29 Not-Quite-Random Walks Around Tokyo

I’ve been a bit slow in posting this one, but the audio and slides of the talk I did for Pecha Kucha Night Coventry in October has been put on the main PK website:

The explosion during slide 13 is courtesy of the party poppers left behind by an earlier speaker, Laura Elliot!

Follow @PKN_Coventry on Twitter to keep up-to-date with what’s happening with future events.

Yamanote Line platform jingles

I swear I was looking for a font when I came across this site with sound files of all the jingles played just before Yamanote trains depart from the station.

Here are a few tasters:

Meguro (clockwise)
Shinagawa (clockwise)
Takadanobaba (anticlockwise)

I don’t know why yet, but I’m sure this will come in useful one day!

queue-jumping

In preparing various proposals etc over the last few weeks, I looked again at some of my photos from SoPG: Yamanote Line.

In particular, these ones of queues outside a restaurant in Ōsaki:

I’ve resolved that next time I get a chance to work in Japan, I’m going to develop a project that relates to the time spent in these queues. I’m sure it could be a good forum for some exchanges. Being in the queue could be the the raison d’être for being in the queue. Perhaps others in the queue could recommend other good queues to be in…

Yamanote days

I have now embarked on a tour of Tokyo.

My guide is a map from the back of a gallery postcard, with all the labels surgically removed.

My starting point is every station on the Yamanote railway line.

I’ve been doing it for 2 days now, and I’m halfway round. I don’t know where the map will take me, but there’s always something interesting to be found at the other end…

Update: this became the Sites of Potentiality: Yamanote Line project.