Tokyo – Week 1 | Seizing the Light

The end of the Cherry Blossom Festivals wrecked havoc on hotel choices this time around, and we wound up in the Roppongi area for the first week of the meetings. The hotel was next to the US Embassy, and it was pretty nice. There were tons of special police (with reallly long batons) walking around and getting ready for the Obama-san visit…

Meanwhile, there were hundreds of small side streets around the hotel with cross walk signals, which made jaywalking very tempting. However, knowing that Tokyo Police had beatdown sticks, and did this, I ended up crossing streets only when appropriate.

^FACT CHECK – There were actually only three crosswalks…

The first week was spent witnessing some testing that our supplier was running. Somewhere in the middle of the week, my co-worker realized that there was a Yomiuri Giants vs Tokyo Swallows series in progress. We went to a Family Mart to get tickets, and luckily, the kid that worked there spoke Chinese. She helped us navigate the universal ticket machine at the store.

Thus, we ended up at Jingu Stadium, one of the oldest baseball stadiums in the world (Babe Ruth played there!). It was probably one of my most favorite things ever. Beers were had, and takoyaki and yakitori were devoured.

The left/right fields were reserved for the cheering clubs from each team. Each club would cheer when their team was on offense (think of a friendly European football chants). We chose the home side purely by accident, and it was fanfreakingtastic. All the cheers were in Japanese, except for the expat they got from the MLB. They reserved “LET’S GO, BALENTIEN!” for him.

Here’s some footage from the stadium:
//player.vimeo.com/video/94282635

On Friday, my co-worker left for the airport to head back to Seattle. After work, I ventured off to Roppongi Hills to check out the Andy Warhol exhibit at the Mori Art Museum. Similar to other Japanese museums, photography was prohibited. They did allow shots of his BMW M1 Art Car, though, which made me very happy.

^hot stuff

dat wing.

On Saturday, I went to the Tsukiji Fish Market and had myself a little sushi breakfast. So oishi.

So oishi

Such oishi

Much oishi

Oishi

Afterwards, I visited one of my favorite photo stops, Yodobashi Camera. They have new lenses sitting around, so I tried out some of the new Zeiss offerings. They were alright..

^FE 24-70mm f/4.0