Water, Water, Everywhere...Except in Tokyo

Flood Prevention in Tokyo 

Second post in a week...NOT BAD! I decided that I'd post some educational articles about Japan on here from other websites that I found interesting, and didn't want to write all over again...so I'll provide a link to it below:

 CNN - How Giant Tunnels Protect Tokyo From Flood Threat (written by Alex Zolbert)

Tokyo is a BIG CITY! Over 13 million people live here (as of 2013)! If you include the entire Greater Metropolitan Tokyo area that would be over 35 million people!

In addition to the danger caused by earthquakes, there is another destructive force of nature that has the ability to cause even more damage to this enormous cosmopolitan city...FLOODS! Japan is a country full of mountains...which funnel massive amounts of water towards the low-lying coast...where it happens that in one place, the capital city of Tokyo is located. How does the city stop all this water from causing destruction year after year? Check this video!

   

Here are some interesting facts about the giant tunnels:

• found in the Saitama area (just 40km north of Tokyo)
• build time: 9 years (1993 - 2006)
• cost: $3 billion 
• length: 6.3 km tunnel
• power: 4 jet engines can drain 200m3 of water in 1 second

For more recent information about how Tokyo is currently UPGRADING their flood prevention structures, check out this article from Bloomberg.com and their own video report:

Bloomberg.com - Tokyo Prepares for a 1-in-200 Year Flood 
(by Chris Cooper and Kiyotaka Matsuda)

If you liked this post, and would like to see more educationally informative posts like this, please let me know, be leaving me a message! If not, I'll keep doing it anyway!

Off to see a Landmark...(and restarting my blog!)

Visit to Yokohama's Landmark Tower

Arriving back in Tokyo for my third year of teaching...so I've decided to put in a lot more effort into updating my blog. To motivate me, I'm planning on purchasing a GoPro Hero 3 camera (exciting in itself since photography and cinematography are a few of my hobbies which have been put on hold due to being lazy).

I just realized that I haven't posted anything on here for over a year and a half! 

I went to Yokohama to do some shopping and check out the Landmark Tower on the weekend. Coincidentally, it was also the 20th anniversary of the building being built.

It's the tallest building in Japan!

Some of you might say, "But what about the Tokyo SkyTree?!" Well, the SkyTree isn't actually considered a "building" where people reside and work, however SkyTree is the tallest "man-made structure" in Japan. The Landmark Tower would only be the third tallest man-made structure, behind the SkyTree (634m) and Tokyo Tower (333m).

The Landmark Tower dominates the harbour area with its futuristic look, which can even look a bit ominous in the later hours of the evening.


Landmark Tower Facts:

• completed in 1993
• tallest building in Japan (296m)
• 70 floors (Sky Garden observation deck is on the 69th floor)
• fastest elevator in Japan (750m/s)
• elevator time from bottom floor to top floor (about 40 seconds)
• Mount Fuji can be seen on a clear day
• 5 star hotel, shops, and restaurants included
• Cosmo World Amusement Park is located right beside it
• 1000 yen for a ticket to the Landmark Tower Sky Garden observation deck

How to get there:

• Closest train station: Minatomirai Station on the Minatomirai Line
• only about 30 minutes from Tokyo

 Here are some miscellaneous photos from the short outing:

Tokyo Bay from the Sky Garden (69th Floor) of Landmark Tower

Apparently Yokohama is famous for curry...?

Obligatory Sky Garden Stamp

Cosmo World

Night View of the Landmark Tower

Japanese Pranks are AWESOME - Part 2

The Japanese are BRUTAL when it comes to scaring people!

This is the second installment of my favourite Japanese pranks. To see the others, check out the first installment.

This time around, in honour of Hallowe'en coming up in a few weeks, I'd like to focus on pranks intended for the sole purpose of scaring someone to death.

As an added informational tidbit, the picture on the right, which most people in North America know as the girl from The Ring (which itself was a remake of a 1998 Japanese movie called Ring), is what ghosts look like in Asian culture. Asian people are deathly afraid of these "ghosts".

They may be brutal, but to me "BRUTAL is FUNNY".

Mirror - This prank is one of my all-time favourites. I played this one over and over again and laughed my @$$ off each time.

TV - Japanese girls watching a video clip from Ring...and then.........

   Doorway - This one is actually a Korean prank, but it's still funny. Watch until the end!

  
Wake-up - Innovative ways of waking someone up...with a a touch of EXTREME!

  

MRI - This one isn't really scary...but that depends on your definition. I'd consider this one more gross.

 

Miscellaneous Scares - This is a mish mash of random Japanese scare tactics. My favourites are the boulder ones.

Hope you enjoyed these, and again, if you'd like to check out the first installment, just click here.
Until next time! Keep on pranking!

The Wonderful...Part 1

Tsukiji fish market is a MUST SEE place if you are in Tokyo. It is very famous for it's tuna auction where gigantic tuna fish are laid out on the ground and are auctioned off to Tokyo's highest bidders. Apparently, the market is the absolute best place for the best freshest and best sushi you'll ever have. For foreigners to actually check out this auction, you have to wake up early in the morning, and be able to get in line for 5AM, as they only allow a very small number of people to witness it.

On the train last night at about 4:40am, excited about the prospect of eating the best sushi of our lives and after a very long day and night, some friends and I (by way of a couple of laughing Japanese girls) were alerted to the fact that the fish market is closed on Sundays. We went home both tired and hungry.

I will have to post about Tsukiji fish market another day. The running joke this year so far has been that weekend partying has stopped our ambitious plans of going to see it...and now that we actually tried to stick out the night to see it, we've been foiled by our lack of reading the "Days of Operation". By the rate we are going...we may never see this market until June...


The Wonderful

I can probably spend hours writing about all of the awesome things about Tokyo and Japan. It truly is a wonderful, exciting, interesting, beautiful, charming place. In this posting I want to highlight a few "wonderful" things...

1) Tokyo

• I've posted this serene video on Facebook before, (it isn't my video) of Tokyo at different times in the day, starting in the early morning. Most of these famous places I have already been to and most of them are just 10 minutes away from my apartment. It's cool to see the streets of Tokyo actually empty, as normally it's like an ocean of people.

2) LOST.....in Japan

• The image of this cartoon samurai is meant to symbolize the honour of the Japanese people. To date, I have lost several things in this country...on the crowded streets of Tokyo...mostly due to my negligence and absentmindedness.

 Losing something makes you feel stupid 

• Commuter pass - A credit card size item that allows me to utilize the metro (train) system here in Tokyo. Value = $70 CDN. Lost at Harajuku station. Right after I get through the turnstile (using the pass)...I fumble through my pockets and realize I've lost the pass somewhere! After looking through all my belongings, I finally admit that I've lost my first item in Japan. Several hours later, in a hopeful attempt to see if anyone actually turned it into the station authorities, after giving them my name and going through a drawer, I was surprised to see my pass in the station worker's hands.

•  Wallet - A beverage-filled evening, a few weeks ago, was topped off with somebody (who may or may not be me) losing their wallet in the middle of Shibuya (home to the crazy intersection that everyone thinks about when they think of Tokyo). The next day, a conversation with a police officer in the area said that a visit to the police station 3 days later (due to a long weekend) might offer a good chance. Lo and behold, the wallet was returned to the police office with all credit cards, IDs, and money! The money amounted to be about 50 000¥ (about $500 CDN) and it was ALL there...including change. I wasn't quite surprised this time, but I was deeply relieved. Um...and when I say "I"...I mean "someone". 
• Hard Drive - Without even knowing, I apparently had also lost my new 1.5TB portable hard drive at the same time as my wallet. They both must have fallen out of my backpack during the night's festivities. So when the officer brought the bag to me, with my wallet in it, I was completely floored to see that my hard drive was in the same bag.

 To read my other related posting click here: The Weird...Part 1

The Weird... - Part 1

Whoa...it's been 2 and a half weeks since I last posted something! That's bad...and I apologize to those of you who have been asking me and wondering where the posts have gone to. To make amends, I'm hoping to post at least three things this week (maybe more). I present to you a 3-part posting entitled "The Weird...The Wacky...The Wonderful".

So much has happened since I last posted...let me count the ways...

 

The Weird

1) Ronald McDonald (Scary Japanese version)

• If you haven't read or seen my previous McDonald's posting with a video of a "beautiful" Ronald, go check it out here.
• I stumbled across this other video just today that's promoting McDonald's. I'm not sure if it's real, but it made me laugh.

2) UFO Catchers

• If you don't know what that is, it's basically one of those machines where you win a prize by using "THE CLAW".

Hello Kitty? Super Mario? Choose your destiny!

• UFO Catchers are EVERYWHERE! There are buildings and arcades with rooms FILLED with these things, selling anything from candy to stuffed toys to posters.
• In Akihabara (the electronic, nerdy part of Tokyo) I, along with another coworker, with a significant amount of money, and with the disgraceful pity of one of the employees (who made it easier and easier for us to win) won one of these each:

Super Sonico!

3) Sushi Stapler

• The picture speaks for itself:

...but where's the wasabi?

 4) Milk Soda

• FINALLY! Everyone's two favourite things: Milk AND Soda...TOGETHER AT LAST!
• I drank half of this because I was thirsty. The rest of the bottle is still sitting on my fridge.

5) Gang Fights?....no it couldn't be!

• I woke up around 8am early on Sunday morning to girls shrieking outside of my apartment and sounds of a street fight. I ran out of my building looking frantically for the sounds of the commotion, when I see something on the other side of the metro line:

•  I'll pretend the guy on the right is the "White Ranger" and the guy on the left is..."the bad guy with a scorpion face".
• Apparently they were filming some sort of movie outside my apartment, which included a group of actors dressed in school uniforms who provided the screaming that woke me up.

---

Anyways, I hope you readers continue to enjoy the posts I put up. This was a short AND random one that I just threw together, but here is a preview of some other things I'm going to be posting very soon:

• Long weekend trip to Nikko (World Heritage Site)
• Sumo Wrestling
• Food!
• Baseball in Japan
• Fashions
• Typhoons

Home Sweet (but small) Home

1000 people eaten (that means "views")?! WOW! 

School finally starts tomorrow. That means I gotta wear a tie. I usually only wear a tie 2 times a year, if that, back home...both times being for parent/teacher conferences. Now I have to wear a tie every day! I usually have to re-learn doing one each time, but thanks to the wonders of technology, YouTube has become my saviour...

A lot of people have been wondering what my apartment looks like, so I've finally gotten around to taking some photos and video of my apartment. I live 5 minutes away from Mejiro Station, which is 22 minutes away from the train stop where my school is. In between my apartment and the school are very famous Tokyo areas, such as: Shibuya (Shibuya crossing), Shinjuku (busiest station in the world), Harajuku (Yoyogi park and crazy fashions), etc.

20 Square Meters of Heaven

Fukujima House (white 3 story building on the left)

Japanese Pranks are AWESOME - Part 1

Canada's Just For Laughs Gags have NOTHING on the Japanese!

The Japanese always take pranks ABOVE and BEYOND what you'd expect. With that in mind and the fact that they find humour in embarrassing people publicly, please enjoy these, some of my favourite Japanese videos from YouTube. This will be the first installation of these, as I will post a few more in the coming months.

They may be brutal, but to me "BRUTAL is FUNNY".

Toilet Prank - Squatting toilets are funny by themselves. Throw in a countdown...and you have comedy genius.

Massage Chairs - This is my all-time favourite Japanese prank. What could be more relaxing than sitting in a massage chair while skiing in the mountains?

1 vs 100 - This ain't no game show with Bob Saget. Be careful when you're walking alone...

1 vs 100 Part 2 - Let's up the ante here and get even more ridiculous.


Onsen Fart - This one is new to me, but is hilarious nonetheless. Some men are a bit bashful when they see a women at the onsen (public bath) with them.

Japanese McDonalds

I was planning to stay healthy this year, but when I saw that there was a McDonalds right by my place that is open 24 HOURS, I just had to check it out. I went and attempted to order some food. It's a good thing I learned Japanese writing, because I can sound out some things on the menu (although I'm not very fast yet) to understand what it is, if the picture isn't very infomative.

I ordered myself a McChicken...or what I thought was a McChicken...I'll pretend it was a McChicken...

McDonalds menu in Japan - What would YOU order?

Just for fun, I thought I'd include some interesting Japanese spins on McDonalds in the following advertisements.

Yes...PLEASE...Take my order...

 

McDonalds Gundam

Travel & Life: Eat, Learn, Move...Dance

Under 10 days to go before I leave Winnipeg to go traveling again. On that note, I've posted 6 inspiring travel videos today. They are a MUST-SEE if you love to travel, like I do.

EAT, LEARN, MOVE

The FIRST 3 VIDEOS were shown to me by a friend today. Here's the synopsis from the Director, Rick Mereki:

3 guys, 44 days, 11 countries, 18 flights, 38 thousand miles, an exploding volcano, 2 cameras and almost a terabyte of footage... all to turn 3 ambitious linear concepts based on movement, learning and food ....into 3 beautiful and hopefully compelling short films.....= a trip of a lifetime.

DANCE

Watching these videos reminded me of the LAST 3 VIDEOS of a famous "dancing" traveler, named Matt Harding. This guy quit his video game developer job a few years ago after being fed up with it, and went traveling the world with nothing more than a video camera and his dancing shoes. After his first video went viral, Stride Gum took notice and then sponsored his next two trips. In his last 2008 video, he included many of his ever-growing fans from around the world. Personally, the music in these videos is really inspiring too.

2005

2006

2008