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Here are a few pictures of interesting stuff from my recent Japan trip:

This is a view of the Yokohama Landmark Tower from the ground.

Here’s the view from our room on the 52nd floor of the Landmark Tower. Notice the enormous cell tower on top of the DoCoMo building. That skyline you see in the distance on the right is Tokyo—if you look really closely at the full-size image, you can see the Tokyo Tower. Interesting fact: I could see 11 (that’s right, eleven) helipads from our window alone.

Jieun, this one’s for you. The morning of the wedding, we went walking around Queen’s Square, a large entertainment-plex (shops, restaurants, etc.) adjacent to the Landmark Tower. Here’s a picture of the ginormous Snoopy outside Snoopy Town.

If you look a little to the right of Snoopy, you’ll see this large black decorative wall (spanning 5 stories) with a message written in Japanese and German. Here’s a closeup:

No idea what it means, but it looks cool.

Here’s an amusing sign we saw for a coffee shop in Queen’s Square. I want a cup of happiness, too!

On Sunday, we went to Shinagawa in Tokyo to see the newly-built Epson Aqua Stadium (an aquarium). While it was nothing to write home about, we had an interesting experience afterward, as we were walking into Shinagawa Station to catch the train to Shibuya. This band, タオルズ (or Towels, in English), was setting up to play just outside the entrance to the station. At one of my friends’ insistence (and I am so glad he did), we stayed to listen a while.

Before their performance, the lead singer (the guy on the left) handed out leaflets with information about their new album (to be released on 10/26/05), and their show schedule, etc. It turns out that they already have a record deal with Columbia; here’s their website on Columbia’s web, and here’s their official website. In any case, we ended up staying around to listen to a couple of songs, both of which were really quite good: the first was called 君に幸あれ (or Kimi ni sachiare) and the second ペダル (or Pedal) (the links are to samples in Windows Media format). I liked the songs enough to buy both their full-length albums from Amazon Japan; they are located here and here, respectively.

Unfortunately, in order to avoid paying $16 for shipping (considering that both CDs cost $32 together), I elected to have them both shipped together, which means that I won’t get them until the end of October. I’ll post a review then.