The Hachiko entrance of Shibuya Station from a recent day & night in Tokyo. The main static set piece here is time-lapse footage shot from a massive Starbucks (that somehow only serves tall drinks) overlooking of one of the most crowded intersections I’ve ever seen.

CNSMHB brought back a considerable amount of footage from their recent trip to Kenya & Sudan which I’ve just started to sift through. I hope we’ll have the chance to go back next year with some real video cameras and audio gear.

The on camera TX1 audio leaves a little to be desired in high decibel situations. I think a possible solution is to have some sort of pocket-sized portable audio recorder with a built in attenuator (like this Edirol R09 – I think this is what Matt Searles from Asymmetricbizcult told me he uses). I never cease to enjoy deluding myself by thinking that yet another bit of technology is the solution to all my problems.

This episode is the first restaurant-based deconstructing dinner. Next up, sausages uncased!! Or not. See em all!

Despite what I said about the photos for the most part sucking, some of the sumo ones turned out to be pretty good in an non-ironic enjoyment big-boy homoeroticism kinda way. Here’s the full set.

I’m not finished editing and uploading entirely but I have to say so far I’m a little disappointed in the still photographs I came back with. The high dynamic range shots in Japan HDR Flickr Pool (including this one of the Tokyo Tower from heiwa4126) are much, much better.

It would be convenient to blame the TX1 (a number of otherwise interesting shots are marred by high grain or slight motion blur) but it’s more fair to say it’s my own fault for overemphasizing video and making still photographs a secondary priority. Next time, I will bring two dedicated cameras and make more of an effort.

Shinjuku is several orders of magnitude more frentic than the brand of chaos that normally permeates my life in Allston. I find it actively hard to think thoughts more complicated than ‘Wow’ amidst this crush of light, noise and crowd. If Boston is quiet by comparison, Kansas is so far away (physically, cognitively, emotionally) it might as well not even exist.

If you’re interested in temporally specific miscellany from my upcoming trip to Tokyo check my new temporary blog q813. Or heck throw the q813 feed in your feed reader and get the mind-numbingly exciting updates in pseudoreal (quasireal?) time. And you might as well add my main quasify feed at the same time if you haven’t already. Cool.

A quick look at what others are doing to mark the day. Tanabata herself is celebrating her 7th wedding anniversary, while innocentgirl seems happier to not have made the same decision. K&S is making special dishes (with photos of good and bad yomogi/mugwort). Abbey walks us through translations of more traditional Tanabata requests (‘To have a stag beetle…’).

As for myself, Three Extremes is only 1/3rd Japanese but it’ll have to do.