Lots More Photos

Jason posted his photos from my friends' recent visit to Japan! Albums from things I did include:

http://www.luminpro.com/gallery2/v/visits/070920_tokyopia_meet/
http://www.luminpro.com/gallery2/v/visits/070918_tokyopia_pretgs/
http://www.luminpro.com/gallery2/v/visits/070916_hakonemuseum/
http://www.luminpro.com/gallery2/v/visits/070916_ank/
http://www.luminpro.com/gallery2/v/visits/070915_kansuiro/
http://www.luminpro.com/gallery2/v/visits/070915_hakone/
http://www.luminpro.com/gallery2/v/visits/070914_tokyo_misc/

Whew! That was a long week! Thanks for the photos Jason!

Leo

Mysteries of the Japanese Culinary Mind

Today I got a Beef Croquette Sandwich for lunch (the Japanese love croquettes so much, they put them inside bread as a sandwich), and as a dressing, the sandwich had... tartar sauce. Hmm....

One of the coolest museums ever

This weekend we went to the Hakone Open-Air Museum. It's an awesome museum, primarily dedicated to sculpture and mainly outside in the open air.

Photos are here, I'll post links to everybody else's photos as they get uploaded.

HakoneOpenAirMuseum

Leo

Great animation blog

http://classicanimation.blogspot.com/

It Cannot Be Denied

This is funny.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRm_pIJ9c6c

Indie Anim Fest

While I was in Korea I met up with my friend Jenny Hsoo, and she mentioned the Korean Indie Animation Festival (which she started a couple years ago, although she's no longer involved).

It's restricted to independent or student works from within Korea, and they had over 200 entries this year! There's a lot of stuff going on in Korea. They accepted 32 entries, I found the trailer on a Korean news site. It was cool to hear about all the activity in the indie scene!

Leo

Quote(s) of the Day

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/l/lawrence_clark_powell.html

A Good Music Video?

Sweetness:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=nPdP1jBfxzo

Go little robot go!

Umi Hotaru

So over the weekend we had an offsite meeting over in 千葉県 Chiba-ken at a town called 金谷 Kanaya. We got there by driving through the Tokyo Bay Aqua Line, which is a freeway that passes under half of Tokyo Bay in a tunnel, and then turns into a bridge for the remaining distance.

Back towards Tokyo	Forwards towards Chiba

The place where the tunnel comes out and turns into a bridge is called 海ほたる Umihotaru. Hotaru means firefly, and umi means sea, so "ocean's firefly?" It's a HUGE man-made building in the middle of Tokyo Bay.

It's 5 stories tall, so you park in one of the lower levels and then go up...	...and up...	...and up...
...and up...	...and finally come out on top where the views are!

Fundamentally, this is what we used to call a "tourist weir" -- it's job is to slow down the tourists so they'll spend money in the shops. It seemed to be a very popular spot to stop, which I was slightly surprised by given that the whole trip across Tokyo Bay only takes about 30 min. At right, Tomoyo and Hitomi enjoy the bay sun. At below left, Shuzo tried to take a picture in the breeze. Below right, some of the insane infrastructure around this man-made island.