Tokyo from above and below

Hello all,

I've been quite ill the last few days, but today I seemed to have recovered from the trots and whatnot. 't Was no fun, but I managed to pull through and live another day.

Anyway, let's forget that. 've been out and about in town with a few friends from the Netherlands, hence me visiting the two places described in this blogpost. Not two places I'd visit on my own... So, let's talk about one of the highest towers in the world! The Tokyo Sky Tree. I've been on it and hot damn, it's high! I

I'll spare you the technical details, since I presume you (the reader) is capable enough of using the Googles. If not, why are you even online? It's a high motherfucker and I think I've never been on such relative heights in a building before. You know, there are mountains I've climbed that were higher and had houses on it, making those places even higher (maybe even twice or thrice as high), but the Sky Tree is something different.

Tokyo isn't a place with many tall buildings, as you can see from the pictures, and if there are any, they are concentrated in certain areas. like Shinjuku, Tokyo-Chiyoda, etc. This makes the Sky Tree stand out from the rest of the city and makes up for a great view of the city and more!

For me, the most interesting part was, of course, checking out the railway lines that crawl around the densely packed neighbourhoods.

After the Sky Tree, we went for a lunch near the tower, since I wanted to support one of the surrounding shops, rather than having a meal in the mall of the tower itself. It was a rather splendid lunch as you can see.

During digestion, laziness struck and we took a Tobu train to Asakusa, just across the river, and visited the famous Senso-ji. You know, that temple with the massive lantern in front of it. You've probably heard of it.

Concluding our day, we went out to visit Akihabara by the hyper-modern Tsukuba-Express. Two stations for ¥200! That's damn expensive! I'll probably never use the Tsukuba-Express again...

Today no descriptions on the picture-hover-overs, since I'm in a lazy lazy mood. Plus, they pretty much speak for themselves.

More Beer!

Hello all!

Last weekend, my girlfriend arranged another visit to a brewery! This time it was Asahi! I was pretty excited again, but this time not because of the quality of the beer, but rather the location and the trip towards it.

The route took us on the section from Shibusawa to Shin-Matsuda, one of the most beautiful parts of the Odakyu Odawara line. From the rather straight sections on the Kanto plains, a tunnel takes you to the curves of the Sakawagawa river flow (酒匂川).

Not my video, but it gives a good impression on how it looks from the front.

Anyway, Asahi isn't the best of beers and you can taste it. At first I thought they were using pure ingredients, like with Suntory Premium Malts, but I was wrong. Very wrong. During the tour, the ingredients were explained and although my Japanese isn't very well yet, I managed to understand that cornstarch, potato starch and sugar are added in the brewing process as well. I was disappoint.

Despite the beautiful surroundings of this hyper-modern factory, the great care they take in maintaining the quality level of the beer (I say 'quality level', not 'quality' here!), the taste is still extremely bland and it tastes more like water, rather than beer. It's a shame this is one is the largest beer brewery in Japan (about 40% of the market) and still only produces a quite boring brew. I guess the Japanese taste for beer isn't that refined yet. My only hope for the future of beer now lies on the efforts of the micro and craft breweries.

Cheers!

The Beers! The Trains!

Hello all,

It's been a while already, so I'm dumping all interesting, uninteresting, related and unrelated photos in this entry.

On a more related note, it's almost been a full week already since I posted something, but that's because not much has happened lately. Anyway, I've been eating rice and noodles for quite a while now, which is fine, but I've also eaten some self made badly prepared chicken. It was still pretty raw and now I feel the consequences of it in my belly for a few days already.

Luckily, today I found some relief, but it has really been a few rough days, consuming a lot of energy and it's still not over yet. I guess I have to endure the soup factory in my body a little longer. A can of Coca Cola can do miracles. I think I'll down a bottle of it later -> goes to visit the vending machine on the corner right away.

Anyway, last weekend I visited a good friend of mine who has an astonishing collection of model trains. We met each other a few years ago in Germany and quickly became good friends.

He lives in a big house, but despite his overabundance of model trains, does not sport a layout in any form. Well, rails on the floor don't really count as far as I'm concerned. He approached me in a careful and very Japanese way concerning this problem and I replied with much enthusiasm.

I have quite some experience with building small layouts, but not with projects that he came up with. On his large layout, he wants to see the following train lines:
- Shinkansen line (17 cars);
- Long Distance line (16 cars);
- Commuter line (11 cars);
- Ikegami-style line (3 cars);

All of these lines should meet at a big station within a dense urban landscape and have a reasonable amount of travel distance in several landscapes.

The commuter line should have a smaller station that connects with a local line (my personal wish) in a suburban area and possible have a full A to B operation possible.

I have a few tricks up my sleeve to make it all a bit easier to build, but it will still be a hugely massive undertaking.

Anyway, the day after playing with trains, my girlfriend and I went to the Suntory brewery in Musashino for a tour and free beers. I recommend this tour to any beer lover, since it's very interesting to see a clean Japanese beer brewery in operation and have three (!) beers at their expense.

Afterwards we went to Shimokitazawa to have dinner at a great Yakitori pub. I drank too much expensive, but oh so good, Potato Shochu (Japanese wodka) from the brand Nigori-imo. Probably too hardcore for you kids. Also, we ate too much skewers of delicious delicious chicken intestines and whatnot. It was pretty much a perfect day.

Anyway, I'm feeling a bit better now, after finishing a bottle of Cola, and the weather looks very good! It's sunny and a boosting 12˚C outside. As always, hover over the images for a short description.

Cheers!