My walk home from work

My walk home from work (not 56k friendly)

It's a beautiful day today because I finished work at 12:30pm and the sun is shining. Normally I couldn't give a crap about the sun shining since I'm a winter guy. Anyway, I finished work early which gave me the happy joy joy feeling of taking a few pictures for you guys :ramen

Now before I start I must make it clear that I don't live in a big city. I live in Shimonoseki which is actually about the size of Liverpool in the UK (Sorry non-British readers) but the area I live in is right on the end of Shimonoseki called Chofu. It's quite a famous place too or so I keep getting told. Anyway, after Chofu all you get are country side towns which explains why the area I live in looks a bit like the countryside.

OK, after getting of the train in most places in Japan you will be presented with a mass of bikes just like this lot.


Most of these bikes belong to bloody school kids (teenagers) who take up half the seats on the trains It's always a good idea if you park your bike here to make sure you remember where you have parked it because most of the bikes look identical. Luckily I bought a new black one so it's easy to spot amongst all the silver bikes.

Japan is full of narrow streets just like this one I walk down to my home. These aren't one way streets either. Cars belt up and down this tinny road at speeds up to 50kmph (sorry but I have no idea what that is in mph even though I should) and I myself have been guilty of doing 60kmph on it at night. These roads are normally poorly lit and filled with far too many overhead cables.

The yellow area is meant for pedestrians or cyclists only but that doesn't stop cars using it.

On a day like today I will normally stop off at the beer machine to grab myself a nice refreshing ice cold beer.


This is my place. The ugly white pipes are for the air conditioners. The guy who installed the upstairs one was F*cking useless since the pipe fell off in winter. The ground floor window (1st floor to our American readers) window to the right is my PC Room's window.


Don't forget that the keys you use are soo out of date


and finally here's a view from my PC window looking on to the train track.


Yakumo

 

You're welcome ;-) Getting shots without people in the way isn't that difficuilt here or at least it isn't at around 1 to 3 in the afternoon. I'm actually surprised at how good the pictures turned out since I took them with my phone (Had to shink them down for the forum though).

Yakumo

 

that is your phone!!! :O, looks like a really calmed place

 

Looks really nice, shame about all the overhead pylons though, they ruin the view a bit

 

Dude, you should come to Amsterdam/Utrecht/Leiden in Holland... trust me it can be way worse ;-)

But those are very nice pictures, especially considering they were taken with a cell phone! Dammit, my digicam's pictures look about as good as that...

 

Man, I'd hate to see what Amsterdam/Utrecht/Leiden in Holland look like Anti. I thought this was bad concidering I live in a small town. Saying that, China has to be the worst.

Yeah, they are taken with my phone. The original size of the pictures is just the same as a digital camera so I shrink them down for the board. The problem with the phone camera is that the auto zoom will focus on one point leaving parts around it slightly out of focus. You can notice this on the beer machine picture. Luckily the auto focus can be switched off. It also has a x2 zoom (real one not digital).

Yakumo

 

It's so rare to find another person who says that. Most seem to stare at me like I'm some kind of freak when I say I prefer winter :smt042

Cool photos btw. Beer from vending machines... gets me every time.

 

actually most parts of africa are worst than china, some slums area in east london & brixton/hackney also worse
wonder what makes china the worst? beijing shanghai shenzhen all those towns are in china and now already match (perhaps better) than tokyo.
come to think of it, if china really is worst, those hundreds of US and european companies begging to set up business in china & wanting to enter china market are complete moron executives

 

Very nice, thanks!

How often does the train go by, and how loud is it?

Ground floor works for some Americans too. :-D

 

the trains don't go by very often, maybe about 3 to 5 times per hour (peak time) and not at all after 11:30 pm till 6:20am. They aren't that loud really since the apartments behind ours takes the noise away I don't even notice them with the window closed.

Yakumo

PS: I thought Americans say first floor for what we called ground floor. I was really confused the first time I came to Japan with the odd (for me at first) floor numbers.

 

I guess it depends.

1st floor
ground floor
entry level

A lot of times you hear an entry level job described as "getting in on the ground floor".

 

Thanks for reminding me about all the things which make Japan the richest third world country.

 

Brilliant Yakumo......superb pics too...amazing they come from a phone.....

Anyone else want to share their path to work? (with pics of course)

 

How about my walk from my bedroom to my "office"

 

Very nice!
That street scene with all the hanging wires reminds me of the towns in Shenmue!

 

nice,

Do the beer machines offer beer 24h or do they have a timer in them to restrict sales at certian times?

Your mail box says mark smith. so where you originaly from?

 

You know my brother took a trip to japan and i must say im shocked at the video he showed us of how clean the streets and even the subway looked, still its a bit odd that as advanced as japan is, they havent really adopted the debit systems thats been extremely popular over here, still from teh video i saw it looked like a very intresting place, and the cross walk in tokyo is crazy(i never seen so many people cross one street in my life).

 

Well, doesn't something like 1 million people use the train station every day in Tokyo? I think that's what I saw on a TV show once. No wonder the cross walks are packed.

 

Yeah, that other high-tech invention too... the piece of paper that we know as a bank note, or check. Something else they don't do, and I know why. They're only around so poor people will bounce them, and increase revenue for the banks. Anyways, back on the debit thing... it's there, but not embraced. Japanese people on the whole don't see it as an inconvenience. They'd rather carry around $1000 USD on them at any given time. :/

Depends on what you mean "the" train station. I've heard estimates that Shinjuku gets 2-3 million per day. Tokyo station would be pretty close to that, and then there's probably 10 or so others (Ikebukuro, Shibuya, Ginza, etc.) that would get a fraction of that, but would still be a stupidly huge number.