The Aoyama Cemetery (青山霊園, Aoyama Reien) is located in central Tokyo, very close to Roppongi. It’s huge (263,000 squared meters according to Wikipedia), and it is completely open to the public at all times. It was founded in 1872 and it is Japan’s first public cemetery.

It has a foreign plot (外人墓地, gaijin bochi) near the center where many foreigners and their descendants are buried,  but the most popular grave is Hidesaburo Ueno’s, owner of Hachiko. I’m sure you’ve heard his story already, but in case you haven’t, here’s a short summary:

Hidesaburo Ueno was a professor in the Tokyo Imperial University in the early 1900s. In 1924 he adopted Hachiko, an Akita dog, as his pet. Every morning on the way to work they walked together to the Shibuya station, and every evening Hachiko went to the station to wait for Professor Ueno’s return from work.

They continued this routine daily until May 1925, when the Professor didn’t return. He had suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died. For the next nine years, Hachiko kept coming to the same spot every day to wait for Ueno’s return, until he too died on March 8th, 1935, aged 11.

There’s a bronze statue of Hachiko in the spot where he waited every evening. This is without doubt the most popular meeting spot in Tokyo.

Hachiko is not actually buried in the Aoyama Graveyard (his stuffed remains are exhibited in the National Museum of Nature and Science in Ueno), but there’s a small shrine dedicated to Hachiko inside the plot of Professor Ueno’s grave, and also a commemoratory pylon just outside the plot.

In late December 2013 I moved to a new apartment just a few minutes walking from the graveyard. Having nothing to do during New Year, I took my camera and went for a walk in the afternoon.

Download full resolution photos (144 MB)

Remember that all my photos are released as public domain. You’re welcome to use them for any purpose, whether commercial or not. Attribution is always welcome, but it’s not required.

Keep reading to see the photo gallery.

The Kanamara Matsuri (かなまら祭り, steel phallus festival) is a shinto event organized by the Kanayama shrine (金山神社, Kanayama Jinja) in the Kawasaki province. It takes place the first Sunday of April every year.

This festival has its origins in the Edo period (1603 – 1868), when the town’s prostitutes visited the shrine to pray for protection against syphilis. Currently the festival is dedicated to fertility and it collects funds for HIV research.

The events start at eleven in the morning. There are performances of traditional Japanese music and dance, and also a very fun penis-shaped daikon (Japanese radish) carving contest. Around the shrine grounds there are stalls selling candy and key rings also shaped like penises or vaginas. This year there were also one or two stalls selling adult sex toys.

Around one in the afternoon the visitors go on a procession around the town carrying two mikoshi (神輿, portable shinto shrines) and a wooden cart carrying a huge ping penis.

After the procession many of the visitors head to the Kawasaki Daishi (川崎大師), a very beautiful buddhist shrine around ten minutes walking from there. The avenue to the entrance of the temple grounds has many shops selling souvenirs and food, that reminds me very much of the Nakamise street before the Senso-ji temple in Asakusa.

Enjoy the photos. Feel free to let me know if you’re interested in going next year, because I’ll go again too.

Keep reading to see the photo gallery.

Nikko is a town, in Tochigi, a few hours by train to the north of Tokyo. It is mainly known for the Nikko National Park (日光国立公園, Nikko kokuritsu koen) and for Toshogu, the mausoleum of shogun Ieyasu Tokugawa, first of the Tokugawa shoguns. The shrines and temples of Nikko have been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Toshogu itself is a very brightly decorated Shinto shrine deep inside a complex of shrines and temples inside the Nikko National Park. You can enter the shrine, but they don’t allow taking photos inside.

Walking in this area almost makes you feel as if you’re a couple hundred years back in time, if it wasn’t for the hordes of visitors and automatic vending machines. It is in my opinion one of the most beautiful places in Japan and I enjoy going there from time to time.

Keep reading to see the photos…

Something you see very often on the Internet are people talking about things they know nothing about, or intentionally just posting information they know is wrong (these are know as trolls.) It happens very often on online forums, or in the comments section of news sites. From time to time I join the conversation in order to clarify. And to prove that I’m smarter and always right, of course.

Today I went to Shinjuku and ended up inside Tokyu Hands. This is a chain of big stores that sell a variety of products: from furniture to joke articles for parties, fitness equipment, kitchen tools… And there’s where I saw something that reminded me of a discussion on Slashdot a few weeks ago. In an article about Japanese police asking ISPs to block Tor exit nodes, a guy named ShanghaiBill started spreading bullshit about restrictive laws banning owning axes, requiring licenses to own scissors, and implying that it is illegal to own a knife with a blade longer than 5cm:This is obviously not true, but I didn’t waste my time replying back then.

Keep reading for the rest of the post…

No, I haven’t turned gay (but hey, I don’t know about what will happen in the future). This is actually about a Japanese woman who decided to start looking for a boyfriend on GitHub, of all places. For those of you who (unlike me) aren’t computer nerds, GitHub is a hosting service for software developers who want to store their projects online using the Git revision control system. I know, it sounds nerdy because it is. The point is that by posting something like this on GitHub, it is likely that she has ensured remaining alone for the rest of her life. Or not. There are lots of desperate male geeks out there too.

Her original application (in Japanese) is here. I woke up and couldn’t go back to sleep, so I translated it into English for you.

Enjoy

Background

I’ve been getting old without being very interesting to men. I’ve started to feel afraid of not being able to ever get married. Because of this, I’m sending this application for a life partner.

Requirements

I’m by no means an expert in music, but I can tell when I see a good performance. Last week I went to one of those. The event was part of the Tears of Today Tour 2012, which was just a couple of performances by several artists: one in Tokyo and another in Osaka.

I was invited by Luschka. She’s the singer in one of the bands (named after her), and she also plays the keyboards in another. Shameless plug here: she’s also my coworker.

I’m at the Glass Building in the Tokyo International Forum right now. I can’t describe how much I love this place. I’ve traveled a bit, and so far this is the building I like the most.

From the outside this building looks like a gigantic ship hull made of glass, steel, concrete and wires. From the inside it feels as if you’ve been swallowed by a huge skeletal whale, or perhaps an alien spaceship. It stands seven floors above the ground, with a huge glass façade on one side, and conference rooms on the other. It also has two more floors underground, the first one connecting to the train and subway lines, and the second one housing a conventions center.

I’m standing now in the top floor. There’s a very nice Chinese restaurant here. It’s probably very expensive too. From here I can hear the sound the steel wires make as they handle the tensions of the building frame moving this way and that with the wind. There’s almost no other sound, other than the trains running outside towards Tokyo station and the strokes of a bell coming from the Yurakucho station.

This place both inspires and relaxes me. I could stay here the whole day just thinking.

If only there was a damn place to sit.

I found this video while I was wasting time in YouTube tonight. I shows what driving in Tokyo feels like. I think it is awesome.

The video starts in the Wangan-sen (Bayshore Route), then crosses Odaiba, the Rainbow Bridge, leaves the Tokyo Tower behind, goes through Roppongi where you can see the Mori Tower to the left, and heads towards Shibuya.

Enjoy.

The new seats in the Tobu Tojo line.

This is the train I rode yesterday in the Tobu Tojo line. The long rows of seats on the sides of the cars have been replaced by three pairs of seats like these. Apparently these new seats can pivot like the ones they have in long-distance trains.

Shopping street near Oyama station

It’s a very, very beautiful day today with a very clear sky.

It’s also very, very hot with very high humidity. It’s comfortable at home with the air conditioner, but going outside means being hit in the face with a heatwave. Same thing as when you’re walking on the street and a huge bus goes past you and the hot air exhaust from the air conditioner hits you in the face. Except the bus stays there until you go back inside.