nonsense engineering

In the afternoon of Sunday 25th, I went to Nakano. Nakano is a metro/train station, there is a big central boulevard street with many shops and a tight network of little streets again with many shops. It is amazing the amount of commerce that takes place in this city. It is impressive the fine grained variety of offered products. I think that both aspects directly contribute to 1) in Japan the crisis will not be felt as deep, 2) in Japan nobody really succeeds in avoiding the need of induced consumption. Yes, I know these pictures are not so interesting, but I just wanted to show a bit.

Then I took the train to meet my friends in Shinjuku.

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In Kamakura I had a new opportunity to be a good tourist and take pictures of temples and shrines. I’m not so fond of taking monument pictures just because they are monuments… however I was determined to do it. These pictures are the kind of pictures I tend to take, they could be in any other Japanese town though.

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Yes, I have to admit I’m a horrible tourist. I arrived in Kyoto a bit late in the evening, it was cold and rainy… finally I found a place to stay. Next morning I was about to discover the marvels of this historic beautiful city. I really didn’t have a checklist but there was obviously one floating around. In the meantime I had to eat something so after a bit of walking I discover this wonderful restaurant.

That night I received an email from a Japanese friend who offer to show me personally the way to Kamakura. I have to say that Kamakura is also a historic beautiful city in the neighborhood of Tokyo but not as relevant as Kyoto. Well, I couldn’t resist. I immediately change my plans… The next morning I would take the Shinkansen back to Tokyo. Some of my thinkings: the buildings will be here many years to come, the people not; besides, years after my visit I’ll remember any human relation better than any beautiful building. The following are the pictures I took in the way to Kyoto train station.

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Time to take the Shinkansen, also known as bullet-train, and visit Kyoto. This was one of the earliest ideas that appear to me when I started to think about coming to Japan. After a day of recovering the time had came… I have to admit I was a bit lazy about this movement though. I did it anyway and here you can see the related pictures.

Conclusion #1, the Shinkansen is extremely clean.

Conclusion #2, the Shinkansen is extremely fast.

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The first full day at Komagome’s place I really needed to do nothing, I was overwhelmed… I stayed at home the whole day, it was cold and rainy so that wasn’t that bad after all. This was the appropriate moment to update this blog and by the afternoon we enjoyed a wonderful dinner with the help of Miu.

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