Japan : Venus Fort entertainment arcade

Odaiba Venus Fort is the first 'theme park-like' shopping mall in Japan. Built in 1999, our guidebooks described it as a "theme park for ladies". We weren't especially interested, but had read (and been told by friends) that it was quite an experience.

Throughout the whole holiday I had wanted to go into a Pachinko parlour, but for one reason or another I didn't get round to it. I was pleased however to find a Pachinko-lite coin-op entertainment game area in Venus Fort. This is where I made the following recording. I slowly weaved around the different types of game, hoping to build an interesting collage of sound.



Recorded on 20 March 2009

Japan : Tokyo Big Sight - conveyor

I briefly mentioned in my last post that I found the Tokyo Big Sight building in Odaiba quite impressive. Tokyo big Sight is a popular name for what really is the Tokyo International Exhibition Center. The day we were there was the day of a huge anime and manga convention, which we decided to go to. Unfortunately our shoe-string budget didn't really stretch far enough to cover the entrance fee. We therefore spend some time navigating the huge building only to have to found our way back again after a brief stop.

While traversing the building we hopped on a conveyor belt that took us down a long corrider flanked by excited Otaku.





Recorded on 20 March 2009

Japan : Odaiba

Quoting Wikipedia: "Odaiba (お台場?) is a large artificial island in Tokyo Bay, Japan, across the Rainbow Bridge from central Tokyo. It was initially built for defensive purposes in the 1800s, dramatically expanded during the late 20th century as a seaport district, and has developed since the 1990s as a major commercial, residential and leisure area."

We spent a long day in Odaiba. Starting off having been too late to get into the Tsukiji Fish Market we took the Yurikamome Line from Shimbashi Station to Ariake Station. On arrival I bought an Onigiri and my first Japanese-bought Umeboshi... I thought the Umeboshi was a bit sweeter than the ones I was used to from Clearspring

Odaiba is modern, pristine and turned out to be one of the places that I felt I wanted to photograph the most. There were lots of very impressive buildings such as the Tokyo Big Sight and the Fuji TV Building, which I photographed to death.

We checked out the Panasonic Center, Venus Fort (a shopping center/theme park for ladies), the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovationand ended the day taking lots of night-photography at the waterfront. We had a great day!





Recorded on 20 March 2009

Japan : Ueno Park - Bells of Time

Sounding through clouds of flowers - is it the bell in Ueno or Asakusa?
What was alluded to in the this well-known Haiku by Matsuo Basho is this bell. The "bells of time" played the part of informing Edo citizens of the time of day. This bell on Ueno hill was one such bell.
The first bell was cast in 1666. The present bell was recast at the Kanno-ji temple in Yanaka in 1787.
Thanks to the effots of the volunteers protecting the belfry, the bell issues it's time-honoured sound three times a day - at 6am, 6pm and at noon.
"The bells of time" has been selected as one of the "one hundred selections of Japanese sounds and scenes which will remain forever", settled by Agency of environment since June 1996.

Near the end of our visit to Ueno Park we noticed a sign upon which the above text was engraved. I couldn't resist hanging around for 20 minutes just to snatch a recording of the 6pm ringing.






Recorded on 16 March 2009