James' Blog

Meet Claude, he’s an 8 year old Bear who currently lives in Asa Zoo, Hiroshima. He could seriously kick your ass. Unrelated: WordPress 3… ooooooooo…..

A while ago I posted a collection of amusing examples of Janglish I came across during my Japan adventures, time for some more!

Rejigged my original Time Lapse Kyoto footage.. bumped up the saturation and added some lens blur to turn it into a moving tiltshift! Pretty happy with how this turned out, i’d recommend checking it out over on youTube for the high resolution version!

Back here in the UK, building any kind of addition onto your home involves a ton of paperwork and red tape. By the looks of thing in Japan all you need is a few bits and pieces from your local hardware store and a bit of time! Here are a few unique extensions I came [...]

Technically, Janglish refers to expressions that sound like English and are used by the Japanese when speaking Japanese but is also used when mentioning amusing  mistranslations too. During my visits i’ve encountered a good few firsthand, so here are a few amusing examples along with some downright funny/unfortunate choices for brands and shopnames!

When we visited Iwatayama Monkey Park in Kyoto last year, I spent a bit of time shooting several shots of the landscape with the plan to combine them into a Panoramic. Finally, here’s the result!

Well if I ever needed a reason to start scrimping and saving every penny I have, there it is. The 1/1 RX-78 Gundam displayed previously in Shiokaze Park is on the way back with a new addition!

So I applied for JET, but found out yesterday I didn’t get selected for interview.

It’s almost becoming something of a tradition for Square Enix to release a licensed energy drink around the time a new Final Fantasy game comes out, so it’s no surprise to anyone that Suntory-licensed FFXIII drinks are currently available. What did catch my eye was this funky box on sale in the 7-11, containing both [...]

I fired off literally thousands of pictures in my time in Japan last December(doesn’t that make it sound so long ago?) so I’ve picked a few with which to revisit tilt-shift photography. This time it’s shots of Kyoto, i’m sure in time i’ll try and pick some shots for Osaka also. Enjoy!

Groovisions are a well known design house from Japan, famous for producing films and graphics for Pizzicato Five, Suchadarapah and many others. This is a fantastic music video for HALFBY’s Rodeo Machine, I’ve seen a DVD of this on sale in the Ginza every time I visit Japan but at around £35 I’m yet to [...]

Every year I push my suitcase to the absolute limit on the way home from Japan, filling every available bit of space with awesomeness from the land of the rising sun. This year I think I did particularly well!

After some 26 hours of travelling through all sorts of weather we are home with our doggie Pickles! The trip started around 7am in Tokyo and being a Saturday morning it was nice and quiet so no getting pushed around like last time, quick ride on the Yamanote from Shinjuku to Shinagawa and we were [...]

Happy New Year everyone! Lovely sunny day here in Tokyo so we headed to Meiji Jingu Shrine as many do on New Years Day

Soba noodles are a favorite anytime all over Japan, but are also traditionally enjoyed on certain special occasions such as New Years or when someone moves as they are said to bring good fortune. So as it’s New Years Eve we decided to go to Kanda Yabu Soba as we’ve always wanted to give it [...]

Christmas is well and truly over in Japan. From the evening of the 25th of December you can see shops wasting no time taking down their displays – being a commercial event over here you could consider it little more than point of sale. Over the next few days, these curious looking objects start popping [...]