintaining the solid presence of the U.S. Navy and contribute to keeping Japan's security and international peace into the future." This would be the first time a U.S. nuclear powered ship would be permanently based in Japan.

At the Thai restaurant. This lunch set for 990 yen.

Looks nice but tasted average. Prawn on toast with sesame seed topping - also 990 yen.

Wifeys lunch set also 990 yen.

After lunch its off for a stroll around Verney Park. T'was a really nice warm sunny day.

Some school girls out in the basking sun playing some tunes.

Brolleys are also used when its not raining.

Wide open deck - great for running up n down waving your arms around.

Water was clear n clean.

Rin occasionally jumps of of my pocket and continues to giggle at something.

Testing the macro on the Lumix LX3.

Some folks in the park sketching.

One of the sketches done by an elderly gentleman. I used to do a few doodles when I was a wee lad too - will take some pics of them when I'm back in the UK.

Heading to other parts of Yokosuka and see the girls packing up for the day.

A young lad and his shiny...my music vocab is moo. Trombone?

At Dobuita street. Ask for directions from anybody around the shopping center and they will direct you.
Here you can get some meaty buns. Mmmmm. Meaty Buns.

Dobuita street. According to Wikipedia, A river called Dobu Kawa used to run down here but was an obstacle for vehicles. A military factory provided some huge steel plates to cover up the river this the naming "Dobu-Ita" where "Ita" means a "plate like object."
The plates and river was removed after a while.

These days one can find military goods and souvenirs. I saw a few belts and pouches that would have looked good with stormtrooper armor but wifey stopped me in my tracks ^^;

Some guitars used and new going for 30,000 yen - 65,000 yen.

For those who have wondered about these cats - they are called "Maneki Neko" and are thought to bring good luck to the owner. Wikipedia has an interesting cultural note:-

To Americans and Europeans it may seem as if the Maneki Neko is waving rather than beckoning. This is due to the difference in gestures and body language recognized by Westerners and the Japanese, with Japanese beckoning by holding up the hand, palm out, and repeatedly folding the fingers down and back up, thus the cat's appearance.

Some Maneki Neko made specifically for Western markets will have the cat's paw facing backwards, in a beckoning gesture more familiar to Westerners.

At the end of Dobuita street, we found that there was a festival going on which was filled with stalls.

Dont know what this is called but balls whirl around the water and kids try to catch as many as they can.

This is Kingyo Sukui "Gold fish catching" where folks are given a hoop like object to pale fish out of the water. The hoop has a thin piece of paper which gradually rips after being soaked for too long. Watch the little laddie below - also taken on the Lumix LX3.

Its those obscene chocolate covered bananas again.

After walking for a while, we came across some indoor shopping arcade. Here they had some examples of house prices.
This place was built a few years ago and costs 29,800,000 yen and comes with 200 square meters of land.
Also comes with a view of the sea and Mt Fuji. Rather nice and costs less than half what our house cost - maybe nice for retirement folks but probably difficult for those who need to commute into Tokyo every day for example.

Another place for the same price but nearly half the land space.

This one was built much longer ago back in the 80's.

Walking past a pharmacy and notice another "all surgical masks sold out" sign.

Another "Surgical masks sold out" donned by the mascot character of Sato Pharmaceutical.

Two doggies sporting some of the dog t-shirts available at this stall.

The festival stalls went on forever!

Licensed Pikachu castella snacks? Speaking of Pikachu - the voice actress below.

They taste great but sticking the whole octopus in your mouth initially needs just a wee bit of courage.

"All masks sold out - don't know when new stock gets in."

This girl managed to get this much on a single hoop! Must have peed off the owner of this stall ^^;

Some character goods whistle sweet thingies.

This seems to be the main street in Yokosuka where all the shops and restaurants are.

Apart from catching balls, and fish, one can also catch some little turtles too.

Folks are given something called a "Monaka" which is made from the same stuff as an ice cream cone - once that gets dipped in water to catch the turtles, the Monaka will start to sag and go all sad - I'm sure many of our male dolphin owners can relate to this phenomenon.

This girl is actually an alien who managed to catch all of these!

Our relatives in Malaysia had a couple of these which they just kept in a huge container outside their house and they occasionally threw in some cabbage ^^;

Some military folks could be spotted throughout the day.

Bags of that fluffy sweet stuff that looks like cotton wool - wotsit called?

These photos are called Nama-shashin and usually refer to photos of idols. I used to pick up a load of my favorite idols at Harajuku when I was a wee lad.
I heard that these photos are sold without permission though.

This stall only sold male idol stuff.

I spotted a few temples in Google maps of the Yokosuka area and came across this one near Dobuita street.

Love these stones with kanji written on them. Not sure what they are called though. Most of the ones I've seen are in Onimusha or Ninja Gaiden ^^;
Loved the OP for Onimusha 3 - never finished the game and got stuck teleporting from one room to the other near some well.

Gorgeous scenery to be enjoyed.

A Wikipedia brings up USFJ as United States Forces Japan. Not sure what this comfleacts thing is though and not sure why this place if off limits to them.

Bush recommends Karaoke with his gun of choice.

Yokosuka Navy Burger "TSUNAMI." Must try one the next time I'm in town.

Some Japan-type mugs for you to bring back home.

Some of the locals look like they have a nice time.

Then we pick up the car and drive over to Mikasa park.

Arrival at Mikasa park where the battleship Mikasa is located.

Some Wiki Wisdom below.

Mikasa is a pre-Dreadnought battleship, formerly of the Imperial Japanese Navy, launched in Britain in 1900. She served as the flagship of Admiral Tōgō Heihachirō during the Battle of Tsushima in 1905, as well as several other engagements during the Russo-Japanese War.
Currently, she is preserved as a museum ship at Yokosuka. Mikasa is the last remaining example of a pre-dreadnought battleship anywhere in the world. She was named after Mount Mikasa in Nara, Japan.

More about the Mikasa from Wikipedia.

Shortly after the peace treaty with Russia was signed, Mikasa sank after a fire and magazine explosion took out a section of hull while in harbor at Sasebo on 1905-09-11. The accident killed 339 crewmen, or approximately three times the number killed in combat during the war and injured some 300 more.
The ship settled in 11 metres (36.1 ft) of water. Extensive efforts were made to salvage the ship, and after repeated attempts, she was re-floated on 1906-08-08 and towed to Maizuru Naval Arsenal for repairs.

After two years of repairs which included the replacement of her badly-corroded 12-inch 40-calibre main guns by newer longer and hence much more powerful 12-inch 45-calibre guns, Mikasa was re-commissioned and restored to active service in 1908

Notice the couple at the front of the Mikasa doing the Titanic pose ^^;

Sweet pic of an elderly couple taking a stroll which reminded me of my grandparents.
I watched one of my grandparents die infront of my eyes.
Many of her internal organs failed and they couldn't do anything else for her so the family decided to bring her home from the hospital to die. Never will I forget that day as we watched her struggling to breathe until gave her last breath.

I think that this experience with death is one of the reasons why I truly appreciate and value the short time we.
Even if we don't have our lives cut short, our time will be up before we know it. I encourage all to appreciate life and make the most of it. Dont die with the last thought going through your mind as "if only I..."

Run giggling away at something as usual. Shes adorable. Love the way she can stand without the Nendoroid plastic bases because of her twintails.

More of Mikasa park. What trying to figure out what that arch symbolized but didn't find anything.

Many jet fountains in one corner of the park going off at intervals.

The drive back to Tokyo only took about an hour and with the new highway discounts only cost 400 yen instead of 1,200 yen.
Had a lovely day at Yokosuka - will go back and take along the DSLR. Want to see more of the military ships on that boat cruise.

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Had the honor of speaking this week at the largest university in Japan - Nihon University.

And you could squeeze them like this while making a "puni puni" sound.

Zooming back in time to the morning at about 10:40. Is making our way by car to the economics building at Nihon University which is also known as Nichidai [日大].

After parking, we are lead through the canteen area to meet some of the students. Students really do take good care of their appearance over here. I had bad taste in clothing during my uni years.

Cant for the life of me remember what the canteen was like at SOAS.

At the teachers office where their lockers and mail boxes are situated. Here they do paper work and take a break.

Off to have early lunch before my talk at one of the canteens in the building. The 550 yen plate is called "Quality Lunch" while the 480 yen plate is the "Economy Lunch."

Professor Barry Natusch and I going over a few details before my talk begins.
I first met Barry at Tokyo CGM Night episode 2 and we talked soon after about the possibility of me giving a talk to his students.

My Mayo Don for lunch.

Moving to another building to give my talk.

While looking up details for this article, I came across info in English about the Monbukagakusho Scholarship which I don't know much about that gave me the idea of interviewing some of the students to find out more.
This then lead to another idea of maybe bringing a group of dannychoo.com readers to Nihon University to mingle with the Japanese and foreign students. Would you be interested in something like that?

The stage where teachers wave their hands while walking up n down.

Setting up my bits n pieces.

Brought along the MacBook Pro in the event that my Dell Mini 9 running Leopard failed...

...and indeed, the Dell Mini 9 wasn't able to manage the output to the projector. Worked fine at home on HD displays but when I attach it to my plasma or various projectors, the display out does not work.

Setting up my pin mic.

Was asked to talk about my carer and dannychoo.com. Here I talk about how I discovered my first goal in life. I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do in terms of work but I knew I wanted to live and work in Japan.

Tis my first step into the academic field and looks like I will be giving more lectures at different institutes throughout Japan. So have given a few talks up until now including:-

• Apple Store Ginza (Tokyo) (Speaker on Consumer Generated Media)
• Remix Tokyo (Tokyo) (Speaker at Remix 2006 for Microsoft on "Windows Live Gadgets")
• Imprint Culture Lab (Los Angeles) (Speaker at Imprint Culture Lab 2007 on "dannychoo.com & Blog Culture")
• Trend Day 2008 (Germany) (Speaker on Otaku culture, mirai.fm and dannychoo.com)
• Promax BDA Asia 2008 (Singapore) (Speaker on Otaku culture, mirai.fm and dannychoo.com)
• Animax Blogging Workshop (Singapore) (Speaker on history of dannychoo.com, monetization, userbility etc)
• Pecha Kucha Night (Tokyo) (Speaker on Tokyo Trooper)

Folks ask me why I do it and what I get out of it - the following words spring to mind:-

• Share - my experiences and knowledge with others in the hope that the information I provide may be useful for their own careers or business.
• Inspire - to encourage folks to take control of their lives and make the best of our short time that we are blessed with and never to say "tomorrow" but do it "today."
• Learn - I gain much experience through just one presentation and feel that my Japanese presentation skills after this week alone has improved dramatically.
  I also learn much about the folks in the audience too.
• Meet - I love meeting new people. Meeting new people enriches our lives.

Here I talk about some of the content of dannychoo.com and how I have been able to share subjects that I'm interested in which turned into a business model unintentionally.

Regarding monetization from my online activities - I get bashed for making money but at the same time also get bashed by people who don't beleive that blogging makes money - do I care what these people think? I don't give a flying foobar.
Pondering about what others think will start to build walls around oneself - walls that will prevent one from fulfilling ones true dreams and passion. Live your life - not the life of others who dislike you.

Focusing and placing energy into an area that you are passionate about attracts opportunities and good karma. Good things will naturally follow. It always does.

My talk is done and time to take a look around the campus. A quick look at Barrys personal gadgets.

Unlike many other universities around the world, the different buildings of Nihon University are not all in one ground but dotted all over the place.

Many of the classrooms looked no different to many Japanese offices. Classrooms in SOAS certainly didn't look like this.

At the entrance of one of the buildings with a security guard giving me the evil eye.

With Professor Barry Natusch.

The students at Nihon University are so lucky! They get to eat Singapore Hainan Chicken Lice every day!

Nice exterior for this ramen place.

At one of the libraries. You wont be surprised to hear that there are less people using library facilities since the Internets.

Some diligent students studying hard. Visiting Nihon University gave me a flashback of my times at London University SOAS where I studied Japanese and Korean language.

SOAS was great - the teachers that I had really cared about whether students were learning or not and done everything they could to support us.
The location was great too near Tottenham Court Road station - I could take a No38 bus straight home to Graham Road Hackney.
Are you pleased with the university that you went to? If you are not at uni yet, will you choose one in your region or move elsewhere to attend one? Which one will you be attending?

My wife moved to Japan to attend university. After graduating she then moved to the UK to learn English and we met when we were both working part time at a Japanese restaurant.
Is moving overseas to attend university an option for you?

A load of interesting reads for those having trouble sleeping at night.

Diligent student spotted.

This student is from Taiwan who attended my talk earlier. Here we see him studying English. Unlike this chap however, there are a load who don't study much.

It is a common fact that many (not all) students in Japan have an easy time and don't do an incredible amount of study when they get into university - was able to confirm this with many students and professors too.
One of the reasons is that they have been studying hard all their life to make it into a good university and are drained after getting in - thus many of them take it easy.

While its tough to get into universities over here and easy to graduate once they are in, I found that London University was the opposite. I jumped into the second year of a 4 year degree through a Japanese language entrance examination - all my studying up until then was self study through manga, anime, games and music.

Once I was in however, the actual course with constant tests was difficult enough to eliminate most of the class by the end of the 4 years. Only 3 or 4-ish out of 30-ish students made it through to the end.

What are your courses like? Is it playtime or work your nuts or eyes off?

Terminals to look up stuff in the library.

One of my clients still has 70% of its users using IE6 - a browser thats close to being 10 years old...

Students out n about.

A chart of the different types of certificates that students can issue from the vending machine below.
They range from 100 yen to 600 yen for certificates like graduation, current grades and proof that they attend the school.

And here is the vending machine which looks no different than the ones you may see in a curry shop.

Administration for students.

The university visit also brought back many memories for my wife too.

The 3D food menu.

If you are moving to Japan then you will eventually get used to the small tables.

Nice canteen interior.

Forgot to go to the top floor where all the Bukatsu rooms are - just like the music room in K-ON where one will find a load of students getting up to sporting, music and other activities.

Nihon University has their own Mos Burger!

They get to eat Mos Burger and Hainan Chicken Rice every day!

Barry with some of his students. And if you are wondering why Japanese folks do the V-sign when having their photo taken then check out the Japanese V Sign article.

In the parking lot to discover a Mikoshi used during Japanese Festivals.

And this is what Barry uses to get to work. Never ridden a bike before and am curious as to what its like.

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Back in the car heading off to another appointment. The following day I present at the Apple Store Ginza.

A snap of the ceremonies that take place during when new students join Nihon University. Didnt have anything like this back in the UK! And this is what one of the graduation ceremonies was like for Nihon University students. Do let us know what your entrance/graduation ceremonies are like.

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Apart from the annoying git who sat next to me in the cinema, last Friday went according to keikaku. We was to finish up work early, drop off at the Wieden and Kennedy offices, go to Roppongi Hills to have some din dins and finish up with some Angels and Demons.

In the car arriving at Roppongi. A van in the front plastered with marketing blurb playing loud music. Seems to be a lot of that going on and wonder why it isn't illegal to play horrendously loud music in the streets.

Zooming towards the WK offices.

Office entrance at WK.

They got these really nice pics of all the staff on the walls - this is only half of the photos though. Everybody looks nekkid.

Meeting up with the lovely Yukari-san who you may recognize from the Nikon CM shoot. Brought some of the Nendoroid Puchi's from the to-give-to-clients cabinet.

The outside of the gorgeous WK offices. Was originally a restaurant with apartments upstairs.

Back in the car and heading off to Roppongi Hills which you can just about make out in the top left hand corner of the photo.

Angels and Demons in sight - is excited!

Car is parked and off to find some food. Roppongi Hills is a "city within a city" where you will find a load of brand names and snazzy food places.

Somehow, this Nikon D5000 appeared in my lap somewhere along the way. Have no idea how it happened but am not complaining. Slowly getting used to the settings and am waiting for a new set of lenses to also suddenly appear ^^;

This is what I had for dindins - Kaisen nabe.

And this is what wifey had for dindins - some very hot n spicy stuff that had chewy bits in it ^^;

Snazzy places will usually accept payment by card no matter the time of day. Many not so snazzy places wont accept card payments at lunch because they have to pay a processing fee.
This is one of the reasons why Japan is still such a cash oriented society. Getting around on just a card in Japan is going to be tough.

I remember my days of living in Seattle - could buy or pay for literally everything with a card including trolleys at the airport and parking.

While other electronic payment methods like mobile phones are getting popular, establishments need to pay to have equipment installed on the premises to interface with mobile phones and what have you and some places cant justify the cost of doing that.

Can you get around on just a card alone in your kingdom?

The Hills. See the view from the top in the Tokyo City View photo article. Most definitely worth a visit.

The Hills also have an art gallery too.

Heading up the stairs towards Toho Cinemas which first started off being Virgin Cinemas.

Order your tickets online at the Toho site and pick up on the evening.

When I first came to Japan, they didn't have any online booking and one had to wait outside the cinema and rush in for a good seat. Remember waiting about 3 hours to watch one of the Harry Potter movies.

A Friday night at the Cinemas in Tokyo is dead quiet and gets busy on Saturday and Sundays. One would think that Fridays would be a busy night but its not the case over here. Not sure why.

When ordering online, you are given a four digit code. Punch in the code at this terminal and then your phone number for verification - tickets pop out after.
If you parked your car at the Hills, get your tickets stamped so that you get a discount on the parking.

Picking up some caramel popcorn before heading in.

Hardly anybody about.

The Toho cinemas at Roppongi have quite a few screens.
We watch most of our films in the comfort of our lounge on DVD but do go to the cinema for films that we think should be enjoyed on the big screen. Are you a cinema buff or DVD buff?

Other up n coming films. Want to see Star Trek! How was it? Another trailer below.

Water disposal time. Love all these messages - the dropping baby, leaving baby behind and the staring at baby.

Our screen for today.

Most of the audience seemed to be foreigners - maybe they all read the book?

I always have a fate of attracting the huge-guy-in-front, the kicking-chair-girl and the noisy-crisp-bag-girl whenever in a cinema. Today fate was no different and I had the pleasure of sitting next to some git who kept playing with his necklace making a jingling noise.

I asked him to stop playing with his necklace and he looked at me in disbelief - probably surprised that somebody actually asked him to keep quiet. His lady friend turned to us and asked us what was the problem. I took his necklace by the hand and started to jingle it about making the same noise. His lady friend told him "stop playing with your necklace!"

What do you do when you encounter inconsiderable gits in the cinema audience? Have you had any encounters?

A few hours later back outside. So what did you think of Angels and Demons?
I liked it but if I was to compare it to the DaVinci Code then I think I prefer the previous film but that could be because I read the book first - didn't read Angels and Demons. DaVinci Code trailer below.

The Japanese TV commercials for Angels and Demons were complete spoilers! I knew who the bad guy was even before watching the film.

On the way back to the car taking a few snaps along the way.

If you want to do a photo walk then Roppongi Hills at night has a load for you to snap.

Paying for tickets. Now, you maybe wondering why my waifu is paying for everything. We share everything - the bank account, toothbrush and while she does wear my t-shirts, I don't wear her underwear - well only when shes not looking.

I learned that many couples over here have separate bank accounts even though they are married and wonder what your views are on this. My personal views are that if a couple can trust each other to vow a life of commitment then why cant they share the same bank account?

Having said that, the culture over here is where the lady of the house manages all the money and allocates pocket money to the husband.
A survey at Biz Makoto shows that the average pocket money allocated to a salary man in their twenties gets an average of 56,100 yen per month. Salary men in their thirties gets 45,500 yen.

As for my "pocket money" - I don't have any allocated sum and just use whats needed. We are fortunate to be running a business where most of the stuff that I want just arrives at the office or falls from the sky - meaning that I dont spend much ^^;;;

The car park at Roppongi hills is organized with mechanical lifts and conveyor belts. After paying the parking fee, you wait at one of the "Stages" where the car will appear on tracks.

Here is a diagram of how the cars move up and down - completely organized by machines. We just arrive and get out the car. A sliding door closes behind us and our car whizzes off to the side into the bowels of Roppongi Hills...

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Very late with episode 38 of A Week in Tokyo - its been about a month! Making up for it with 85 photos which may balk in Google Reader - if that happens then just click through to the www article or you can get updates by email instead.

Am also interested to hear what loading times of photo articles are for you of late as these days I'm including a load of photos. Also lemme know of any problems you have viewing them.

First photo taken at Tokyo CGM Night Episode 4.

The guy pointing his camera at me is Sam Furukawa - the founder of Microsoft Japan.

T'was a great evening and you can see other bloggers coverage below. If you feel you should be at Tokyo CGM Night then contact myself or Andrew Shuttleworth.

• http://www.flickr.com/photos/lhuga/sets/72157617495229093/
• http://www.lesterho.com/blog/?p=745
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/gohsuket/tags/cgmnight/
• http://www.fotonauts.com/albums/f-Wpqm-FpmQ
• http://www.thewesternworld.net/2009/05/tokyo-cgm-night-episode-4-a-new-roppongi.html
• http://www.kenleewrites.com/2009/05/tokyo-cgm-4-faces.html
• http://www.good-design-review.com/archives/801104.html
• http://ameblo.jp/amanoai/entry-10252206035.html
• http://japanmanship.blogspot.com/2009/05/tokyo-cgm-night-episode-4.html
• http://www.1rick.com/blog/tokyo-cgm-night-4/
• http://mytravel.over-blog.com/article-30885996.html
• http://www.dshack.net/2009/05/cgm-night-episode-4.html
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/shibumi/sets/72157617536134886/
• http://tamegoeswild.com/words/2009/05/tokyo-cgm-night-volume-4/
• http://ameblo.jp/findmehere/entry-10252233491.html
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/jonnyli/sets/72157617456742343/
• http://bernard.nexusinternational.jp/2009/05/cgm-night.html
• http://ameblo.jp/hobino/entry-10252722656.html
• http://www.shakaijin.org/archives/2009/05/03040824.php
• http://www.jeromesadou.com/en/entry/60/Tokyo_CGM_Night_4
• http://www.gohsuketakama.com/2009/05/danny-choos-tokyo-cgm-night-reputation-sharing-economy-and-creative-commons.html
• http://blogs.sun.com/jimgris/entry/tokyo_cgm_night_episode_4
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimgris/sets/72157617467944309/