November Search Terms

search enginesBack in July I posted a top ten search terms for my whole site:

    1 905 29.27% hawaiian flowers
    2 49 1.58% mexico
    3 47 1.52% bayport alameda
    4 32 1.03% safari
    5 31 1.00% parrot
    6 29 0.94% magic
    7 21 0.68% beer bottles
    8 20 0.65% vxworks
    9 17 0.55% detention centre
    10 17 0.55% generation 5 ipod

November’s results tell a surprisingly different tale:

    1 3270 25.49% darth vader
    2 2301 17.93% anakin
    3 1159 9.03% hawaiian flowers
    4 553 4.31% seahorse
    5 515 4.01% camels
    6 220 1.71% bears
    7 210 1.64% duckling
    8 153 1.19% meerkats
    9 146 1.14% dragon
    10 110 0.86% jedi

The Hawaiian flowers term is still there, and at roughly the same number of people searching, but now it is third place to a strong Star Wars theme! The overall number of hits coming from search engines has risen a lot too (as has the number of hits from their crawlers in the logs).

Autumn Reflections in Shibuya

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.

Spencer

I found out today that 4 year old Spencer, son of my good friends Chris and Jessica in New York, was diagnosed with leukemia in October. He has been receiving intensive chemotherapy at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and is being a very brave young (spider)man. Our thoughts are with the whole family and especially with young Spencer who will likely be starting another round of treatment this coming week.

Get well soon Spencer

Storm Troopers at Bic Camera

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).

Jeans

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).

Street Rock

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.

More Harajuku Girl Photos

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.