A Week in Tokyo 54

Please forgive me once again for yet another late installation of A Week in Tokyo. Since we last spoke, had a trip to the UK, France, Malaysia and came back to Japan to start work on producing a TV show called Culture:Japan and soon its off on the plane again to LA. Made the decision to decline the interviews, appearances, publication offers and have also scaled back on web production but for some reason there still does not seem to be any more free time to work on the products that I want to work on ToT.
The TV production should be over in the next 2 weeks and I got a meeting scheduled with Obitsu this Friday so hopefully should be able to gain traction with my own products.

This snap taken after I got back from Malaysia - tis the entrance to Ueno station.

Zooming back in time to April 6th. Checking in at the ANA counter for the Europe trip.

Picking up some traditional Japanese sweets for comrades in the Europe.

This is what happens when you go toilet and leave your armor outside.

Was so awesome to meet UK based comrades - hope to see you again this December! See more photos taken at SOAS together with some pics of my hometown Hackney.

And it was just as great to meet comrades in Paris too. Thanks to all who came and thanks to James for taking this pic.

Back from the UK. For the first time in my life I actually walked into a souvenir store in London ^^; I saw a Dollfie sized jug O beer in the shop but my girls are like me and don't drink.

Sushi from Costco.

The Pizza place that got burn down is open again with higher prices - guess they need to compensate the folks who were living in the dwellings above?

Japan public sleeping continues. Japan is not a good place to drop dead in public because people would walk around thinking you are just asleep.

At Togoshi Ginza for dindins.

Wanted to have a soup curry at Coco Ichibanya but they only do that menu in the Winter - settled for some Sukiya next door.

Production meeting for Culture:Japan - learning a load and is fun but tis pretty much taking up most of my time these days.

Some of the researchers and producers of Culture:Japan.

Mio makes cake.

I eat Mio's cake.

Relaxing sunny day in our local park.

Absolutely love the Rollerblades we picked up in London - its that store in Marble Arch next to the Odean cinema. Cost about 190 pounds-ish.

Office layout sometime in mid May.

Evening at Nishikoyama.

Been working on the 3rd floor from time to time. Saber accompanies me.

And when I wake in the morning, Saber is still lying down from her nights sleep.

A cutie Saber is!

Dollpa on May 4th. First report here and the second one is here.

Passing through Oosaki station.

5th of May is Children's Day - a Japanese public holiday. Flags in the shape of carps can be seen throughout Japan to celebrate.

People from time to time fall into the tracks and happens a lot during the evenings when folks start to get drunk. This poster calls out to folks to press the emergency button if you spot somebody falling in.
Reminds me of some terrible accident from a few years back when a drunk salary man fell into the tracks. A guy jumped into save the salary man and succeeded by pushing him up onto the platform but he himself could not get out of the tracks in time and got killed by the on coming train. The hero was named on the news but the salary man remained anonymous.

Some traditional Japanese garments for kids - adorable! Prob too big for Dollfies though.

Godannar - remember this oppai mecha anime? Used to watch it when I was in Seattle with Amazon.

Our local shopping arcade occasionally has dragons appear.

Picking up some food tickets at the machine. Many stores have you pay for food at these machines first. This means that the staff don't need to worry about collecting money and time is saved because the customer deals with the money exchange by themselves. Do they have this sort of system in your neck of the woods?

iPad in the background - photo review here with video review below.

Was getting warm a little white back but its gotten chilly all of a sudden - had the heating on yesterday!

Yui likes her donuts.

Seems to be getting more popular these days - stuffing a bag full of veggies. You are given a plastic bag where you are free to stuff as much veggies in it as possible. To make things more interesting - this takes place at a pachinko parlor.

Korean dish at Johnathan's.

Mmmmmm. Om Nyan Nom.

The Japanese word for Sandwich is "Sando" which is short for SANDwich - this is why you will occasionally see signs in Japan like "Tasty Sand" but would sound better with "How about a mouthful of sand?"

Walking back to office after lunch.

Japanese mobile phone stores have dummy phones for you to play about with which look exactly like the actual product. Many of these shops would just leave them outside their shop like this from time to time when the models are obsolete - the sign here asks you to take as many as you want for free.

Use to love Japanese mobile phones but don't think I'll be giving up my iPhone anytime soon - the new one supposed to be out next month?

Hmmm. Need some Dollfie sized mobiles.

Folks lining up for some ramen.

Love these little bikes.

More production meetings for Culture:Japan.

Use a Figma stand as an iPhone stand.

And this is what it looks like from behind.

Cuppa PG Tips in the afternoon. The big Ikea jug saves me from making a cuppa 3 times over ^^;

Taiga Tempura.

Done a quick n dirty video tour of Musashikomaya Palm.

Throwing out the recyclable paper.

Taking Karin out for the evening. She needs some padding for her pupils.

The Lucky Star girls replace the SOS Dan on the car dashboard.

Need to get Karin a black jacket - saw one at the last Dollpa and didn't get it - regretto!

Fried mayonnaise prawns. Mmmmm.

*Thousanailand* Dressing.

Love this product to clean hands - wallop a dollop on yer grubby mits and rub - gets rid of dirt and dries up in a jiffy. Always make sure I have this when taking the girls out n about.

Fruit dipped in white chocolate for dessert.

Kawaii!

Rainy season starts soon and lasts until mid July-ish.

Saber dons coat ready for a tip to Malaysia.

In Malaysia, Saber is being in danger from being kidnapped!

Thanks to all comrades who came to the meetup in Kuala Lumpur. Sorry for the short notice and look forward to seeing you again this August!

Unexpected to see myself in the national newspaper the next day ^^;

Was a long flight back to Tokyo as the plane stopped off somewhere in Malaysia for an hour or so.

Checking the times of the Skyliner.

The new Skyliner service starts soon! But charges a few hundred yen more ^^;

Tokyo Loves You.

Waiting for a ride outside Ueno station.

Saber jumps out to greet the other girls.

Saber comes back with a few accessories.

Saber also discovers that she has a new younger sister!

Good Smile Asanon at the office. Shes coming around again this Thursday too. You got anything you want me to ask her?

Lunch at the Chinese place downstairs in the shopping arcade.

Filming with Antoine de Caunes and the Canal Plus crew.

Armor weights about 10 (?) kilos when you put it on and 20 when you take it off.

Tenpura dinner with Miku.

Afternoon tea time.
Chris setting up my development environment. We use a single Ubuntu parallels image which is configured with Nginx, Mysql, PHP and wot not. This means the dev environments of our developers can be set up in a very short time.
While we may be scaling down on new clients, we still got a load to do with our current sites.

I'm leaving the painting of the pupils to Mio-chan.

This mornings office.

Feels much more productive with this layout. Looks like I will be implementing use of the iPad into my work flow more effectively now that its jailbroken - can browse folders over USB through finder for fast copying of files which all play through GoodReader - will give you the steps on how to do this in a separate post.

Current schedule is something like:-
6/1 - 6/12 Filming/production of Culture:Japan
6/12 - 6/29 Product research / preparations for talk at Anime Expo
6/29 - 7/8(?) Anime Expo in LA
7/9 - 7/12 Filming back in Tokyo
7/12 - 8/5 Product research/development
8/5 Malaysia trip (tentative)

Will try not to leave it too long until the next Week in Tokyo ^^;