I live within walking distance to the Arakawa River in the northern border of Tokyo. The river acts as the border between the Tokyo metropolis and the Saitama prefecture. As in other parks and natural spaces in the city, there are always people jogging, cycling, praticing baseball, and even water skying! The well-known Sumida River branches from the Arakawa not far from where I live. It flows into Tokyo Bay near the Kasai-Rinkai Park next to Tokyo Disneyland.

I took these last year, during a walk a beautiful summer afternoon.

The photos are after the break.

Look at this video. This is how typical anti-nuclear protesters in Japan react when you try and talk to them.

So violent. How do you reason with someone like this? This is why you hear so much from anti-nuclear protesters, but you don’t hear from us pro-nuclear: anti-nuclear are many, irrational, violent and (most of them) don’t understand what they’re talking about. Because of this, pro-nuclear people feel threatened and prefer not to say anything.

Most of the song is insults, threats and yakuza-speak, but he also manages to drop a nice amount of lies (maybe just because he doesn’t understand what he’s talking about).

Let me clarify a few of them:

With technologies like solar power and other renewables, we can get all the electricity we need without nuclear power… and cheaply, too.

No. This has been discussed again and again in many places. Most of these aren’t economically viable, or just won’t work in a country like Japan that doesn’t have the resources. But hey, maybe I’m mistaken. Show me real data that proves that we can depend on the renewables, and I will happily agree with you.

More after the break.

Yesterday there was a blackout at home while I was at work. It lasted about two minutes, and I learnt about it because one of my monitoring systems at home sent me a notification saying that two of my servers had rebooted.

You know, I’m not used to blackouts because this is the first one in the 10 years I’ve been living in Japan. Usually I wouldn’t really care about the power going offline for a few moments, especially when I’m not home. However, I’m sharing my room with two little ferrets. They don’t stand the hot weather very well, so I keep the air conditioner on during the whole summer for them. Yes, 24×7. And yes, it’s expensive. When I came home yesterday I found the air conditioner turned off because of the blackout, and the room temperature was very high. Nothing happened to my ferrets this time, but it could have.

Read on for my opinions about all this anti-nuclear movement.

Hakone is a mountainous area about 100km south-west of Tokyo. It is a very popular touristic destination because of its many onsen, beautiful scenery and its proximity to Tokyo. You can get there easily by train (JR East or Odakyu).

Hakone is one of my favorite places around Tokyo. I visit there from time to time, but I like it especially in winter. One of the best experiences you can have is being at a rotenburo (an open-air hot spring bath) while it’s raining or even snowing

More after the break.

Yokohama – Japan’s First Port City

In 1859, the Edo period came to a close and Japan opened itself up for foreign trade.  It chose the tiny fishing village of Yokohama to be its main port city.  Yokohama grew from a population of 600 to become what it is today – Japan’s second largest city.  It’s a beautiful city with its mix of architectural styles, spacious feeling, and internationalism.

More after the break.

Yesterday I was walking in Odaiba. I love the view from Tokyo Bay at night from there. However, it was a bit chilly, so on my way back home I decided to walk inside the DECKS shopping mall instead of the avenue outside. There on the second floor of the mall I found a shopping area decorated as the Tokyo from the 1950s. It’s called the Daiba 1-chome shopping street (台場一丁目商店街, Daiba 1-chome shotengai). In all my years in Tokyo I had never been here. I don’t know for how long it has been here, but it’s a very nice place. There are restaurants, a food court, shops where you can buy old clothes, a candy shop… all of them with an atmosphere that reminds the 50s.

I liked the place. Especially, I liked a retro game center with game machines ranging from the 70s to the early 90s.

Unfortunately I didn’t have my Nikon DSLR camera with me. I took photos with my iPhone, but the quality is quite bad because of the bad lightning. Most of the photos are from the retro game center.

Photo gallery after the pause. Enjoy.

The Japanese music industry sucks. Look at bands like AKB48 or Kyary Pamyu Pamyu (きゃりーぱみゅぱみゅ). If you are living in Japan then you must be sick already of seeing them everywhere.

In case you hadn’t heard about them, I’m going to share the pain:

AKB48 is an all-girl band composed by *64* members, whose only talent is being young and cute. They jump around in the stage singing without much grace, but that doesn’t matter much, because their fans (mostly male otakus) only care about their looks.

They started in their own theater in Akihabara, where they performed daily in front of their fans (they still do). The group is actually named after the Akihabara district.

Very fun car crash in Japan. According to the Mainichi Shinbun, several Ferraris, a Lamborghini, a few Mercedes and a Toyota Prius were involved. Total 14 vehicles. I assume the poor guy driving the Prius was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and was not part of the convoy.

(Traducción en castellano debajo. Spanish translation follows.)

English:

I’ll go straight to the point: the situation here in Tokyo is normal. There’s no panic, no exodus, and no immediate danger.

However, western media is spreading fear and lots, lots of bullshit among our families and friends, because being alarmists brings them advertising money.

Because of this, family and friends are pressuring those of us who stay in Tokyo to leave the city. This is causing trouble for many of us.

To the media:

For fuck’s sake, please stop publishing crap in order to bring more viewers (and therefore, more advertising money) to your publications/programs/whatever. What you’re doing is just taking advantage of this situation in order to try and make some money at the expense of everybody who knows someone in Japan. You’re causing more trouble to us than the earthquake did!

To our family and friends:

We are fine. The situation in Tokyo is normal. There’s no panic, no exodus from the city, and no immediate danger of radiation exposure as the media would like you to believe.

Some links in English:

• Realtime streaming of a Geiger counter in Chiba. Showing normal levels of radiation.
• A post from MIT nuclear engineers explaining why it is physically impossible that radiation from Fukushima will affect Tokyo or surroundings. Who would you rather believe? Experts in the matter, or journalists who do it for the money?

Castellano:

Iré directamente al grano: la situación en Tokyo es normal. No hay pánico, no hay ninguna huída de Tokyo, y no hay peligro inminente.

Sin embargo, los medios de comunicación están difundiendo miedo y montones, montones de basura entre nuestras familias y amigos, simplemente porque el alarmismo les trae ingresos por publicidad.

Debido a esto, nuestros familiares y amigos nos están presionando para que dejemos la ciudad. Esto nos está creando problemas a muchos.

A los medios de comunicación:

Por lo que más queráis, dejad de difundir mierda para atraer más público (y por tanto, más ingresos por publicidad) a vuestras publicaciones/programas/lo que sea. Lo que estáis haciendo es simplemente aprovecharos por motivos económicos de la terrible situación en el norte de Japón, para hacer dinero a costa de todo el que conoce a alguien en Japón. ¡Nos estáis causando más problemas que el terremoto!

A nuestros familiares y amigos:

Estamos bien. La situación en Tokyo es normal. No hay pánico, no hay huída de la ciudad, y no hay peligro inminente de exposición a la radiación como os quieren hacer creer los medios de comunicación.

Algunos enlaces:

• Streaming en tiempo real de un contador Geiger en Chiba. Mostrando niveles normales de radioactividad.
• Niveles de radioactividad en España. En algunos casos, superiores a los de Chiba en estos momentos.
• Japón no vive en el caos. Un post de otro residente en Japón.
• Huída de Tokyo, 17 de marzo 2011. Un vídeo de otro español en Tokyo mostrando la realidad de la situación en estos momentos. A él también le han presionado sus familiares y amigos, y se ha visto obligado a dejar la ciudad en contra de su voluntad.
• Entrevista en El País a César Molins, doctor en ingeniería nuclear. Explica por qué no hay peligro.
• Carta pública a los medios. De un grupo de españoles viviendo en Tokyo, cansados del sensacionalismo de los medios de comunicación.

Note: two days after the 2011 earthquake in Japan I wrote a post explaining my experience and what I saw on my walk home. That post was lost after I updated the blog and discarded the old database. I see in my web server logs that I still get lots of request for the old article, so I’m posting the photos again, together with comments from what I can remember. — July 12th, 2012

These are my experiences from March 11th 2011, when a big earthquake hit Japan. I was on my lunch break at work in Ginza (central Tokyo) when the earthquake hit. After it was decided that we would close the store for the rest of the day, I walked around 20km home because there was no public transportation.

Read the comments on the photos below for a description of what I was on the way home.

More photos after the pause.

2:49pm. Earthquake hits while we’re at work. Employees and customers are instructed to get cover under the tables.