Author Archives: Matthew

Our House to Shinjuku Station

by Matthew Posted on July 17, 2018

Some of the things we saw as we strolled from our flat to Shinjuku station on our way to somewhere nice.

Sometimes I like to just keep it simple – grab a compact and shoot away as I’m walking.

Olympus XA / Agfa Vista Plus 200

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Shimokita to Yoyogi Park

by Matthew Posted on July 16, 2018

Nikon FM2 / Kodak Portra 400

We left Shimokitazawa with a plan to go to Yoyogi Park and visit Meiji Jungu. The journey took a while longer than we anticipated so we decided to walk part of the way and then walk around Yoyogi Park for a while and leave Meiji Jungu until the next day.

We found some cherry blossoms but there were lots of people engaged in the act of selfie taking and it was getting a bit dark so I didn’t get many frames of the chezzer blossoms. Emily had more luck than me.

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Shinjuku to Meiji Shrine and Harajuku

by Matthew Posted on July 6, 2018

Olympus XA / Agfa Vista Plus 200

The day we went to Meiji Shrine. We’d already been to Yoyogi Park after our trip to Shimokitazawa but didn’t have to visit the shrine. We headed there the next day and wandered to Harajuku to gawk at crêpe-munching teeny-boppers at Takashita Street and of course, munch some crêpes.

Meiji Jingu is pretty amazing actually. It’s set in a 700,000 m² wood – an impressive chunk of land set aside for such a project. The shrine itself was destroyed during WWII and was rebuilt afterwards. The Torii gates are the largest in the World and were built with cypress wood that was half-inched from Taiwan during he war.

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The Train to Nikko

by Matthew Posted on June 24, 2018

The train to Nikko and some munch near the station.

Nikon F100 / Fuji Industrial 100

The indeterminate puck of fried matter I’m holding in my wizened, withered, weather-beaten mit is actually yuba manju. It’s deep fried, salted tofu skin (yuba) filled with sweet red bean paste (manju). We bought these tasty morsels from Sakaeya (さかえや) a little shop on the corner of the square over the road from the train station where the buses pull in.

I’ve since learnt that this shop is somewhat famous for these snacks and that yuba is actually a local delicacy. We were served by a delightful young lady of no more than seventy years of age who skilfully willed me into buying not one, but several of these modest but immensely flavourful snackettes and I’m so glad she did because we did something downright touristy and didn’t even realise it at the time. We had a jolly nice time as we waited for the bus all thanks to the charm and charisma of an elderly and rather attractive yuba manju lady.

You’ll definitely want to be like us and go there so here’s some info-goodness for you.

http://nikkosakaeya.co.jp/shop/

To get to Nikko from Shinjuku we took the subway from Higashi-Shinjuku to Shinjuku station (¥‎140) and then from Shinjuku, the Chuo line to Ueno (JR Pass). The “Yamabito” Shinkansen took us to Utsunomiya in about 50 minutes and at Utsunomiya we changed to the local Nikko line (pictured).

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