Shack in Japan

Stork! Also, reflections on the camera market.

    In some ways, I think of DSLR's as similar to high-performance outdoor clothes, Leathermans, and SUV's- guys buy them because we like the idea that at any time, these expensive, specialized tools could be exactly what we need. Stuff White People like says it perfectly:

When white people aren’t working, they generally like to wear Outdoor Performance Clothes. The main reason why white people like these clothes is that it allows them to believe that at any moment they could find themselves with a Thule rack on top of their car headed to a national park. It could be 4:00 p.m. on a Saturday when they might  get a call “hey man, you know what we need to do? Kayak then camping, right now. I’m on my way to get you, there is no time to change clothes.”

Though it is unlikely that they will receive this call, White people hate the idea of missing an opportunity to enjoy outdoor activities because they weren’t wearing the right clothes.

    On the one hand, I love my D50. It was cheap, it focuses and snaps pictures quickly, and I take pretty pictures with it. That said, it's also kind of "I have a big hunk of metal in my hands with a Nikon strap on it, therefore I am a badass." For everyday snapshots, it's kind of overkill (I've been using a much-smaller-but-still-badass panasonic for an everyday camera lately). I get that it does some things a lot better than a compact camera, but I still kind of cringe when I see tourists carrying a $1500, 3-pound hulk of a camera to take a shot available on a postcard in the gift store of a tourist attraction. That said, it's really fun when you actually get a chance to use your little toys. I love it when there's a rope to be cut with my leatherman, a camping trip that requires wearing my patagonia jacket, or a quick happening across the street that lets you whip out your SLR and pop off some shots.

    I had one of these moments today, when a stork alighted outside of my room. I'm staying on the fourth floor of my host family's house, and there's an empty flowerpot full of water right outside my window-doors. It's full of water, and while I was killing time on the internet a little while ago, a majestic stork swooped in, grabbed a goldfish in its beak, posed on the railing of the deck, and soared away. I have no idea where the goldfish came from.

A few more pics are up on flickr.

    In other random camera news, it has been a long time since anything new has gone on with DSLRs. My D50's sensor is five years old, and unless you're really into cropping, with a tiny bit of postprocessing it's near-impossible to tell the difference between its pictures and those from the new D90. Megapixels don't matter. People worry too much about hype from the camera companies, and don't sit down to figure out a good compromise between how small their camera is, and how much speed and how many stops of light they're willing to give up to a tiny sensor and a slow lens. When you get down to it, that's all that really matters in the world of cameras (but saying that would make life hard for Canon's marketing department).

    Until now, SLR's from Nikon and Canon have kept the same sensor size. Since low-noise-high-sensitivity is due to sensor size, aperture is lens-dependent, and shutter speed is a setting, this means that besides a little work in the camera's software, there's no light advantage from a new body. Marketing departments are lying hypists, and consumers are sheep. However, in the last year, two big things have happened in DSLRS.

    #1: The D700. Nikon took the sensor and 90% of the abilities of their expensive D3, and put it into a $3000 (now <$2500) body. Expensive? Hell yes, and I won't be buying one any time soon, but this represents a big drop from the D3's sticker price of $5,000, and my hope is that in another year or two, full-frame breaks the $1,000 barrier.

    What the hell is full-frame and why does it matter? Full-frame means the sensor is big, about as big as normal 35mm film. This makes for shots with very little noise, even with high sensitivity (ISO, similar to film speed). This means more light in your shot, which means easier shots in darker places. To illustrate stuff, compact cameras start looking like crap between ISO 400 and 800. DSLR's start between 800 and 1600. The D700 looks like this at ISO 6400:

 

    This means that to get a similar looking shot to a smaller camera, you could shoot two shutter speeds faster, or two aperture stops more closed, and get the same amount of light in the camera. That's a big deal.

    #2: HD video. To be honest, when I heard about it for the first time, I didn't think much of it. Tiny cameras can do HD too, and it looks a lot like normal pocket-cam video, just a little sharper. However, then I saw Joichi Ito's video of my company's fifth anniversary party, taken on his Canon 5D Mark II:


    Wow. I now get that the big sensors of DSLRS, and their bright lenses with large apertures, are worlds away from little pocket-cam stuff. The video is amazing! It looks better to me than a lot of consumer HD video cameras. I doubt we'll see 5D's making feature films any time soon, and the lack of a hard disk (HD takes up a lot of space), mic attachment, or electronic viewfinder doesn't suit it to cinema, but for capturing an event or location in motion, it blows me away.

    Well, that rambled a bit, but I think it arrived in a good place. I'm packing up at the moment- I'm going to Nagoya on the Shinkansen tomorrow morning. It's pretty exciting, because as far as I know, a shinkansen is like a combination of a choo-choo train and a spaceship, and I've loved both of them since I was a little boy. I'll be sure to put up pics a-plenty when I get back.

   

Facebook: Now Available in Pirate

Oh my god:

Oh my god oh my god oh my god. Localizing for nomadic wayfarers of the high seas!

Next project: ヤクザ日本語 (Yakuza Japanese)!

UPDATE: Looks like they did this for a short period of time in September, in honor of Talk Like a Pirate Day, but it appears they're actually looking to launch pirate English as a full localization once all the translations are done.

New Years Eve, Illustrated

Here's how the Koyama family does things:

Sukiyaki on New Year's Eve

With dad, sister, and Kyoshi, a past exchange student. Sukiyaki involves cooking meat, tofu, and veggies in a sweet, tangy broth, then dipping the cooked ingredients in raw egg before eating them.

Sukiyaki in the bowl

For some reason, I'm really not into namatamago (raw egg). I think they think it's weird that I eat sukiyaki without it, but I find it perfectly tasty plain. The broth has plenty of flavor.

Preparing to go to the shrine.

It was chilly! We first went to the Buddhist temple where the family's ancestors are interned (a fast, quiet deal), and then it was off to to the Sumida-ku (Tokyo is divided into 23 ku's, or wards) shrine. Shrines are Shinto, temples are Buddhist. The Japanese don't really have a problem with multiple faiths.

Nighttime snacks

A vendor on the way to the shrine, serving hot soup, snacks, and sake for tired 販売者 (hanpaisha, or people going to pray).

Tending the flames

Outside the Sumida-ku Shinto shrine

Tokyo 2016

Not sure why the banners were up on New Year's Eve, but Tokyo is a candidate city for the 2016 Olympics.

墨田区無形民族文化?

Don't know the last character, but it translates to "The Sumida Shapeless Ethnic Group Cultural Performance Troupe," which actually means something along the lines of "We play folk music, and live in Sumida."

Praying at the shrine

1) Toss a 5-yen coin in the well. 2) Shakea da bell. 3) Bow twice, clap twice. 4) Bow your head one more time, for real, thinking of wishes for the new year.

Amazaki for Unicef

Amazaki is thick, sweet, spiced, and very lightly alcoholic. It was tasty in the beginning, but I couldn't make it to the bottom of the cup- it got too thick and starchy.

The shrine was freezing! Despite the Amazaki and several layers, we were all chilled to the bone, and hurried back home for oyu-wari sake (about 2-3 parts hot water to 1 part shochu), baths and sleep. I forwent the downtown activities; As fun as New Years' can be drinking and dancing with friends, I feel like I've probably got another 10 or 15 years for that, whereas this may be my only chance for a long time to experience this sort of Japanese family celebration. As the Japanese say, Akemashite Omedeto Gozaimasu!

P.S. My friends were absolutely right- at about 11:55, cell phones ceased to work entirely. When I tried to send my happy new year messages, my phone politely told me that it couldn't do it right now, but that it would automatically send them all once there was service. It wasn't lying- over the next hour, my mails trickled out, friends' trickled in, and phone service gradually came back. For the first little while, though, absolutely nothing worked- no web, calls, or cell communication of any type. Guess that's what happens when a few hundred million people toss a bunch of data packets into a network over the span of a few minutes.

New Years in Japan

While Christmas is regarded as less of a long-standing tradition than a date night, New Years is arguably the biggest holiday of the year for the Japanese. Wikipedia knows and articulates the particular traditions better than I can or want to, so I'm just going to lay out what's happening for me and my family.

It moves in a few stages:

Pre-New-Years: 

O-Soji, or "The Big Clean." Get your house or dwelling absolutely spotless and settle up any monetary or personal debts or obligations, so you can welcome the new year in properly. Also, send out nengajo to absolutely everyone you know. I believe anyone that doesn't receive one is legally allowed to hire ninjas to kill you in your sleep.

December 31st: 

Eat toshi-soba, buckwheat noodles in broth, their long length symbolizing long life. People also tend to watch a show called Kohaku on TV, in which the most popular singers and bands in Japan are split into female and male teams, then have a four-hour-long sing-off against each other. It's basically a long run of top-40 stuff, and top-40 Japanese music is ten times as banal as its equivalent in the states. The only saving grace is enka, the syrupy-orchestrated, ululating traditional Japanese songs of love and tragedy. Also, the chick from Gokusen is hosting, which makes me happy.

January 1st: 

Once the New Year turns, so I've heard, the cell network (which is also the email network) promptly dies, as a few hundred million people all send each other the same "Happy New Years" mails from their phones. I plan to do my part in this pointless tradition this year; my phone is already set to release a flood of mail to all sorts of people at 12:01 tomorrow.

After the electronic infrastructure of Japan recovers, families do hatsumode, the first visit to a shrine of the New Year. The temperature at night is in the high thirties right now, so I'm really not looking forward to a midnight Shrine visit, but such is life.

Tonight is the single day trains run all night (I normally have to cut my nights short at 11:30ish, or be out all night). I'm assuming there are parties and the like at clubs, but invitations from DJ friends and my own sleepiness will probably decide whether I make it out.

Tomorrow is also the start of hatsubai, a kind of odd tradition in which department stores sell bags of goods which are deeply discounted, but which the customers don't get to see before buying. I'm on the risk-averse side, so I normally wouldn't bite at something like this, but my friend told me you can usually coax the contents out of the storekeepers, so I might give it a go.

Starting on the first, Japanese people eat osechi-ryori, which is basically just "New Years Food." I think mochi, very hard rice paste, figures heavily into the menu.

January 2nd:

Relatives and friends will swing by the house, and I expect there will be a lot of food, drink, and schmoozing.　

I think most things end on January 3rd, and I'll be headed off to Nagoya to hang out with my friend Sandy, and maybe take a day trip out to Kyoto. Winter vacation has been amazing so far, and it's really sad to think about going back to school, work, and having things to do. Thankfully, though, once I push through a nasty few weeks of papers and finals, I'm off for two months, with nary a commitment in the world.

Happy New Years!

SAKK's End-of-the-Year Party

SAKK closed out their year with a little in-house party. We drank champagne, played with a crazy little Nikon headset, ate dinosaur tacos, and played some pretty hardcore Wii.

Turning up the heat

Wii mario kart with a big screen and computerized tourney board. They don't half-ass stuff at SAKK.

The Final Match

Winner gets a nintendo DS! I lost in round 1.

Living on the Edge

Our general manager demonstrates poor Wii safety, and total badassness, by refusing to don the all-important Wii safety strap.

Hi-Yah!

Little does he know the person before him is a helpless TP support agent, and not actually his Tekken rival. The paperwork from this little incident was a bear.

Weirded out by future tech

Miura watches in fear as the office intern dons the robot ninja headset

Seki-San, Cyborg in the Making

You Will Be Assimilated

Resistance is Futile. We are Six Apart

I Don't Have To Look At Reality

There's a more interesting anime reality right below my right eye

Nikon Media Port UP

Nikon's crazy wifi-enabled media viewer. Looks like something out of Star Trek

_-5.jpg

_-4.jpg

_-3.jpg

_-2.jpg

_.jpg

Kanpai!

I seem to be titling a lot of photos "Kanpai!" lately.

Something spilled...

Roederer Estate 25th Anniversary Brut

Acquired at our 5th anniversary party, no?

Pouring the Champagne

Mario Kart on the Wii

It's On!

Dinosaur Tacos!

The mild salsa had no spice whatsoever, and the "Okinawa" salsa was kind of like Mission St. super-mild, but they were still darned tasty. Also, how can you lose with a name like "Triceratops"?

Waiting for 4:30

I'm testing out using PixelPipe to upload photos, which seems to work pretty well. In one step, it shoots pictures from Lightroom into facebook, flickr, and and zooomr, as well as aggregates them into livejournal and Typepad blog posts. My only issue so far is the chronology and naming- it seems to reverse the chronology of photosets, and also posts the aggregated pictures without a title.

Just Can't Get Enough

Of these Sumida sunsets. Every time I go downstairs for dinner, I end up needing to grab my camera to capture the crazy light.

Posted via Pixelpipe.

Holiday Date Marathon Part II: Yokohama

Last night (Christmas Eve), I went out to Yokohama with Midori, a girl from the Tokyo University of Foreign Languages. We didn't really hit it off romantically, but we had a great time talking, the conversation mostly meandering about differences between our cultures when it comes to gender relations, standards of beauty, and love.

Yokohama is an amazing port town, and beautifully lit at night. It has bay cruises, a warehouse-cum-boutique-mall, an amusement park, and Landmark Tower, the home of the world's fastest elevators.

Despite the platonic vibe, I think we were both happy to be strolling around holding hands and looking couple-ish. Looking at the crowds at the pier, the amusement park, and the tower, Christmas Eve in Japan is nothing but pairs. Single people stay inside, or in some cases, go to game centers all night the day before so they can sleep through the misery. Given that I was already adjusting to my first Christmas away from family, not feeling doubly lame because of my single-ness was nice.

Yokohama's Chinatown- made me nostalgic for San Francisco.

Pretending to like the Chinese noodle dish I got, with was a flavorless, oily disaster. Why didn't they have any good old mongolian beef?

Midori and I in front of the Hikawa Maru Yokohama

Shocho, the greatest street performer I've ever seen. Besides making balloon corsages, solving a rubix cube in 30 seconds, juggling fire, and blowing a latex glove into a hat with only his nose, he was also amazing at crowd-handling, keeping us all in awe and stitches with his glib Japanese shpiel.

Shocho juggling fire, just because he can.

The "Vanish" coaster, which is pretty darned scary when it shoots under water like that.

As usual, full Flickr slideshow below (turn on captions for the narrative).

Unfortunately, my dating marathon never made it to #3: Miyuki caught ill. I ended up tooling around Shibuya with a friend from Lewis and Clark, and then going out to Sushi with her family. It was pretty fortunate we had planned to meet up, because otherwise I would have been super-bummed about my spoiled plans for the night. Nothing like a cell-phone mail header of「悲しいお知ら ( "A sad announcement") to let you know you're not going to like the rest of it.

What's in store for the rest of the week? Tomorrow's Six Apart Japan's holiday party, and the 27th is a little apartment shindig with a friend from Hosei University. I'm going to try to get together with Miyuki sometime before New Years (maybe see if I can bring her some soup or some other gesture of well-wishing), and then it's off to Nagoya to hang out with Sandy and her family before classes.

Maybe I should also make a little time for studying in there....nah.....

Holiday Date Marathon: Part I

    Christmas isn't much of a family holiday in Japan. Some families celebrate baby Jesus' pagan birthday bash with a Christmas cake, but the big tradition among young people these days seems to be the Christmas date. I just discovered Michael Downey's excellent blog (covering the diverse subjects of Japan, philosophy, and bioluminescence) this evening, and he has a great post on it.

Illuminations, fashionable restaurants, Christmas cake, KFC, omnipresent Santa Claus avatars, Disneyland and the infamous love hotels. It’s Christmas in Japan everybody! Okay, so you may have heard about KFC providing the Japanese Christmas Day ‘turkey’ or seen the seas of beautiful blue neon lights, but what about the romantic side of Christmas? For many people, Christmas Day in Japan is Valentine’s Day, take two.

That’s right. For couples and lovers, Christmas Day is the day of the year to spend time together. According to JapanToday, 63% of people want to find a boyfriend or girlfriend over Christmas, the majority saying that Christmas ‘is the season of love’ (JapanToday). It’s not surprising considering - the commercial aspect of present-giving mixed with the rosy fantasy-land of upmarket places like Ginza and the Tokyo Bay area create the perfect atmosphere for spending time with that special person.

    My dating here tends to ebb and flow- I go to an event, meet girls, go out with one of them once or twice, realize that something doesn't really click, take a break for a while, and then repeat. Somehow, this week turned into a big flow; I ended up with three solid days of dates, and if I didn't have year-end parties to go to, I suspect there would be more. Tonight was with Miyuki, the girl I went out with last Monday.

    The absolute best way to see the night unfold is to click here, or watch the slideshow below. Make sure to turn on captions!

    Wall-E exceeded expectations, kind of like every Pixar film I've seen to date. It was simultaneously beautiful, hilarious, and a strong commentary on consumerism, all with a ton of kid appeal and very little dialogue. It was awesome to see my friend Tara's name in the credits! I told the Japanese kids about Pixar's beautiful Emeryville campus, and they couldn't believe it- only top government ministry officials get the kind of amenities tech firm employees take for granted in the states.

    I'm scheduled for another date tomorrow, with a girl I met at Friday's three-month-anniversary nomikai. I feel pretty good about Miyuki, and we're going out Christmas (the day after), so tomorrow's looking to turn into more of a casual friend-type expedition out to Yokohama. I find that most people here take romance slowly enough that backing a date into a platonic thing is a non-issue.

    Oy, it's really time for bed here. Night!

Mad (guy) player skills

If I had half the luck I had with guys, I'd be rolling in feminine affection.

So far I have:

-Been treated to an extravagant Ginza wine-and-dine (but mostly wine), replete with 25-year-old kimono-beclad beauties serving me 40-year-old whiskey.

-Picked up DJ's in clubs, through friends, and right out on the street.

-Been treated to drinks and snacks by random dudes I meet on/walking on/walking off the train.

-Ended up guestlisted anywhere in Shibuya I'd like.

-Grabbed phone numbers and invitations to go out from massage therapists, managers, businessmen, and students.

I got treated to a stupid-expensive meal today, due only to the fact that I go out when I get invited, have fun, and talk to everyone I can. If you're 留学生ing in Tokyo and spending your time hanging out with other exchange students, seeing then same people in the same Izakaya's, cut it out, go meet some Japanese people, and make the most of your time here. You're not in Japan to hang out with westerners. They're wonderful, they're great for sharing experiences, but you've only got a little time here, so give it up. You can hang out with 外国人 any time you'd like, but you only get to hang out with 日本人 for a few short months.

Have fun, y'all- this break is what you make of it. As for me, it's a few nights of dating, drinking, sleeping, and networking, then a trip out to Nagoya to see Sandy, a girl from my home college that invited me out to my family's place for the holidays. Merry Jesus-day, happy hanukkah, and a festive pagan solstice to all.

Posing for a picture below the staircase.

Admiring the kids' beautifully-sculpted sugar santas

Sam insisted I pose by the chef, and insisted the chef *try* to smile. I think he's giving it a damned good amount of effort there.

An accordian player? Really? He was damned good, too. Not shown: the hot tenor saxophone-playing J-girl.

I'm so glad I went out- it was a last-minute decision, and had I not hopped off the Hanzomon line, I would have spent the night at home.

Ok, actually getting to today's event wasn't due to me- it was Sam, the awesome front-and-center Jew in the above picture, that hooked me up with these guys and their crazy holiday party. That said, I feel (and know) like these sorts of opportunities are all around- I came to this knowing practically nobody, and three months in, I have enough contacts to bury me in clubs, alcohol, jobs (mebbe less of a bury and more of a lightly sprinkle), and general recreation. For a foriegner in Tokyo, life is about one choice: are you going to have fun, or not? If you set your mind to it, you can meet new people every night, keep up your grades, and grab silly discounts everywhere you go. Most people love foriegners, and if the people you're with don't, meet some new people. This country is what you make it- go out and make it great.   

           

A fashionista tomboy, pretty holiday lighting, and $7 coffee.

    Miyuki, a girl from the Friday's gokon, had today off work, so we got together after my internship was out to celebrate. We met up at Harajuku, and had a light dinner and drinks at a little restaurant tucked below the shopping plaza right outside the subway station.

    It was a great time. Miyuki's an odd amalgram of fashionista and tomboy; she works in a Jaeger boutique and went to France to intern with a fashion house, but she also road-bikes, surfs, and (gasp!) eats apples without peeling them, all to the chagrin of her coworkers and superiors. It was refreshing to get a new perspective on Japanese society, one other than the party-line salarymen, know-it-all academics, or fresh-faced college first-years. This is a girl who likes to live a tiny bit outside the lines Japan paints for women, and catches all sorts of flak for it.

    It was really surprising to me to find a girl that not only rides a bike, but rides a road bike, and loves it. We want to go riding together, so I need to go track down some sort of cycle, and not one of those granny cruisers everyone seems to use here. Apparently road bikes can be found pretty cheap here, and I think I'll try to get one and use it for my school commute. It's about 15 kilometers (10 miles), but it seems like about half of those are on a bike path and another 2 or 3 on a big boulevard, so I'm imagining it can't take much longer than the hour-ish of the train commute. Plus, all this gourmet food and drink is fattening my belly and lightening my wallet, and a little more exercise and less train money can't hurt stuff.

    Starting off with hot "herb whiskey," a blend of Canadian Club, rosehips, hot water, a random spice or two, and honey. Delicious, if a little weak. She got the chamomile version, but we decided mine was the tastier one.

Toasting good company and a day off work. I had my SLR and a 50mm prime lens with me today, a change from the tiny little Panasonic LX3 I've been carrying around lately. I forgot how much I love the little prime! I've been spending a lot of time at 24mm, trying to get everything I can see into the frame, but there's nothing like 75mm and f/1.8 to make people pictures look really, really good. I also forgot how much better the flash is on the DSLR- I'm used to on-camera flashes totally blowing out faces at this range, but the skin tone is perfect.

Forgot to take a picture of the food, but it was tasty- a very tender (and damned reasonably priced) steak, with a light Worcestershire glaze and bay leaves and parmesan on the side, then espresso over ice cream for dessert. This might have been the best price/quality/ambiance ratio I've run into yet here; dinner, drinks, and dessert for two (in a very cool little comfy-chair, low-table booth) just crossed 5000 yen.

Next, it was on to stroll Harajuku and Omote-Sando, which are both lit up beautifully for the holidays.

Gucci

Christmas tree in Harajuku. Once we got outside, I wished I had brought the other camera, too: with a 24mm f/2 wide-angle and a good 3-4 stops worth of vibration reduction, handheld nighttime shots of buildings and landscapes are a pinch.  I think the combination of the two (75mm effective prime for people, 24-60mm zoom for everything else) basically covers all your bases. The Panasonic is f/2.8 and 60mm and the tele end, which isn't the worst for portraits, but also isn't near as fast or sharp as a 50mm prime.

Some sort of VIP buying some sort of expensive designer thing. As soon as I took out my camera, a guy asked me not to take pictures, but once he turned away, I popped off a quick shot, and luckily it came out great. If you want to shop discreetly, why are you doing it in a brightly lit room separated from a sidewalk by a wall of glass? Plus, the guy asking me not to photograph them wasn't even a security guard, much less a cop; he was a middle-aged, plain-clothed, and not the least bit intimidating. 撮らない訳はなかった (Japanese for "there was no reason not to take a picture").

Strolling past Commes de Garcons, one of the many beautifully-designed, overpriced fashion houses in the area.

After we reached the end of the strip, there was still some time before last train, so we decided to go for coffee. We found a cool little restaurant with a terrace overlooking the strip (we both seem to share a scoffed-at-by-others love of outdoor dining, and ended up being the only ones outside), and the staff lit up a heater and brought out some blankets for us.

In America, if a small cup of black coffee is $2.50, that better be the best cup of coffee you've ever had in your life. Not so in Japan, where Starbucks starts at around there and climbs rapidly. I'm used to paying $2-4 for a cup of coffee, but this was my first time with nonalcoholic drink prices this high. Naturally, we wanted to know what MARUYAMA coffee was and what made it $1 more than regular, and naturally, the waitress' vague answer made us order a cup to try it. We also got a cup of regular and a plate of tiny cookies.

The Maruyama coffee came in a press, and on pouring it into the cup, the first thing I noticed was the very light color. This is partly because, I'm imagining, the Maruyama guys don't scorch their beans like Peet's or Starbucks, but I also think they made it a little on the weak side. That said, it was damned good coffee- I was proud of myself for guessing African or Indonesian beans, and confirming it later on the interwebs. It was smooth as hell, but earthy for how thin it was, and had some nice little chocolate and berry notes going on. It took awhile of tasting different blends and comparing them with scent oils (mostly during my either bored or sleepy downtime at Starbucks) to get my coffee palate sorted out, but it's stuck with me pretty well. Would I pay $7 for this coffee again? Hell no- it was good, all right, but it didn't hold a candle to anything at San Francisco's Philz, the standard-bearer of superior black coffee.

I don't care if there's a $7 cup of coffee on your menu, the $6 cup should still taste great. Not so in this case; it was drinkable, but only barely. I don't know if it was overbrewed or just made with old or scorched beans, but we both found it really disappointing.

On the other hand, the tiny cookies were excellent. Eat a truffle, and your world turns to chocolate as it melts in your mouth, completely enveloping you. Miyuki had to tap me to see if I was still alive.

Oh my god, tiny, tiny Madelines!

The high price of the coffee starts to become a little justifiable if you think of it as a fee for the ambiance, service, and location. I'm not saying it's not ridiculous, but I might come here again on a special occasion- the heater, blankets, festively lit street, and cute company made for a savory experience. We headed out to the subway station, where she caught the Ginza and I caught the Hanzomon. I barely understand the opposite sex in my own country, let alone an alien society like Japan, but I've found that taking dates as nothing more and nothing less than pleasant evenings getting to know another person works out for the better. That said, I wouldn't mind seeing this girl again- I'd never met a road-biking Japanese surfer girl before, but I think I'm pretty sold.

Update: Going on a picnic tomorrow!

Since I already had the big DSLR with me, I took some pictures in the station while I was waiting for the last train. I've been getting back into black and white more recently, especially doing conversions from color while adjusting the gain on each color channel. It gives you a lot more play than a single contrast slider or curves adjustment.

Full photo set, as usual, on Flickr.