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is a Professional Geek for Microsoft Australia. More info lives underneath the About Box...

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Japan 2.0: Dear Japan…

Friday, July 20th, 2007

Dear Japan
I think I really like you as a friend, but I am no longer in love.
It’s not you, it’s me. The love of the new, the unknown, the for­bid­den is gone.
It is not the great pub­lic trans­port, the very friendly and cour­teous people. The wall-to-wall shop­ping.
I am sure we can still be friends.
My third […]

Japan 2.0: Typhoons + Earthquakes = Shopping

Monday, July 16th, 2007

Pic­ture: Dis­tant view of Typhoon clouds from Hotel Room
Typhoon num­ber 4 (offi­cial name) hit Okinawa, and skimmed the east­ern shores of Japan. Com­pletely miss­ing Tokyo, but stop­ping many ser­vices for a few minutes on Sunday. We were out in the worst of it in Harajuku on Sat­urday. Wind+Rain = Shop­ping in Japan. Every­one was out and about.

Then […]

Japan 2.0: Maps

Thursday, July 12th, 2007

Exits are numbered and are import­ant in the Tokyo sub­way sys­tem. A1-10, B1-12, C1-16. Yes, there are that many exits.
Thank­fully the organ­isers of Japan have nice maps vir­tu­ally every­where, and you should not get lost.

Ginza is the home to shop­ping in brand-name stores. Today we vis­ited the Sony, Nis­san, Canon and Apple stores.
After vis­it­ing Yodo­bashi, and […]

Japan 2.0: Undercover

Wednesday, July 11th, 2007

Pic­ture: Yodo­bashi Cam­era, Shin­juku, Games Store. Playstation 3, Nin­tendo Wii.  Maybe some­thing Xbox360. If you look hard enough.
 

The nor­mal PC “bits” store in in the lower level (B1) of the main store. Here is abso­lutely any­thing and everything you will ever need for PC stuff:
 

Pic­ture: Image, on tree in Shinjuku

Pic­ture: Qual­ity mer­chand­ise from Japan

Pic­ture: I jump on a busy […]

Japan 2.0: Osaka, Shinjuku.

Wednesday, July 11th, 2007

9th July: Liam and I take a rest-day after 4 days on the go. Avril goes out into the local Osaka shop­ping scene and cap­tures some pho­tos. The most inter­est­ing one has cookie mon­sters in blue and red!

 
10th July: Up early, JR train from Osaka to Shin-Osaka to cap­ture a new N700 Shinkansen train to Tokyo. […]

Japan 2.0: No Shrines Needed in Hiroshima

Sunday, July 8th, 2007

 

Up at 6:00am to get ready for a long day. Osaka JR train to Osaka-shin. Catch the Shinkansen to Hiroshima via Shin-Kobe and other sta­tions that mix together. The Hodge’s almost broke the whole sys­tem by insert­ing our Suica cards into the wrong machines. Friendly JR staff kindly help us for gaijin out.
Just like […]

Japan 2.0: Kyoto-des

Saturday, July 7th, 2007

Up early, walk to JR Train: Osaka to Kyoto via Express Line. Cityl­ine Bus around to the middle of Kyoto sub­ur­bia. Express Line is faster as it seems to skip 2 stops out of 3. A Rapid, in com­par­ison, skips 1 out of 3. A local stops at every stop. The nuance between Rapid and […]

Japan 2.0: Lost Underground in Osaka

Friday, July 6th, 2007

Goal today was to work out exactly where we are, and what is around. And more import­antly, how we are get­ting around.

Pic­ture: Can Has 8-bit Text! Shinkansen timetable
First stop: JR sta­tion to pur­chase tick­ets. Even­tu­ally lin­ing up in the cor­rect queue, we spent about AU$1200 on cari­ous Shinkansen (bullet/fast train) both to Hiroshima for Sunday, […]

Japan 2.0: The Traveling

Friday, July 6th, 2007

Up at 6:00am, arrive at air­port at 8:30am and through checkin, cus­toms and immig­ra­tion. Our checked in bag­gage weighs 31kg; and other carry on is 25kg.  Includ­ing assor­ted liquids under 100ml.
OK, what’s the deal with put­ting your 100ml liquids into a plastic bag. The secur­ity guys at Sydney Inter­na­tional grabbed some poor Chinese student’s fish oil […]