An interesting contrast here I felt with the autumn tree, the modern reflective glass building and caught in the reflection an older building’s rooftop hut (presumably an elevator covering). The building was on the edge of the Shibuya district, and was one of the images I captured on my walk from Harajuku to Shibuya on Sunday morning a week ago.

An autumn leaf taken just outside the Canon S Tower building near Shinagawa station. You can see this photo and two full resolution segments from it (one, two) in my Flickr set.

Went over to the Bic Camera store just outside Yurakucho station to see if they had CF wireless cards and a SIM card reader for work. At the main entrance there was a huge crowd gathered, and a collection of storm troopers, Darth Vader and others from Star Wars (no R2-D2 or C3PO though). Seems that today (November 23, 2005) is the launch date for the episode III DVD here in Japan. It seems to be somewhat pricey too at ¥3,800 (around US$35).

Walking in the Ginza I was snapping street shots “from the hip” and somehow caught this image which normally I would just delete. For some reason though it caught my attention as I skimmed through the thumbnails. It was slightly larger pre-processing, catching more of the pavement either side, so I cropped it down to this size and then removed the colour from everywhere except the orange stitching (and all of that was done using the Gimp on the Linux laptop since I don’t have the PowerBook with me).

Walking from Jingu-bashi towards Yoyogi-koen and the NHK Broadcasting Centre I passed by a number of bands just set up on the side of the pavement and putting everything they had into their music. The guy in the photo is part of a band that seemed to be called Burst, and they were probably the best of those playing when I walked through.

Inspired by a photo I saw a while back on Ben’s Photo Sydney blog, I snapped this shot of a single barb in the barbed wire fencing alongside one portion of the Daibutsu hiking trail.

A couple more trees in their autumn colours, these from along the Daibutsu hiking trail.

More photos from the morning in Harajuku. I didn’t spend that long on the bridge, but I got quite a lot of photos that I like of the kids in their costumes. I will probably post more later in the week too.

All the girls in these photos were later arrivals, and on the road side of the area. There seemed to be two large groups of girls, and then a number of pairs. Most of them were dragging small suitcases and set themselves up in one area where they stayed. Unlike descriptions I’ve read in the past about the girls dress styles being gothic in nature (i.e. mostly black), there were quite a few in bright coloured costumes today as well as the black goth-style outfits.

When I arrived at the Jingu-bashi bridge just outside Harajuku JR station there was nobody there. So I walked through the Harajuku shopping district up to the Omote-sando subway station and back. On my return, the area was transformed. There were several groups of the now world famous Harajuku girls and at least as many, if not more, tourists and photographers with cameras at the ready. Point a camera at them and they pose. Ask to be photographed with them and they oblige, and always with a smile.

According to my Lonely Planet guide book, many of them are ijime-ko, or victims of bullying at school. I guess it shouldn’t surprise me as kids can be pretty cruel, but in Japan I’d never have guessed that bullying was a problem. Letalone one sufficient to prompt this kind of reaction. Bullied or not, they were all incredibly polite and friendly, both to each other and the hundreds of tourists asking for photos with them.