In 2009, I shot this and you can see that there is a construction crane on the left side of the frame. At the time, I was curious to know what, if any, of our view of the Sumida-gawa fireworks would remain when the crane had done its work and the new residential building was in place:

2009 shot of the fireworks over the Sumida River

To be honest, I’m not overly interested in the Sumida fireworks display – they’re just slightly too far away to be exciting, but it is nice to see the night sky aglow on a summer’s eve.

This year, as a result of the triple disaster on March 11, the Sumida fireworks date was pushed to the end of August (it’s usually in late July) and the Tokyo Bay fireworks were not held at all.

Historically, the Sumida display is quite interesting: apparently, 1732 was a bad year in Edo (the old name for Tokyo) with famine and disease wiping out a good chunk of the population. The following year, the shogunate held a ceremony on the Sumida dedicated to the water god and to pray for better fortune and for the souls of all those who’d died the previous year. Restaurants near the Ryogoku Bridge asked for consent to shoot off some fireworks during this ceremony and the tradition began.

As you can see from the photo above, there are actually two stages on the river, so there’s double your viewing pleasure if you’re in the area or have an unobstructed view.

Well, as you can see, that’s no longer the case from our balcony: the apartment building’s complete and we’re left with one tiny corner on the left, where the unobstructed view used to be, and the other partially obstructed display in the middle.

That’s one thing about Tokyo: you can never get attached to your view because the landscape never stays the same for long in this city!

(click on the image for a larger view – the cluster of buildings in the distance is Shinjuku.)

Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 - 3 exposures tonemapped with Photomatix

This was taken from the “Sky Deck” of the Mori Tower at Roppongi Hills - if you haven’t been, I highly recommend it on any clear day you are in Tokyo. You have an almost 360° view of the city and it really gives you a sense of scale and scope; and you are outside with the wind blowing, so it is very different from the enclosed observation decks and high rise or office building views throughout the city. If it’s a really clear day, you can see Mt. Fuji.

This is for Budget Trouble‘s photo meme/blog post called Show Me Japan. Jump over and take a look at the other entries by clicking the link above or  here.

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:

<a href="Click here to visit the dynamic map on Google Map.