It was really great having Wouter here last week. I’m going up to Tokyo next weekend, so I was pretty lazy this weekend. Well, I worked all day Saturday, I got 4 loads of laundry done, and I went out in the heat of the day today but still it seemed like I did a lot of nothing.

I was able to take Thursday off and travel up to Tokyo with Wouter. He quickly realized that Tokyo is a lot busier than Nagoya. We met Tomo in Marunouchi, had lunch, and then went to Bic Camera (bi-ca, bi-ca, bi-ca, bic ca-me-ra) to check out some new cameras for Tomo.

Wouter and I then went on an open roof bus tour that I definitely do not recommend. I took him to Shinjuku and overwhelmed him with Kabukicho. As a result, we passed up Shibuya and headed to Roppongi Hills to check out the City View.

I didn’t realize we could go outside on the 54th floor. But you can! Cool! So I was on the roof of Roppongi Hills, hanging out around the helipad.

We met Tomo for dinner. It was good because Wouter and I were so hungry that we were getting grumpy and couldn’t really make a decision. Tomo had a suggestion for us.

After dinner we went to Shibuya so Wouter could see the crazy intersection and then headed to Shinagawa and back to Nagoya.

I had the opportunity to work with my new camera while Wouter was visiting. I’m starting to dig it. All the pictures in the entry are from my nice, new camera. A few others in black and white are below.

Cosplay

Yesterday and today were the World Cosplay Summit in Nagoya.

What exactly is cosplay? Basically, it is dressing and acting as anime characters. I don’t think that the top cosplayers actually made it to Nagoya. I found the people who found the scene interesting to be more interesting than the scene itself. How’s that for a complex sentence? It was just too darn hot for me. I wasn’t sure when the big show was going to start, so I just took some pictures of the picture takers and then headed to Osu Kannon for another festival.

Samba

Down the street was another summer festival, or まつり. This was in Osu Kannon. There is a large Brazilian presence in Nagoya, and a samba parade is actually a part of the festival. Actually, Brazil has the largest population of people of Japanese ancestry outside of Japan (glance at the wikipedia article, it is pretty interesting). Yes, even greater than the Japanese population in the US. I had read that there was a samba parade but I wasn’t that curious to see it. However, I arrived just as it was getting ready to pass. And I had a camera, so I took a few pictures.

Here are the requisite scantily clad women.

Here is a boy with one stick and his hand.

And apparently I am of some interest to the revelers.