Yes, of course there’s a polar bear plushie outside of the Sony Building. Why wouldn’t there be?

Anyway, as funny as it looked, there is a reason (and it did make me laugh to watch the bear and its sidekick, who looks like he is trying to pretend that he is not on the same gig as the bear): they were out there to promote the Sony Building’s Opus High Vision Theatre and it’s showing of 「3D ハイビジョン旭山動物園」or “3D High Vision Asahiyama Zoo” (a 3D film of some animals at Asahiyama Zoo in Hokkaido).

In general, the Sony Building is always a good place to cruise by with your camera because you never know what you’ll find out front. They have a display area in front of the building called ソニースクエア (Sony Square) and they change the display quite often. For example, in the summer, I happened to be walking by and I snagged this photo:

You can visit the Sony Building website here (but, if you’re inclined to click on the “English here” link, don’t bother: they have not updated it for well over a year).

]]> http://blog.tokyololas.com/polar-bear-in-ginza/feed/ 0 http://blog.tokyololas.com/mount_fuji_from_tokyo/ http://blog.tokyololas.com/mount_fuji_from_tokyo/#comments Tue, 29 Dec 2009 12:56:38 +0000 tokyololas hinode odaiba pier boat fuji shot central sighting http://blog.tokyololas.com/?p=475 A couple of weeks ago, I posted a photo of the amazing Mt. Nantai as caught in a rare sighting from my balcony, and I used a sunset shot of Mt. Fuji (富士山) for comparison. However, while going through my archives today, I found a shot that gives you a much better idea of what Mt. Fuji looks like from central Tokyo if and when it is visible.

This particular shot was taken in November 2008 and it reminds me that I should venture to the other side of my building on the next clear day:

The boat heading out into the bay is one of the boats that goes back and forth between Hinode Pier and Odaiba every 30 minutes. Here’s a shot taken from Hinode, while waiting for the boat to arrive:

I meant to post this the other day, but then Christmas was upon us and then I got hit with Norovirus (which, I can tell you, is NOT a pretty way to spend Christmas Day and Boxing Day)! Still on little-to-no food  AND have not had a cup of coffee for three days (if you know me, you know this is an almost unbelievable state of affairs).

Anyway, Avatar officially opened in Japan on December 23, but it was, for some reason(?), showing at the Toho Cinemas in Roppongi Hills from the 22nd. Since I had the evening free and I’d been feeling fairly cooped up from the other flu I’d just had, I decided to go and check it out (how ridiculous does that sound? I seriously get sick once every 2 years, but have been hit twice in one month this year).

I opted for the 3D version, which is a no-brainer if you have the choice at your local cinema. If you don’t have the choice, it might be worth the drive somewhere else. It’s not that you have to see it in 3D, but just that the whole point of the movie seems to be the visual universe created; and it was created with a 3D delivery in mind.

The story is not really anything you haven’t seen before (so I DO NOT CONSIDER THIS A SPOILER if you have not yet seen the movie, BUT skip this paragraph if you are not one that notices archetypes being employed in almost every story you read, see, or watch): an unlikely hero, a relationship beginning under false pretenses and morphing into a love relationship that flourishes despite seemingly insurmountable differences, a change of allegiance, and the lovers being reunited in the end.

On another level, the story is also a rehash of Princess Mononoke and countless other stories dealing with “Man’s callous destruction of nature for commercial gain”. This part of the story is, quite frankly, so heavy-handed it is impossible to suspend your disbelief and when you mix it in with a whole slew of what is considered today, in 2009, to be shocking Colonialist sentiment (the indigenous are “savages”, etc.), you might find yourself wincing at the screen.

If you have any sense of “story”, you know exactly the direction the whole thing is moving and there are NO surprises anywhere; in other words, at about the one-third mark, you could probably finish the script yourself.

However, that is NOT why you go and see Avatar in the theatre: you go see it for the astounding visual universe created; or, rather, you go and see it for the realization of the astounding universe in James Cameron’s head brought to the screen in 3D. It is worth seeing for the forest scenes alone. Screen shots don’t really do it justice, but the night-time forest scenes are really fantastic:

For the curious, a shot of my ticket stub:

Yes, it was ¥2100 for one ticket – that’s $23.99 for my Canadian readers and $22.95 for any Americans reading this or €15.95 for those of you in Europe. I have no idea how much it costs to see a movie in a major city in Europe (despite the cold and crappy weather when I was last there, it never crossed my mind to go and watch a movie), but I do know $24 is a bit steep compared to Canadian movie theatres.

You can visit the AVATAR Japan website and watch the Japanese trailer for the movie here – it’s a bit different from the the U.S. version.

[photo from: REUTERS/Shuji Kajiyama]

If you are wondering (like I was at first glance) why the whole Imperial Family is crammed into a tiny, red, train, it happens to be a solar-powered train at a children’s park called Kodomo no Kuni (こどもの国).

The park was actually founded in 1959 to commemorate the marriage of Akihito and Michiko, who would become Emperor and Empress 30 years later (in 1989); and they have crammed themselves into the little red choo choo because it is the 50th anniversary of their marriage (and, by extension, the 50th anniversary of Kodomo no Kuni).

Just for fun, here’s a groovy photo of the Emperor as a 17 year old (in 1950):

[photo from Wikipedia]

And here’s a bit of Emperor trivia from Wikipedia: he’s an ichthyologist!

In extension of his father’s interest in marine biology, the Emperor is a published ichthyological researcher, and has specialized studies within the taxonomy of the family Gobiidae. He has written papers for publication in Japanese and English scholarly journals, namely Gene and the Japanese Journal of Ichthyology.

He has also written papers about Scientific History in Japan during the Edo and Meiji Eras, which were published in Science and Nature. In 2005 a newly described goby was named Exyrias akihito in his honour.

Okay, enough “Rock” talk!

I’ve left you all staring at a bottle of what appears to be a rather disgusting beverage for far too long, mainly because I was travelling in Canada for a few weeks and just couldn’t squeeze in the time for a blog post. And then the flu hit, which I am still not entirely free of yet…(not H1N1, fortunately, but I certainly could feel the icy stares of all the passengers around me on the flight back jammed into the cabin and dreading each sneeze and every cough).

Anyway, I’ve been so under the weather that I had not even looked at any photos or touched my camera gear until yesterday. I was mainly driven to grab my camera yesterday morning because I looked out the window and saw something as clear as day that I had NEVER seen before in the whole (almost) 2 years I’ve been in this apartment – a snow-capped mountain to the north, which was just sitting there looming behind the buildings of Tokyo Station & Otemachi areas:

Now, just to reiterate and clarify: this is looking North from Tsukiji – NOT West towards Mt. Fuji, which can be seen from the other side of my building, but NOT from my balcony – here’s Mt. Fuji in the setting sun (at a distance):

At first, I thought the mountain might be Mt. Tsukuba(筑波山), but the shape is wrong and Mt. Tsukuba is more to the East.

Incredibly, Mt. Nantai (男体山) is a good 150 km from central Tokyo (close to 180 km if travelling by car), so it really is quite rare and amazing to see it from here (Mt. Fuji is just over 140 km from central Tokyo and it is also somewhat rare to see it from central Tokyo because of the usual cloud cover or the haze when it’s hotter).

A little bit more information on Mt. Nantai from Wikipedia:

Mount Nantai (男体山, Nantai-san) (also called Futarasan (二荒山) is a stratovolcano in the Nikkō National Park (日光国立公園,) in central Honshū, the main island of Japan. It stands at 2,486 m high. A prominent landmark, it can be seen on clear days from as far as the Pacific coast, 100 km away.

The mountain is popular with hikers, and the trail to the summit starts through a gate at Futarasan Shrine’s Chūgushi (中宮祠, middle shrine). The gate is open between 5 May and 25 October.

Mount Nantai is one of the 100 famous mountains in Japan.

In September 2008, the Japan Meteorological Agency was asked to reclassify Mount Nantai as “active” based upon work by Yasuo Ishizaki and colleagues of Toyama University showing evidence of an eruption approximately 7000 years ago.

Of course, Mt. Fuji is also a stratovolcano, which explains the resemblence in terms of “tall” and “conical”.

For those who occasionally visit tokyololas (from Flickr) for photography information, the shot of the Mt. Nantai in black and white was taken on a Canon 50D at 500mm (gotta love that extra reach with a crop sensor body!) with my Sigma 150-500mm – handheld, ISO 800, OS1 activated.

Finally, just in case you can’t really visualize the distance from central Tokyo to Mt. Nantai, this should help (the little “A” tag due north of Tokyo is the location:

Click here to visit the dynamic map on Google Map.