Day 24: More Kyoto-eki, Yodobashi Camera, and Kyoto Tower!

Sorry, nothing ancient today, mostly just life stuff and random observations. Before I get into that I'd like to say thanks to you all for all the positive feedback. If there is something in particular you'd like to see more of (e. g. social commentary, life updates, landscape photos, flora/fauna photos, architecture photos, daily life photos) let me know and I'll be sure to include it. 

So, this past week marked the start of classes. I got moved up to second year speaking and listening (thank you Yazawa-sensei!) after taking a secondary placement test, which is awesome because it starts at 1:00 pm instead of 9:00 am. Also, I managed to work out my schedule so that I have no morning classes and no classes Monday or Friday. It's amazing.

The rest of my classes are extremely interesting (not that Japanese isn't interesting). I chose to take many classes which include GGP (Japanese) students as well as SKP (international) students. These Japanese students are part of a program whereby they'll be studying abroad next year. Most of the classes focus on intercultural communication, the psychology and linguistics of it, and international relations. Many of them follow a pattern that includes a session during the lecture in which SKP students and GGP students form small groups and discuss some facet of the subject matter. It's extremely exciting to have the opportunity to openly discuss these kinds of topics with Japanese people in Japan. I love it. Anyway, I'll include more about that once I have some more solidly formed ideas.

I spent the first two days of my four day weekend inside cleaning and studying while it rained outside. Today the weather was overcast, but dry. So, I took the subway south to Kyoto Station to check out some more stuff in that area.

Dragonball Z is still a huge deal here. The curry place I go to always has contests where you can win a Dragonball Z memorabilia, and posters are plastered all over the place. Anyway, this is just a giant promotional Shenlong hanging out in Kyoto Station. He didn't grant me any wishes. Someone probably already asked him to bring back Krillin. Don't feel bad if you don't get that reference.

This is just some of the offerings at Shinshindo, an awesome boulangerie chain in Japan. There's one less than a five minute walk from my dorm, but I took this picture at the one in Kyoto Station.

From the station I entered the massive Yodobashi Camera building. You might think that Yodobashi Camera is just a camera store, but it's more like Best Buy got jacked up on steroids and had a love child with a shopping mall. It's got a footprint the size of a Target with three floors dedicated solely to electronics, two to clothing, one to toys and housewares, one to restaurants, and two to groceries/deli. Also crazy is the sheer amount of valuables basically just sitting out. All the lenses you see in this picture are over $2000 with some of the more valuable ones costing over $10,000 and this is a very small percentage of what's on display. In the U.S., Even among retailers which specifically sell photography equipment, most of them don't have a quarter of this selection and what they do have is locked up tight. There's another electronics retail giant named Bic Camera down the street, but I'll check that out another time. 

From Yodobashi I headed to Kyoto Tower. Kyoto Tower has appeared in a couple of my photos before. It's this giant lighthouse looking structure that sits kind of awkwardly on top of a 9 story hotel. It was built in the 1960s, and like many things from the '60s, now it looks kind of tacky. There's a two floor observation deck at the top that sits at 100 meters (~328 ft). So, I decided to check it out. It's kind of a hokey tourist trap sort of thing that looks like it hasn't had a face lift in 30 years. I have to admit though, while it was somewhat tacky and worn down it was also kind of charming. And the mascot was adorable:

Before you go up the observation deck they take your picture with him, but I wasn't gonna pay the 10 dollars afterwards to get my copy. Obviously, the view was awesome. There were mounted binoculars placed every 20 degrees or so along the upper deck with signs on the window of where to point to see specific monuments.

I took like 60 pictures, but I picked just a few to upload. This one just shows off the crazy sprawl of Kyoto. If you look really closely you can see the faint outline of Osaka in the distance. Apparently, on clear days you can pretty clearly see Osaka Castle through the binoculars. Keep in mind that Kyoto Station is at the south end of the city and Osaka is to the south, so most of Kyoto is actually behind me in this shot.

I just thought this picture looked kind of neat.

I finally got around to putting Photoshop on my laptop, and I figured these were perfect for turning into tilt-shift pictures. Basically, tilt-shift photos are supposed to make a real-life scene look like it's a diorama filled with miniatures by enhancing the vibrancy of the colors and employing a unique blurring effect that mimics the depth of field created with macro lenses. It's kind of a pain to do real tilt-shift photography but it takes less than a minute in Photoshop to replicate the effect pretty convincingly. If I took a little more time I could make it passable even to a trained eye, but I'm too lazy and too busy to bother right now.

You may also notice that I've resized all the pictures so that they should display better on your monitors and so it doesn't take forever to upload them on my lackluster connection.

Till next time!