It was back to the mountains yesterday, but this time closer to home as we went to the Okutama area to climb Mount Takanosu. It still always amazes me that all of this terrific terrain is within the boundaries of Tokyo. It was a tough day though, as the hike up was quite the workout and took us much longer than planned, and then coming down we ended up doing the last hour and a half in the dark (we did have lights). Pictured above, what greets you at the top (at an altitude of just under 1800m).

From Ikebukuro we took the train up to Okutama station (by way of the Yamanote and Chuo lines), and then it was a 15-20 minute bus ride to the start of the trail.

The village where we got off the bus.

Here’s the sign that marks the start of the trail, as well as a few others alerting you of things to watch out for — the one with the helicopter says that water will be dropped in case of forest fires.

My wife, ahead of me.

A map that shows the Okutama area, with all the trails you can take.

A piece of street art I spotted yesterday in Ikebukuro, which my friend Patrick Benny made me realize is by street artist ESSU — here’s a larger piece Patrick spotted recently.

Remember that weekend last week with the typhoon warning in effect? We kept waiting for it to come, and finally on Sunday decided to head up to the Okutama area for a bit of hiking. Lo and behold, the typhoon weather made itself felt just as we arrived, and so it was a very, very wet day indeed (below, me, dressed to deal with the elements). 

Despite the wetness (which was on and off, but mostly on) we took the cable car up to Mount Mitake, and then hiked over to the top of Mount Otake, where we managed to cook lunch (see below). The big adventure comes next weekend though, as we will be heading to the Northern Alps (Mount Yari) for a 3-day trek. Cautiously looking forward to it — just worried about one of my knees, which occasionally gives me trouble, but I bought a brace for it. We’ll be staying in mountain huts, which should be interesting — first time for me.

A week of opposites then, from the tech-heavy Tokyo Game Show to the alpine heights of the north!

Just before I went to the TOO MUCH magazine launch party, I stopped by my friend Spikey’s new studio in Daikanyama. Spikey (or Shin Takahashi) worked at Klein Dytham architecture for 7 years, and just a few months ago left the company to start his own thing, in the guises of Special Normal. He’s an amazing interior designer, and I got to hear about some upcoming projects which all sounded fantastic. Loved his studio space as well, which is what you’re seeing in this post.

Just over a week ago I attended the launch party for the second issue of TOO MUCH magazine, held at the United Bamboo store (in the building’s event space) in Daikanyama. TOO MUCH is of course the follow-up to OK FRED magazine, and is still helmed by the editorial duo of Yoshi Tsujimura and Audrey Fondecave (my fellow Radio OK Fred podcasters). The party doubled as an exhibition based on a feature written by another good friend, Ian Lynam, of which you can see more here. You can buy a 2-issue subscription to TOO MUCH (it’s published twice-annually) here.

After the reception, we walked down towards Nakameguro to get some drinks at Just Another Space, which is a rather funky spot — and hey, there’s ping-pong table there too.

Also, if you’re curious as to the effect I’m putting on these photos (which I also did for the haircut post), I’m using a series of actions in Photoshop that replicate the filters found in Instagram — in each case, I’ve applied “Hefe,” followed by “Brannan.” You can download them here (and thank you Nick Chester for the tip on this).

There was a time when I would always post a photo here after I got a haircut. I’ve long stopped doing that — it did feel rather silly — and so here’s a pic of me just before the scissors hit the hair. I didn’t get anything drastic, just a “refresh” — I have a two-block-like cut, so the sides definitely needed to be shaved down again. And yes, I always bring my iPad with me, to read magazines and comics — I do chat a bit with the hair stylist, who I’ve been using exclusively (I always make an appointment with him) for years now. I don’t go to a pricey place or anything though, it’s just the Di Moda Japan chain, and the cut itself is usually around 3500 yen.

I’ve been continuing my Ikebukuro West Gate Park beer drinking outings throughout the summer, and now it has spread into fall — our first combini run even saw us grabbing our first fall beers, which I believe were out that day (September 1). Meeting up with two friends (Cormac and Josh) who are as much into comics as I am, that was the excuse to get together — hence me describing it as the inaugural “Comibukuro” gathering — and it was fun sharing opinions on recent books, and talking about the books that affected us throughout our lives. After a few beers outside — with a scenery of kids taking dives into the park’s fountain — we continued on to the nearby Dubliner’s pub for a few hearty stouts. When that place closed we moved on to the Hub (pictured above). 

We were constantly worried about the threat of the oncoming typhoon, and although it was fine for most of the night, I finally got caught in a sudden downpour as I was biking back home, getting rather drenched. Oh well.

So how’s your summer going? Is it hot enough for you? I can assure you that here in Tokyo we have had our fair share of hot weather, and it’s in no hurry to stop: A quick look at my weather widget shows a pretty steady mid-thirties for the rest of the week. Enough of this already.

The real question is, how are you dealing with it? I’ll readily admit that summer is my least favorite season — not a fan at all, actually — and so it tends to take the form of a constant countdown until fall. Yes, September can’t come soon enough for me (even though it tends to still be hot in Tokyo, psychologically I can tell myself that the weather is on a downward spiral towards something reasonable).

Of course, it’s also a challenge for my dog — summer in Tokyo is obviously not what a Great Pyrenees needs. But he’s used to it — it’s his 3rd summer — and he just pretty much stays indoors during the day, sleeping near a fan or air con. Walks are done at night, when the air is a bit cooler (but it still doesn’t take very long before he starts panting). We did manage to take an epic walk from Ikebukuro to Harajuku this past Saturday — it takes us about 2 hours both ways — but we left around 3-4, and got there a bit before 6, so we were at least past the midday heatsuck.

Above, a photo taken as we were walking — this is somewhere between Takadanobaba and Shinjuku.

I’m not much of a car guy — although I have come to realize in recent years that the racing game in indeed my favorite genre (along with RPGs) — but I did quite like the looks of what you see pictured above, which drove past me as I was having a coffee at the Starbucks by the Junkudo bookstore in Ikebukuro. When I put the photo up on Instagram, a friend mentioned that it may be a classic Porsche, but I have no idea. 

I should mention that all of the photos I’ve been posting on the site of late are taken with my iPhone, using a variety of apps for the effects: Instagram, Cross Process, and Hipstamatic.

If you’re a fan of The Guardian Eyewitness app or event the “Photo” section of the NYT app, then you’ll probably find a lot to like from the new LIFE app for iPad. Available as a free download, it’s basically an interface to LIFE magazine’s amazing photo archives.

There are a few different ways to explore the collections, starting from an “Explorer” page that lets you dig in geographically, and then a few themed sections.

It’s not perfect though, and the biggest annoyance is the ad for LIFE services (pictured above) that pops up every few photos — it’s especially annoying because when it comes it actually moves the regular interface elements away, which makes for a jarring transition. There’s also a slight load time for every single photo you view, so it seems that they should have paid a bit more attention at keeping file sizes manageable.

But hey, it’s a free app, and there’s more to like here than to not like, so well worth a download.

This past Saturday we walked all the way down from Ikebukuro to Harajuku with the dog, mostly because we wanted to spend some time at the big “dog run” area inside Yoyogi park. It made for quite a pleasant outing (if a long walk), and we also walked around Aoyama a bit — I wanted to check out the Magazine Library event — and also spent some time at a cafe. As you can imagine, we get a lot of attention when we’re out and about with him, and it’s quite normal to have to stop so that people can pet him or take photos.

Above, a photo taken as we were walking through Shinjuku. Below, walking up Takeshita Street in Harajuku.

Remember that long post I wrote at the end of June in which I talked about me getting back into photography? Well, it appears that my wife’s love for her camera has meant that I’m still not anywhere close to getting a chance to play around with it. Guess it means I’ll need to be a bit more patient, or just pull the trigger and get a camera of my own (which I doubt will happen).

It is indeed PauseTalk Vol. 42 tonight (July 5), happening as always at Cafe Pause in Ikebukuro from 20:00 (with the space reserved from 19:30). Already looks like we’re going to be a good group, and I know a few ex-PingMagers will be there, so I’m feeling like a post-mortem might be in order.

Above, one of the many photos taken at last month’s edition (Vol. 41), courtesy of Michael Holmes passing around his camera — you can see a gallery here.

One thing that’s happened to me over the past few years is that I’ve pretty much stopped taking photos. Sure, the odd iPhone-to-Twitter shot is still a regular occurrence, but in terms of taking photos with a relatively descent point-and-shoot — in my case, a series of Canon PowerShots — either for this site, for other sites, or even just for personal use, that just kinda stopped. You’ll notice it also if you check my Flickr account — except for a little rekindling courtesy of an iPhone/Toy Camera fling last year in Macau, not much has gone up over the past couple of years, to the point where I haven’t even renewed my pro account in years, and this coming from someone who was particularly active there.

So why? That’s a good question, and there are several answers to it. One thing is that I grew dissatisfied with the quality of what I was taking and sharing, but lacked the energy (and money) to move up to decent gear and shoot (yeah, pun sadly intended) for more. It also doesn’t help when you have a lot of friends who are so damn talented when it comes to photography — some would say this can be inspirational, but I’m on the side that tends to think, oh well, better leave this to those who are better at it.

But to be honest, the biggest reason is one that actually affected a lot of the content that you saw appear on this blog, and that’s even pre-SNOW Magazine. It got to a point where I just couldn’t “experience” anything for myself anymore. Every time I was out and about and spotted something interesting, I was immediately composing a blog post in my head about it (even if I had absolutely no intention of writing one) and taking photos to “document” it. This ended up literally getting in the way of my enjoyment of things. Many are sure to say that this is a handy skill to have, and I wouldn’t disagree, but it can also be a negative in the sense that I started losing something rather important, and that’s the pure sense of enjoying the moment/space you occupy.

Sure, this wasn’t just about photography, but I think one way to fix this for me was to remove that part from the equation. And you know what, after a while it did in fact work. I no longer cared which angle of what I was seeing or experiencing would best tell the story.

“OK, Jean, but this post is titled ‘Panasonic Lumix G2,’ no?”

Yes, how perceptive of you.

My wife has been wanting a decent camera for a while now, at first mostly to use for her next field research trip to China, but also to just start taking better photos of the things around her, including of course our dog. She finally pulled the trigger on a purchase yesterday and ended up getting the aforementioned Panasonic Lumix G2, the follow-up to the company’s G1, the camera that kicked off the whole “Micro System” craze. For months I’d been suggesting to her the GF1, in part because of Craig Mod’s amazing field test article, but also because at least 5-6 of my friends ended up buying one, to great satisfaction. She was able to get something a bit better — the GF1 is sort of a paired-down more compact version of the G2 (or rather its predecessor, the G1).

So this means we have a nice new camera in the house, and she says I’ll be able to use it when I want — although there seems to be some sort of unwritten rule stating that such sharing will happen after a fixed amount of time. The prospect of learning photography has me rather excited, and despite my fears of getting back to that sense of always being in reporter mode, I’m thinking that it will help get some more original (not reblogged) content on SNOW Magazine.

To be fair, I also have a feeling that the iPhone 4 is going to help with that. I finally got around to ordering one yesterday — the wait will take up to a month though — and from the examples I saw in this Boing Boing post, I think it will make for a great device when you’re in a pinch. But more than just the camera, it’s the prospect of HD video recording that has me excited, and I’m hoping that you’ll see the results on SNOW as well — and hey, that G2 takes some pretty decent HD videos too, just look at what Craig was able to get out of his GF1.

Next up is moving to some more serious photo editing tools — iPhoto and quick Photoshop touch-ups have been fine so far, but I want to move up. After asking about Adobe Lightroom versus Apple Aperture on Twitter, the feedback was overwhelmingly pro-Lightroom, and Adobe certainly makes it easy for you to try it out for yourself. It seems that Lightroom 3 was actually released just recently, so looks like I’m hopping on at a good time.

What you see at the top of this post is just me having fun with some of the filters in Lightroom, on a photo my wife took of me this morning — this is pretty much what I look like, and where I find myself, everyday. Funny how adding a vignette/sepia filter makes everything look oh-so serious. Looking at the photo, I really feel like a hard-working writer. Yeah.

I may not have talked about it a lot here on the blog, but I’ve certainly tweeted a bunch over the years my love for tonkatsu spaghetti, which I get at this great little pasta joint in Ikebukuro (not far from Cafe Pause) called Nobu. I like it so much I’ve even added the place to the next editions of The Rough Guide to Tokyo and Japan.

Here’s beautiful shot of the meal in question, taken the other day by Hiyoko Imai — a fellow GOOD person.