My favourite shop in Tokyo

As an exchange student in Japan, I was not really into fashion and in general, didn't want to spend too much money on clothes. In most cases, my spending on clothing was due to necessity — to survive the cold in winter because coming from tropical Singapore, I didn't have any thick clothing. Most of my money, which came from the JASSO scholarship, was spent on travelling — in my year in Japan, I visited all of Japan's main islands: Honshu (of course, since that's where Tokyo is), Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku (which most Japanese I know have never visited themselves). I don't think many other exchange students travelled so much within Japan as I did! My little badge of honour.

Anyway, I was thus naturally attracted to the budget clothing stores, and the biggest one in Japan was and still is Uniqlo. Now with a presence in the US, Europe and many countries in Asia, including Singapore, it is one of the most successful Japanese companies in recent years.

But besides the usual stores, Uniqlo had a special branch called Uniqlo UT.  Located in Harajuku, it has a distinctive industrial design, with wall lines with LED displays and rows and rows of Uniqlo UT T-shirts in transparent cyclindrical containers. I believe it is the only one in the world. It was unlike anything I'd ever seen before, and the bright lighting and futuristic design was always a refreshing change from other stores in the vincity. I'd bought a few T-shirts in UT Harajuku during my year in Japan, and admittedly not always out of necessity but purely because I like some designs and the shopping experience there so much.

Back in Tokyo again, this time for vacation with Joanne, we were in Omotesando this afternoon and I decided to check out the store again. And I was surprised to see a series based on the new Evangelion movies! For the uninitiated, Evangelion, which appeared first as a 26-episode anime series, is just about the biggest anime ever. And the picture on the stickers on the T-shirt containers was a silhouette of lead character Rei Ayanami against a full moon. I knew I had to buy one of the shirts.

Rei Ayanami, one of the most famous anime characters ever. 

The current flavour of the month is Ghost in the Shell, another famous anime from the 1990s.

Joanne, who had visited Harajuku in her previous Japan trip two years ago but didn't know about the UT shop, quite liked the place too. She is not a fan of T-shirts however. Pity. She almost bought a jacket though!

 

Almost like a uniform! 

Got to love the industrial design. I learned that there are now 4 floors, when there were only 3 a couple of years ago.

The mirrors on the 2nd storey are still there, as I remembered them.

In the end I bought an Evangelion shirt and one based on the Ricoh GR Digital camera. The latter is part of a series on famous Japanese companies. The GRD is apparently a cult favourite camera in Japan, and Ricoh is still a very well respected name in digital imaging here. 

I'll be back again! (Maybe not during this trip though.)

More to come...

Japan Revisited

I really missed Tokyo and Japan!

Mitsubishi's iMIEV, the first mass produced Electric Vehicle in the world

Visitors at Asakusa temple taking in the incense smoke, which is said to give good luck.

It's great to sit down at a cafe in town and while away the time drinking coffee and people-watching.

Wind power generator in Yokohama.

Mind boggling variety.

Nagoya castle

For lonely males on week-long work trips

My camera of choice (for now)

A return to Tokyo probably wouldn't be complete without meeting some of the people with whom I was there with. I suppose I was lucky that Xianna has just started work in Tokyo, after spending a year on the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) programme. And Manuel, my mate from school during my Waseda days happened to be back in Tokyo for a brief two weeks for work. 

Xianna

Manuel

There wasn't much time to look around during this trip though. I didn't even have time to complete my souvenir shopping!

I'm actually back in Tokyo as I write this... I arrived here on holiday just yesterday afternoon, this time with Joanne. Good two weeks ahead... :)

Rainbow

I was already planning to go to Japan for vacation next Month. But then came an invitation from the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) to attend a special programme for foreign journalists. It is held about once a year and some of my colleagues have attended this in the past. The theme this time is on Japan and climate change. 

Interestingly, there are journalists — 9 of us in total — from Asia, Africa and South America on this trip. I thought this would be a great opportunity to learn about the latter two continents — I really know so little about them.

As Joanne and I loitered around Singapore's Changi Airport Terminal 3 before I entered the departure gate, last week, we spotted a little rainbow (of sorts) on the floor. I guess I can see that as a lucky sign? 

I touched down at Narita Airport on Sep 24, around 6pm. It was already dark by then, as we are approaching winter. I was somewhat swept by nostalgia. It was my first return to Tokyo since two years ago after all. And this was the only country I've lived in, albeit only for a year, other than Singapore.

More to come...

Life Squared

Using the Ricoh GXR has been somewhat a liberating experience. While the image quality and response are not as good as a DSLR like my Nikon D40X, I have been using it quite a bit since I bought it on Aug 31. 

Being relatively compact, I can really bring it wherever I go. I enjoy shooting with the D40X but carrying it out always causes me a headache, since I seldom go out with shooting pictures as my sole objective. In the days before the GXR, I sometimes looked back fondly on the days when I was using my Sony point-and-shoot, which I could just stuff into any bag I was using.

Novice baker Joanne's blueberry muffins :)

Currently, I'm particularly enamoured of the GXR's ability to shoot in square format natively. Of course you can take any picture from any camera and just crop it in Photoshop, but shooting it in square format directly allows you to compose the pictures the way you want it to turn out, instead of as an afterthought/picture-salvaging effort on the computer. (The RAW files are recorded in square format too btw, so that's a potential downside)

Chanced upon the colour windmill display outside Ang Mo Kio Hub earlier this week.

The GXR's option to store 3 custom shooting settings on the mode dial (MY1, MY2 & MY3) make it easy to switch to square format on the fly. I've set MY2 and MY3 to square frame, in colour and sepia tone respectively. 

As mentioned earlier, the GXR is easy to carry about, and this makes it great as a camera to take pictures of daily life.

Mushrooms at West Coast Park.

Put the two attributes together and that's how I arrived at the Life Squared project:

Life Squared = Life X Life = Life in Squares

"Life X Life" is in part symbolic of my relationship with Joanne, who is of course a big part of my life now. ;) At the same time, I also think it encapsulates my goal of living life to the max. 

Joanne and I having a pleasant little picnic at West Coast Park. 

As for "Life in Squares", besides the aesthetic appeal and relatively freshness of square pictures, I recall my sergeant-major from my Officer Cadet days during National Service, who's well-remembered by my company mates for his frequent pep talks when he would tell us to "square" things away, by which he meant put things in proper order. 

I liked that guy. He was very enthusiastic (sometimes overly though) and actually brought some nice changes to the the company after he arrived. I shall continue squaring away my life. 

Joanne prepared quite a spread! Despite eating a Mac's meal before that (because we had to hide from the downpour when we first arrived at the park), I licked up every last crumb. 

More to come...

Sindh province, Pakistan, after the floods

As mentioned in my previous post, I visited Pakistan for a work trip a couple of weeks back. I accompanied Singapore NGO Mercy Relief on their second disaster relief mission to Pakistan, which experienced its worst ever flooding this August.

It was my first time in Pakistan and my main concerns were security. Indeed, there were multiple bomb attacks in various parts of the country in the short 6 days I was there. Fortunately, none of them happened in Karachi, where we were based for this mission. But an Al Jazeera cameraman, who joined us for filming midway through, told us that he had a friend who died during a blast in Lahore just the day before. Despite that, he still maintained his professionalism and completed his filming over the next two days.

Indeed, if there was one thing I observed about the Pakistanis during the trip, it would be exactly that — they are a hardy bunch. Even during our visits to the various relief camps, I saw more smiling faces than sulking ones. Yes, the children are probably less aware of the severity of the situation and the whole displacement might have been more of a joyride to them, but among the adults, I saw many who seem to have gotten over their losses and are trying to improve their situation. The flood victims may have been through a lot, but life goes on.

Anyway, I was told to file a story on my fourth day, which came as a surprise because my boss had told me prior to the trip that I could file after I'd gotten back to Singapore. Fortunately, I managed to get access to a working PC with internet connection that afternoon — because of the time difference with Singapore, I had to send in my story by around 5 to 6pm local time. I say "fortunately" because on all the other days of the trip, we would have been in the middle of nowhere and there would have been no way I could have written a full story in time. It was still a mad rush though — I effectively had about two and a half hours to write the story and send in pictures. (To add to my fortune, I had already flagged my best pictures a day earlier, on the long van ride back to Karachi from the flood-hit areas, so it didn't take me very long to select the photos)

But it was worthwhile in the end, because a picture I took for my story made it to the front cover of the Straits Times. I couldn't contain my delight when Joanne first told me about it. 

The Straits Times cover on Sep 6, 2010.

The picture was of Madam Saleha, who lost her home during the flood. She now lives in a tent by the side of a road on an embankment, and depends on aid for food and water. It was a poignant picture because my story was about how the victims all want to go back to their land, where generations have lived. 

The original picture. Madam Saleha's house is somewhere under the water, in the background.

I also took many other pictures, which did not make it to print due to lack of space. I was very pleased with the Ricoh GXR camera (with the S10 24-72mm lens unit), which I had bought for this trip. It took me a while to get used to, as it operates a noticeably slower than my DSLR, but looking at the final products, I had very little to complain about.

Here are some of my personal favourites:

A boy carries a carton of read-to-eat food packs given out by Mercy Relief as his family follows him back to their makeshift tent in Thatta district, Sindh province.

Flood victims at a relief camp in Sindh queue up with their ration forms in hand while waiting for their turn to collect their carton of ready-to-eat meal packs, disbursed by Mercy Relief. 

Madam Aasi, 45, broke her left arm as she scrambled to evacuate her home when the floods came. But she recovered from her shock and eventually walked for 3 days before reaching the relief camp in Thatta district in Sindh province, where she is now staying. To her left are her daughter-in-law, who is holding her grandchild, and her daughter.

Three men walking on a flooded road near the Indus River. The last man was holding some fish he caught, presumably from the flood waters.

Ready-to-eat food packs, bought by Mercy Relief, in a store room at the office of their local NGO partner. 

Young flood victims in a relief camp in Thatta district, Sindh province.

A young girl at a relief camp in Thatta district, Sindh province.

Though short, the trip was a very memorable experience. I would never have gone to Pakistan under any other circumstances, given the volatile security situation. For the first time, I made it a point to let my mum know that I was ok at the end of every day during the trip — I just had to. I do wish to revisit this country again in less troubled times, however.

For now, I hope that all the victims are getting on well, and may they return to their land to start their lives anew soon.