Neil Hopcroft

A digital misfit

In the shadow of the communication revolution

stompyboots and timsmith are in Japan at the moment, so I have been showing them a few of the sights over here. They seemed quite impressed with the Christon Cafe on Friday night, and yesterday was a lot of walking around Odaiba…I hope they enjoyed that too, but they were looking a little tired by the end of it, perhaps too much walking around.

Its good to have people around that I can talk to, most of the people I work with don’t speak English as their first language, and I’m not sure I’d want to talk to many of them about general stuff going on in my life anyways.

Today I went to the park and was surprise just how busy it was there. It is cherry blossom time here, its a little earlier than normal this year because its been a mild winter. Everyone seemed fascinated by the flowers and there were loads of really serious photographers setting up huge lenses to take pictures of the trees. For me, though, it was more interesting watching how the people were behaving, so I was taking pictures of them taking pictures of trees.

For some reason I felt really strange when I was in the park, I think it was reminding me of a wonderful day I had at Hever Castle just before I left England, and how I wanted that day to last forever.

Out of the shadow of the Docomo building and heading into Shinjuku I discovered a ‘Bogner Fashion’ clothes shop…I assume its a different Bognor….and a Beatles themed McDonalds with a clay mock up of Abbey Road in the window.

Then I figured I’d take a wander around one of the Shinjuku department stores I’ve not explored before, only to discover they had a RecoFan (CD&DVD shop) having a 100Yen sale on a couple of racks of CDs outside. I walked away (after a minor incident with the security alarm…it went off as I was trying to go to the cash desk) with 15 CDs. I’ve not had a chance to play many of them yet, but Sense of Shapes ‘Etoile'[0] was probably worth half of what I paid for the whole pile, so I only really need to find another two or three songs I like and the whole exercise was worthwhile.

[0] Goth demo tape from early nineties style music recorded on modern(ish) equipment.


Categories: Memories.

/ 4 Comments

4 comments

  1. evilmandykins

    hurrah for sakura!
    and you need to post your pics somewhere! i keep thinking that you have all these digital cameras and yet post so few of your pics… unless you are putting them somewhere and, like a dunce, i am missing them…
    in other news i may have decided on a minidisc, though i keep thinking i ought to wait until they roll out himd. gah. technology is annoying in it’s advances…
    i keep meaning to ask, have you been outside of tokyo much? like to kyoto or osaka?
    wheee!

    Reply
    • neilh

      No, I tend to not be particularly organised about putting my pictures anywhere, they’re all just lying around on my hard disk, I tend to think that nobody will be very interested in them so don’t bother doing anything else with them. I rarely even look at them myself.

      Which MD player? Is it gonna be cheaper to get over here? Or is that just too much hassle/waiting? (Tim & Kate are over at the moment and might be pursuaded to cart it back to the UK)

      No, I’ve not gotten out of the big city much, a few times but its kinda difficult ‘cos nearly every means I have of getting out of the city will take me to another city without much in the way of stopping in the countryside on the way.

      Reply
      • evilmandykins

        gah! we need pictures!
        it would be cheaper there i think – the model i am after is sony mz-n910 (or the slightly newer mz-n920) ( either blue or silver is fine) if you spot one for less than 29 000 yen then it would be worth it :)
        let me knwo how to get money to you if you find one :)

        Reply

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