Life in Japan - Pictures galore !! Arcades, Temples, Rainy days, etc

[Yakumo]

One thing you'll have to watch out for if you ever come to Japan are the japanese swat bogs as I call them. These are a right pain in the arse to use and first timers may stand around for a good 5 minutes trying to figure out just how the hell you use them.

The above picture was taken today at Chofu Station (not the Chofu in Tokyo) where I live. You'll notice there is no toilet paper, only a little blue basket. that's because in this station you're meant to buy some tissues out side the toilet from the machine then dump the wrapping in the blue basket if you use all the paper. Actually this toilet is pretty clean concidering the picture was taken at 6:15 pm. 6 years ago however I wouldn't have never dreamed of visiting the train station toilets in Shinjuku or Shibuya up in Tokyo. YUCK !

Yakumo

[Paulo]

No shitting for me till i get back to a proper toilet...

[zappenduster]

ok and now solve the riddle for me how do you use this thing ?

[Paulo]

[Szczepaniak]

You'll find those toilets in France quite a bit too. Not everywhere, but in a lot of places built years ago.

Bloody awful things to use, especially after a night cap or several. ;)

[Yakumo]

It was a beautiful day today so I decided to take a walk past Kokura castle on the way home from work. Here's a few pictures I took plus a short video as well. The quality of the video is pretty nice but I removed the audio thanks to the phone picking up mostly wind sounds.

Remember I told you that Kokura Castle was surrounded by water?


And in that water are these Karp.


This is a photo of the main gate.


This huge place is called River Walk. It's a massive and I mean MASSIVE shopping center. The cinema in here is also very good with one of the biggest screens i've seen in Japan. This is where I see all my movies :) You can see the side of this place on the video download linked below.


Here's a pretty short video that I took with my phone. The sound has been removed and video converted from ASF to XVid.
http://segagagadomain.com/KokuraCastle-phone.avi

Yakumo

[Paulo]

Really nice!

[Yakumo]

Whilst out and about on the bike today I stumbled across this TV burial place :( The sad thing is that some of these TVs are better than what some of us are using to game on. What's even sadder is that 90% of them will work fine. The Japanese really waste money.

Sorry for the hazy image but the sun was directly in front of me when I took the picture.

Yakumo

[SilverBolt]

Wow that's one big pile of tv's

[Yakumo]

Wow that's one big pile of tv's

I've seen bigger as well. About 6 years ago I only had a shitty 14" TV so I went to one of these dumps and grabbed myself a nice 26" NEC TV (almost did my back in too) that I used for almost two years before it died. The picture was great as well plus it even had a SCART RGB Input !!!! That's pretty rare in Japan. No idea why it died though. One day I came to switch it one and nothing. It was as if the power just wasn't getting to it. Give it another few years and I bet plasmers will start to turn up in those dumps :D I've already seen a Sharp LCD TV (abut 12" or 14") that was battered to hell.

Yakumo

[kizzycrew]

Yes, i'm using a new, but obviously very small 14 inch TV. I wish we had dumps like that in England tbh. But loved the video, it makes me want to visit the smaller places in Japan now :D

~~GV

[AntiPasta]

Yes, i'm using a new, but obviously very small 14 inch TV. I wish we had dumps like that in England tbh. But loved the video, it makes me want to visit the smaller places in Japan now :D

~~GV

I had something similar in my town (well, not as lush in terms of new TVs, but I found a working MegaCD there, for instance), but a few months ago they decided to no longer allow people to take stuff out of there :smt071

[Yakumo]

Isn't that where you found the "Yakumo" PC, Anti?

Yakumo

[CpSteve]

OMG

every time you post pics, my desire to return in Japan grows more and more... :smt022

I hope to enjoy a lot more my TRIP in August...


less videogames search more lived life :smt023

[Perkunas]

I had something similar in my town (well, not as lush in terms of new TVs, but I found a working MegaCD there, for instance), but a few months ago they decided to no longer allow people to take stuff out of there :smt071

Hehe, everytime I go to the container park in my town I always find piles and piles of broken keyboards, pc cases, monitors, television sets,... Some stuff works, and there's some older stuff too (mostly C64/Amiga/...) occasionally, but it's that dirty and broken, it's not worth picking up...

A safer bet is to head to the recycle shop where they sometimes sell game systems or even televisions very cheap. ^_^ (not that I want another giant television set on my room ;p)
I once bought a 32X there for like 2,5 euro's, shame it was broken though. Luckely, I've bought stuff that worked too. ;p

[ccovell]

Hi, folks.

I finally got a nice new camera, so I have taken some pics from around my area as well. Please check out the page below:

http://disgruntleddesigner.com/chris...out/index.html

Mostly it's nature pics, but there are some pics of an arcade at the very bottom. Enjoy!

[Yakumo]

some nice pictures there ccovell. What part of japan do you live in?

Yakumo

[ccovell]

I'm in the northeast, in Kitakami, Iwate Prefecture.

My page explains it a bit: http://www.zyx.com/chrisc/lifeinjapan.html

[Paulo]

real nice pictures!

[PhantasyStar]

Wow, I've never seen a Japanese Arcade center. That looks awesome. Great pictures. Unfortunately, there aren't any Arcade centers where I live anymore.