coming soon

shadow

topdog

trike

street art and cell phone

The awesome graffiti I found in Shibuya yestaurday when wandering.

From Shibuya Graf ...

From Shibuya Graf ...

From Shibuya Graf ...

Here is my Japanese cell phone! It is meant for Japanese kids in elementary school. The typography on the key pad is all cute and all the menus have cute little characters representing each phone feature. When I bought the phone it came with the kids gift bag which included a phone case and a sticker pack. Way cool. My phone rocks everybody elses. Feature wise, the phone is really sweet. I can translate japanese to english and english to japanese. That is the best feature. Also, in Japan we don't call anybody at all, we email. So I'm really good at text messaging now. Ohh yeah, phone is completely in Japanese. So. Difficult. But, I am pretty good at it now and I often message people in Japanese.

From Shibuya Graf ...

From Shibuya Graf ...

things I miss: goldfish snack crackers

So I'm realizing that I only have a little over a month left in Japan. In Japanese time, that's about a little less then half of week. Time goes by really quickly here. Thus, I will be trying to update my blog thingy more then "once a trip to Japan".

The Japanese have better voices then Americans. True.
I love Karaoke and it is one my favorite default things to do in Japan. It's so much fun going with Japanese people. Of the bands they like, they can sing English songs really really well. For Japanese songs, I try to sing them as fast I can read hiragana. I usually end up singing the last note of each line because that's about as fast as I can read... one character in the time it takes to sing one line. So my singing goes something like... blah blah blah blah blah blah NA! blah blah blah blah blah blah KA! I'm horrible. But. So Fun. Karaoke probably like twice a week. Occassionally we will do the all night karaoke, 12-5 for 1,200 yen. Good deal + good times = the samurai way.

Shibuya. Wander.
Went to Shibuya today to just wander. I walked pretty far down some back alleys and found a really nice graffitiness with characters from doremon incorporated into the typography. Very cool, I will post some pictures later. Bought a jacket from a used select shop for 3,000 yen. I really like it a lot expecially since it was super cheap. The used clothes select shops are my favorite clothing stores in Japan. They bassically sell used clothes but very modern stuff... not from the 80's and 90's like other used stores. Japanese kids buy clothes and sell them back when they don't want to wear them anymore. There are a ton of them, 4 I've been to in Yokohama and about 6 I've been to around Tokyo. Overall, they have all the brandname clothes but for pretty cheap and sometimes really really cheap. It's fun too, kinda like treasure hunting. Anyways, I don't think I've bought any new clothes in Japan yet. I went to the Medicom gallery/store today to look at all the vinyl toys/kubricks/bearbricks... very cool but very very expensive. They have the most amazing buisness model ever.

MC Escher
I went to the MC Escher exhibit at a museum in Shibuya. MC Escher is the dorkiest artist ever and I LOVE it. There were probably 150+ originally works of his on display and I knew at least 30 of them going into the show. His sureal stuff was just amazing seeing in person. Overall, MC Escher is my favorite rapper now.

Pictures!
I have yet to really compile all my pictures and post them online for the world to see. I am working on it. But, alas, Japan makes it difficult to get anything done. In the coming week I should have a sweet gallery going. Here's the link but it doesn't that many photos uploaded now:

http://picasaweb.google.com/travis.chen

Dislocated Shoulder!!

From Dislocated Sh...

Me and my bestest buddy Michiko! She is so awesome! That day we went to Yokohama station and tried to find a 'Wat' cd. Aparently I look like some Japanese pop star named Wentz, a member of 'Wat'. Pretty much every young Japanese person I meet imediately thinks of that nickname for me. So much so that I now often answer to the name Wentz without even thinking about it.

A couple weeks ago I met this awesome guy named Motoya at a skateshop. He's a Yokohama skateboarder and I've gone skateboarding with him a couple times in downtown Yokohama. Last weekend, we descided to go to the skatepark in Kamakura. It was soooo fun, it was just me and eight Japanese guys who don't speak english skateboarding a couple half pipes near the beach. Really one of the best experiances I have had in Japan so far. About six hours into skateboarding I managed to fall of my board pretty hard and dislocate my shoulder. I wasn't really in pain right away but I knew it was dislocated cause I could see the bone protruding from my chest. Motoya and the gang took me too the emergency room where I had to wait 3 hours to see a doctor! By then I was in the worst pain I have ever felt in my life but I was still in good spirits because the Japanese guys I was with were hilarious. The doctor tied this sandbag like thing to my arm and made it fall to the ground. Five minutes of that and the bond popped back in and the pain went away. It was quite the experiance going through all that and not being able to really talk to anybody in English. After, the my skateboarding buddies took me to eat dinner and we had a contest to see who could drink the most Tabasco sauce. It was an amazing day!! Above is a picture of Motoya standing on all of our skateboards. Mine is the one with pink wheels. It cost me 18,000 yen (about 160 dollars!!)

Here's all the Macu Donolds we ate at the skatepark.

From Dislocated Sh...

Here is me in my sling. I have to keep it like that for a couple more weeks and I just found out that I actually cracked my shoulder. Doctor says it should be fine though. It hasn't really been bothersome and it doesn't hurt at all so I am all good. If anything it's a good way to meet people, haha.

From Dislocated Sh...

Here's the only photo I took on my little day in Akihabara. I bought a hacker keyboard and a videogame. It is so hard not to buy stuff there!

holy crap, japan

i'm about to leave for japan. an hour now before the airport shuttle picks me up. this is nuts! it was great seeing everybody before i left. had a lotta fun my last week in the vine. thanks all! now, japanese crazy fun time, sugoi!

Z-Flex

I just really like this photo. I have the yellow.