That’s the Japanese Constitution they’re stepping on, there. These guys also have a sign with a big US Army helmet enclosing a tiny Japanese one.

Traditional Japanese culture is disappearing to make way for these guys.

This guy stood on his suitcase and would move only very slowly, and only when someone put some money in his cup. I’ve heard stories about these guys around the world but he is the first I’ve seen.

It was crowded there. The concepts of “watch where you’re going” and “get the heck out of my way” don’t exist in Japan. Instead, people just bump into one another until everyone gets where they need to go.

Every year a bunch of dudes take off their pants and carry this golden god-car around Asakusa. We went to check it out, and it was neat to see the tradition still being carried out. I don’t know if smoking a cig and yelling at people for using your shishkabob stand’s trash can because they hadn’t bought any shishkabobs from you is tradition, as well. Maybe it’s an emerging ritual.

Someone retro-fitted this [SE/30][1] case (circa 1990) with a TFT screen and a G3 mobo of some sort. Now it runs [MacOS X][2]. The existence of this machine reminds me that there are still cool things going on in the world, and that many of them are going on in Akihabara. [1]: http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_classic/stats/mac_se30.html [2]: http://www.apple.com/macosx

Meet Jake. Jake is an Australian dude studying linguistics, who also happens to be a semi-professional guitarist. This guy is full of facts and personal theories about pretty much anything that you’d care to talk about. He, Jerry, and I shared a really nice sound studio for a few hours and jammed. Here he is trying out my bass. High points of the evening included a rousing rendition of The Beatles’ “Come Together”.

Jealous?

I don’t know, either.

This is the panel on the photo-drying thingie.

One pair of goth-lolis I approached today politely refused to be photographed. Another pair gave me a dirty look and kept walking, which is a shame because they were particularly cute. The whole trip was worth it, though, for this photo. All in a day’s work.

I like how the photographer looks as if he’s trying to convince the model of something.

Today I went into 7-11 and found very, very high quality Evangelion models in these little capsules for 191 yen each. I don’t know if I told you, but, yes, I like Japan.

Here’s Tets’s friend (and now my friend too), Hama-san, hard at work on his tiny little Casio notebook-PC, running a Game Boy Advance emulator.

We went up into the mountains where they had the skiing for the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics, and Tets chased butterflies around. Here are Tets and Hama enjoying lunch on the deserted ski lift platform.

Tets, Hama, and I ordered too many sandwiches. Tets, inspired by [some lunatic Japanese dude][1] who photographed Big Macs with increasing numbers of patties on them, created this KiloMac from the extras. [1]: http://www.powertoday.com/gedou/megamac/index.html

Tokyo’s homeless are fascinating. They set up entire villages of meticulously crafted cardboard and scrap homes in parks and train stations. They’ve got a pretty famous rivalry with the Tokyo government, which sometimes ignores them, and sometimes forcefully kicks them out of where they’ve set up, knocking over the houses and carting them away. Anyway, I think it says something about Japan that even the bums are relatively hard workers.

I ran across this homeless march on the way to the station this morning.