Author: bt

Here I am listening to a tune on the iPod touch, typing out an entry to this site to be sent when I land, while my flight circles over the pacific ocean just outside the bay of Tokyo. We have made two loops so far and slowly descending, definitely the sign of being put on hold, whatever the terminology for that is. Funnel?

Flew over some nice geographical features over west japan, including a potshot of kansai airport island, some volcanic looking features, but Tokyo is very cloudy today. Mount fuji cannot be seen although I know it should be roughly there. Watched An Inconvenient Truth last night and the view from the skies takes ok a different meaning sometimes. Is that town going to be under the water in 50 years? How are all these urban features affecting the weather in ever little ways? Ok no time to think about this. Time to land, and the stewardess is already wondering why I’m typing out an email during the landing procedures.

Travelling along a highway right now en route to Xian and just some observations and some do’s and dont’s.- Don’t reverse your car on the highway once you missed your exit. Pretty common sense but any trip along the chinese highway and you’re bound to  meet with one guy doing just that. Ok, the emergency lane will do but its plain bad habit.
– Don’t spit out of the windows. When in the bus don’t spit in the bus either. If you need to regurgitate your phlegm, swallow it. Else wait till  you get to a rest stop.
– Do car car pool. This has to be the funniest thing on the road. A small  truck stacked on the bed of a medium truck and in turn on a larger truck. I have seen two so far today, 3 trucks in one. If it saves petrol or diesel, why not?
– Don’t sleep while driving. Ok this one is quite serious, saw a car flipped over a couple of times. Not really sure what happened, but I guess sleeping at the wheel brings something similar.

Brought back from Tokyo an Epson X970, basically a Japanese rebadged V700 film and document scanners. Firstly kudos to ANA airlines for handling it properly. I know that they put duties on scanners and many other items in China but there’s nothing on the web that specifies how much except I know its 20%.
Declared it and was charged 20% or a maximum value of 1000 rmb. Basically whatever your stuff costs its 200 rmb. Of course the maximum value for every type of item is different. So go on, buy your high end stuff and bring them into China.

Yup. Something like the official day of spring today. So there’s no work here in Tokyo, and spent the whole day out in Nakano having tako balls, charcoal fired unagi and the occasional Fujiya here and there (and checking office mails at the same time). Bought a lens case at the junk corner. Raining the whole day, and made the whole day feel miserable. After that its time for Shinjuku just to walk around a little here and there. Was looking for small hard cases for 120 films since they seem quite fragile after exposure.
Flying back to Shanghai this Saturday after spending 3 weeks out here in Tokyo.

My first earthquake in Tokyo. Woke up at about 2am on Saturday morning by a little shake. Nothing compared to the one I experienced in Taipei a couple of years back, but this one was still a first. Nothing like a first! Here’s a copy and paste of the details from the USGS website.
Earthquake Details
Magnitude 5.2
Date-Time

* Friday, March 07, 2008 at 16:54:56 UTC
* Saturday, March 08, 2008 at 01:54:56 AM at epicenter
* Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones

Location 36.474°N, 140.420°E
Depth 35 km (21.7 miles) set by location program
Region NEAR THE EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN
Distances 15 km (10 miles) NNW of Mito, Honshu, Japan
80 km (50 miles) SSW of Iwaki, Honshu, Japan
110 km (65 miles) NE of TOKYO, Japan
120 km (75 miles) E of Maebashi, Honshu, Japan
Location Uncertainty horizontal +/- 8.9 km (5.5 miles); depth fixed by location program

… I regret to inform you that I will need some more weeks before uploading all photos to the last 2 posts. Ok… my office PC just decided not to boot up last week and there goes all those photos I was hoping to upload while in Tokyo, bypassing the Chinese firewall. Lucky I managed to upload the A380 photos and maybe 1-2 from Sydney. The rest will have to wait…
9 March in Tokyo