Month: September 2011

September 5km run race

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I started off today with a pathetic 5km run race – one that I’d rather forget. —- Last weekend, I bought new running shoes at a shopping outlet. Super bargain! A pair of Adidas (SuperNova Glide 3W – a wide lightweight running shoe). They are super light. And were really cheap. They were reduced! My current, old pair were also Adidas. I’ve had them for over 5 years, so I guess, I was in need of a new pair – way overdue. If I get accepted into the Tokyo Marathon, I’ll splurge on another pair and get a proper fitting consultation.

From 5km run
From 5km run

Super white and clean. They practically glow in the dark!

From 5km run

I have small feet. I also wear orthotics so I needed a pair of shoes that fit them. My feet are also quite wide. Yesterday, I had to go to and pre-register for the race – pick up my race number and goodie bag. Entry into the 5km race was 2500yen. Running races are so much cheaper than open water swimming races in Japan which will set you back around 7000-8000yen. Here is the goodie bag:

From 5km run
From 5km run

It included some Vaam gel sportsdrink, and a bag. I was pretty happy with the bag. It’s super lightweight and folds and packs up, but it’s also a drawstring backpack. This will come in super handy for my swimtrek. I need a swim bag/day pack that will fit in my luggage, so the bag is pretty awesome. I had a sleepless night last night. Couldn’t sleep at all. I woke up this morning overtired, and I nearly slept in. I also woke up ridiculously dehydrated. It was kinda hot during the night. I guzzled over half a litre of fluids prior to the race. The 5km race was one lap around the Imperial Palace – my favourite running race route in Tokyo because it’s so familiar, and convenient to get to. I rode the train in, with my very conspicuous joggers.

From 5km run

I got to the race this morning with about 15-20 minutes to spare. I was still half asleep and very thirsty. Here are some pics pre-race around the Palace.

From 5km run
From 5km run

It was a very small turnout.

From 5km run

The race was only 5km. And there were two categories: Serious and Beginners. Needless to say I had registered myself for the Beginners and we raced at 9:35am. Here is the line-up for the “serious” runners:

From 5km run

The weather was a tad warm for my liking. If there’s one thing I hate more than jogging – it’s jogging in the heat. The race start was 9:35am, and the temp was already in the high 20s. Like I said, too warm for my liking. I had only one goal for this race. And that was to run sub-30minutes. Not a big deal to most people, but a challenging goal for me. My pace on average is 6min/km. I’m having trouble breaking that pace. So off I went on the 5km run. Torture. The worst 5km run I had ever run.

I started out strong, but then I don’t know what happened. I was still so freaking dehydrated. Super thirsty. Every breath was drying out my mouth, and being only 5km, there were of course no water stations. Crap. So super thirsty and I was also really hot. Reached the 2km mark, and thought crap, I’m already beat. How unfit am I. Another 3km to go! Geez. 3km to 5km was struggle, struggle, struggle. Needed water. Stat. A most bizarre feeling overcame me. I felt so incredibly dehydrated and hot. My whole body was heating up. Scarily so. I needed water like one needs air. I thought about dropping out of the race because I needed a drink so bad. The temperature was one thing, but my God, the humidity was abominable.

Here is a weather analysis of the day (source: Yahoo weather, Japan): Between 9-10am (the race time), the temperature was about 28 degrees (orange dotted line), and the humidity was a whopping 90%! (the green dotted line). You can see that the humidity level really dropped off to about 75% in the hours after. It’s still summer here and Japanese summers are incredibly humid. Dangerously so. Today the humidity really affected me. I felt like I was going to pass out. I’ve suffered heat exhaustion before, to the point of fainting, so I knew something was wrong because I got that same feeling. I didn’t feel ok. So badly wanted to quit, but I’m not a quitter, and I hate to say, that I had to walk a bit of the race. Walk, slow jog, walk, slow jog for the last couple of k’s. I was annoyed that I had to walk but my safety was paramount. My whole body was extremely overheated. I managed to cross the finish line in one piece. I felt so hot and red. I must have looked like an incredibly unfit freak…but the truth was, I wasn’t feeling good. The sooner I got to the finish line, the sooner I could guzzle some water. Got to the finish and sat down. Could barely stand up. Drank lots of water, wet my body, and drank some sportsdrink as well. Needed sugar. Body was incredibly overheated. Such a crazy, unusual thing to happen over such a short distance race. I sat for about 30-45min, not being able to move. Felt weak and headachey. I took my time to relax and for the body to cool. I looked at the time on my iPhone/music player, and had worked out that by my time I had run about 32minutes. Didn’t break my 30 minute goal. But I didn’t much care. I was glad that I had even finished the race, and not walked out on it. 32minutes wasn’t too bad considering I walked a portion of the race. I had run the first couple of k’s strong.

They had the little prize ceremony for placegetters in the serious category. Fastest male did 17minutes, and fastest female did 20minutes. They also had lucky dip/door prizes. I wanted to check out my official race time. I saw on the record sheet that it said: 37min, 23 seconds! What!!!!! I started to mentally flagellate myself…thinking how shit I had run and was thinking about ways to punish myself for such an atrocious time. I wondered how my stopwatch could have been so off. It wasn’t possible that my time could be 37minutes, considering we started at 9:35am and I was back by 10:07am. I then realized that the time hadn’t accounted for the 5min lag between the serious and the beginners start. We started five minutes after, so I needed to subtract 5minutes. So my official race time was 32minute and 23 seconds. That was better. Still not good. But better, especially given how rotten I felt during the run. I got home and crawled into bed with the air conditioner on and slept for a few hours. I was super tired, and had a giant headache, and was feeling not 100%. A little bit lightheaded.

Am feeling much better now though…although I don’t think I have eaten enough today. Here’s what I think went wrong that accounted towards how I felt today: – high humidity. (Major cause). Not healthy to run in such high humidity. And yeah, yeah, yeah, I know I need to HTFU. But as consolation, here is one tidbit I found on the Internet: “Humidity is considered high when the levels go above 45 to 50%. When combined with high temperatures, high humidity can be very dangerous to the body as it interferes with the bodies ability to cool itself down, which may cause heat stroke. High humidity can also trigger an asthma attack.” – total lack of acclimatisation. Today’s race was the first time I had jogged outdoors. All summer, I have jogged indoors, inside at a gym on a treadmill. I had no exposure to running outdoors in the heat and humidity. My body didn’t adjust so well. I think it was a bit of a shock to the system, especially given how much I swim – I’m too used to being in the water where it’s wet and cool. – lack of proper hydration.

I don’t know why I woke up so thirsty. I had drunk plenty of water the day before but I guess the heat during the night took it out of me a bit. Even now as I write this at 5pm, it’s 29 degrees. It’s just hot. And my body does not enjoy running in summer. This is why I swim. – no breakfast, no fuel prior to the race. I’ll often race on an empty stomach, so this isn’t usually a huge problem especially for such a short race. Even though I only jogged 5km, I also somehow managed to get blisters on both feet. Maybe a marathon wasn’t such a great idea after all. Still hoping I get accepted anyway. At least it’s in the winter. I’d rather run in snow than in 90% humidity in near 30-degree temps! Will probably regret saying this, especially if it does actually snow on marathon day next year. I didn’t achieve my sub-30minute goal, but I ran 5km, so I s’pose that’s better than nothing. Gotta start somewhere. Around the Palace moat on my way back to the station, there were some turtles. I felt as slow as a turtle today. But on the upside, turtles live a really, really long time!

From 5km run
From 5km run

Saw a t-shirt today that said: “Run yourself better”. Simple. But nice.

Swimmer’s block

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I hadn’t swum in over week, which is a little bit of a record for me, because I always swim at least, at a minimum – once a week. Today, after doing a 2km swim this morning, I remembered why I had taken a break from swimming….shoulder pain.

In just a few weeks, I will be swimming around Turkey – a 30-35km swim over 6 days. On average swimming 5-6km a day. I should be training more, me thinks. But with all the swimming I had been doing over the summer, my upper shoulders and upper back/neck are getting sore. Subconsciously I had stopped swimming for about 10 days to give my shoulders a break. I’ve also taken up jogging as well, which meant that I had swapped the pool for the treadmill. I am actually getting into the jogging a bit now … even bought myself new jogging shoes! I’m in need of swimming motivation considering I had slacked off a bit. I’m also getting worried about the swimtrek. I feel underprepared to swim that much, day in, day out. The thought of sore shoulders and back is a little unnerving. Swimming laps in a pool also gets a little boring.

Last night I came across an awesome blog of a gal who a few months back did a swimtrek. Hers wasn’t so much a holiday as it was a swim bootcamp. She had signed up for the Gozo (Malta swimtrek) – this swimtrek is a swim camp used mainly by those who want to swim the English Channel. It’s a full-on long distance ows swim camp, working up to a 6-hour swim. (My limit is 2-hours). It’s a really interesting read of the training and mental endurance of open water swimming training in cold water (15 degrees). I highly recommend reading her three entries on her swimtrek. Start reading from here. And work your way to post 3 of her Malta swimtrek. Her last post is the most inspiring and motivating. Her blog gets brownie points because she makes reference to Haruki Murakami. It was a re-quote from someone else, but I’m pretty sure that Murakami said that in this book, “What I talk about when I talk about running”. (Murakami is a prolific marathoner). One of the quotes that always stuck out in that book for me was: “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional”. (I think it was also a re-quote from someone else as well). But after reading that book – that quote always stuck in my mind. I think I should re-read that book. Good motivation for mental endurance and perserverance, especially since I’m also hoping to get accepted into the Tokyo Marathon. It was a good insight into what I can expect…although not as full on as that. It will be a similar routine. Up early, breakfast and then hitting the water everyday, swim for a couple of hours, lunch, swim a few more km’s, dinner, a couple of sessions on technique and swim analysis, and then sleep. Thankfully, it’s also a holiday, and not a race, and not a swim bootcamp, so hopefully it will be a little more leisurely.

After reading that last night, I thought it was time for me to HTFU. So even though I desperately wanted to sleep in longer this morning, I changed into my cossies, got onto the train, jumped into the pool and swam 2km. The first 1km was easy enough. Felt good to be back in the water especially having not swum for a while. Between 1-1.5km my shoulders started to get sore. My lower neck, upper back and shoulders are getting really tight and sore though. It doesn’t help that I sit in front of a computer all day at work either. I think I’m gonna need some deep tissue massaging. In my last ows race (the 4.5km one) I remember my arms being incredibly sore, especially around the 3km mark. To the point where I could barely get the, out of the water and they were just pretty much skimming the top of the water, floundering. Should I be pumping iron? Do I have weak arms? I think sore shoulders and arms is normal? The recommended swimming training program provided by Swimtrek seems pretty relaxed to me. Maybe, I am swimming too much. When you also eat as much as I do, there’s no such thing as “swimming too much”. I went back over the swimming training program – which spans 3 months in the lead up to the actual swim.

I leave in 3 weeks, and I feel as though I haven’t done enough training, despite being on track with the program. I barely swim 5km a week, let alone 5km a day for a whole week! They recommend a certain distance per week = target km. I have then recorded my actual distance swum for that week.

Month 1/July

Week 1: Target: 1km Actual: 10km (includes 3km OWS race, plus additional training km’s)

Week 2: Target: 1.5km Actual: 10.6 km (This was the week I competed in the 4.5km ows race, plus additional training km’s)

Week 3: Target: 2km Actual: 1.5km (this was my recovery week after two back to back weekends of ows races)

Week 4: Target: 2km Actual: 1km

Week 5: No target. Actual: 1.7km

Month 2/August

Week 1: Target: 2.5km Actual: 4.1km

Week 2: Target: 3km Actual: 5km

Week 3: Target: 3.5km Actual: 3km (did more cross training instead of swimming – 3 jogging sessions)

Week 4: Target: 4km Actual: 3.5km (lazy week. No jogging either)

Month 1/September

Week 1: Target: 4km Actual: 1km swim (but 3 jogging sessions)

Week 2: in progress Target: 5km Actual (so far): 2km ….but the week ain’t over yet.

Here’s what I need to cover over the next 2-3 weeks…

Week 3: Target: 5km

Week 4: Target: 3km Moral of the story. No pain. No gain. And must find good masseur.  I also need to fit in another open water swim session (instead of laps in a chlorine box), so I signed up for another race (my last one for the summer) which is in a week and a half away, and I’ve not done much training for it. It’s a 3.84km open water swim race. If you’re thinking 3.84km is a weird distance, it’s because I will be swimming the length of a bay somewhere in Chiba prefecture, and apparently that’s how long the bay is.

Conrad Tokyo Afternoon Tea: French fizz and mini morsels

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If you want to attract ladies to an event, I have two words that will do the trick: “Unlimited champagne”. Well, make that three words: “Unlimited sparkling wine” – coz let’s face it, it did not come specifically from the Champagne region. The folks at the Conrad Hotel, Tokyo, know how to get bums on seats at their Twenty-Eight Bar and Lounge. If the 2 x Michelin star Gordan Ramsay restaurants at the Conrad Hotel (part of the Hilton chain) aren’t enough to attract people, then their Afternoon Tea set with 2 hours of unlimited french fizz/champers/”I can’t believe it’s not champagne”/sparkling wine, certainly will. I had no trouble recruiting fellow tea lovers for September’s Champagne Afternoon tea – 8 people in attendance!

So Sunday afternoon was spent at the Conrad Hotel at their Bar and Lounge – called “Twenty Eight”. And guess what level it’s on? If you guessed level 28, you’d be right! I had originally wanted to do this venue back in August on the weekend that I went to Bvlgari, but they were booked out, hence I arranged to go to Bvlgari instead. So I booked a month in advance for this one. The Afternoon Tea is called “American Classic” and the food was amazing! So darn cute. Everything was mini. And nothing is cooler than miniature food…except for giant oversized food. And to top it off, for a limited time there is a champagne offer which half of us took up on – 2 hours of unlimited Chandon to accompany the afternoon tea. Yes, please! I’m going to launch straight into the food. Another venue that does a modern take on afternoon tea – they’ve done away with the three-tiered platters here. Instead, mini food is presented on a flat glass platter. And the mini food was soooo cute. We oohed and aahed over it. You’d have thought it was a baby shower. No one ate for a good 15 minutes as we happily admired the food and snapped away. Each platter held two servings. I’ve heard of super size me…but this was super shrink me.

From Conrad Tokyo
From Conrad Tokyo

How cute and awesome is mini food. There’s not enough mini food in this world, I say. Proof that good things come in small packages.

From Conrad Tokyo
From Conrad Tokyo

Savouries, sweets and scones all on the one tray, so beautifully presented. Talk about so much fun with food.

From Conrad Tokyo

I’m rather obsessed with this mini food.

From Conrad Tokyo

Food for little people = fun.

From Conrad Tokyo

Can. Not. Get. Enough. Photos. Of. This.

From Conrad Tokyo

We were in for a fun afternoon. Mini morsels of delectable food, washed down with unlimited glasses of Champers!

From Conrad Tokyo
From Conrad Tokyo

The way to a woman’s heart (or at least mine) is champagne and cute mini food (or giant food). And the food not only looked good but was pretty darn delicious too! It was so hard to pick and choose what to eat first and save for last. My ritual is to eat the savouries first – of which there were three on this occasion. This was the walnut bread with Iberico ham scented with truffles. OMG. So tasty. Love nuts. Love bread. Does that make me carb crazy. And Iberico ham is a really famous, amazing, tasty ham. And it did not disappoint. Sooo good. This was definitely one of my favourites.

From Conrad Tokyo

I think the highlight of the day was the mini burger (slider for you American readers). Mini burgers are so the food of du jour. We were all rather besotted with this burger. It was a perfect miniature burger. God bless burgerlings.

From Conrad Tokyo
From Conrad Tokyo
From Conrad Tokyo

I couldn’t resist doing a cheesy burger pose! (Clearly, I have no shame.) What can I say, I’m lovin’ it. This is one very happy meal.

From Conrad Tokyo

And inside was juicy. Mini sliders have a tendency to be on the drier side but this surprisingly juicy and not dry. It also had a tasty harisa aioli for extra flavour. The burger was another winner.

From Conrad Tokyo
From Conrad Tokyo

Yum. Yum. It was interesting to see what everyone was saving for last. Someone was clearly saving the mini burger for the end. The last burger standing:

From Conrad Tokyo

Next I had the brie cheese on cranberry bread sandwich. I thought that I would love this, but I didn’t.

From Conrad Tokyo
From Conrad Tokyo

I then moved onto the sweets next. There were a lot of desserts in this afternoon tea, and normally it’s my least-favourite tier. But everything on this plate was awesome and I loved the desserts portion of this particular afternoon tea. Desserts were their forte here. And I appreciate that it took skills to make everything in miniature. There was a lime marshmallow which was very limey – nice and tart, yet sweet and marshmallowy too.

From Conrad Tokyo

This was followed by more miniature food – a tiny devil’s chocolate fudge cake.

From Conrad Tokyo

And then a miniature cupcake. This was really yummy. A pistachio and cherry cupcake. Cupcakes are pretty small to begin with but this about a quarter of a size of a full cupcake.

From Conrad Tokyo
From Conrad Tokyo

It was sad to see the platters dwindle down as the mini morsels were slowly picked off and devoured.

From Conrad Tokyo
From Conrad Tokyo

Getting smaller…

From Conrad Tokyo
From Conrad Tokyo

So next I tried the New York cheesecake. Personally, I’m not a huge cheesecake fan in general. The only cheesecake I really love is my mum’s cheesecake which she always makes for birthdays and special occasions. It’s a favourite at family and relo gatherings. Anyway, this was the cheesecake – still good nevertheless.

From Conrad Tokyo

Now normally I always…always save the scones for last. I never deviate from this ritual. But I did on this occasion. There were two scones – a plain one and a mango and coconut scone. It was a face-off between the lemon meringue pie or the scones. The lemon meringue pie won! Yes, lemon meringue pie was on offer. Awesome. Especially since just a couple of weekends ago I had been in pursuit of lemon meringue pie. And the only thing better than lemon meringue pie is MINI lemon meringue pie!

From Conrad Tokyo
From Conrad Tokyo

So I broke with tradition and ate the scones next. I just can’t get decent scones in Japan. They are dry, hard, American ‘biscuits’. I preferred the plain one over the mango and coconut one.

From Conrad Tokyo
From Conrad Tokyo

And then down to the last lemon pie standing:

From Conrad Tokyo

I had saved it for last. And it was pretty divine, and so cute to look at!

From Conrad Tokyo

Check out the detail to the mini meringue peaks.

From Conrad Tokyo
From Conrad Tokyo

It was yummy. It was actually way better than the other lemon pie that I had bought. There was such a tiny layer of the lemon curd, but it was so incredibly tarty and awesome. The only downside was the pastry on this pie. It was too flakey. It had been made with puff pastry rather than being a shortcrust pie pastry. Still bliss.

From Conrad Tokyo
From Conrad Tokyo

And then the whole platter was empty. What a sad moment.

From Conrad Tokyo

You might recall that I’ve mentioned before in other tea reviews that it would be nice if they gave us fresh plates. Essentially we are eating savoury foods, scones, and desserts all off the same plate. Today was a prime example of needing fresh plates. Here’s what happens when you eat randomly (this is why I save the scones for last). Someone had obviously saved the mini hamburger for last but was left with a jam-smeared plate. Any afternoon tea venue that offers fresh plates will definitely earn brownie points with me, so as to AVOID the below travesty:

From Conrad Tokyo

I really enjoyed the afternoon tea arrangement here – glass platters of mini food. I noticed that for other guests there in groups of twos – had different glass platters – they were glass platters that were in a staircase arrangement. I was a little jealous of their servingware. Super cool. I zoomed in a random person’s afternoon tea set. You can kind of see in this photo, what I mean:

From Conrad Tokyo

Here are some photos of the Twenty Eight Bar and Lounge. Plenty of natural light streaming in from the tall glass windows.

From Conrad Tokyo
From Conrad Tokyo
From Conrad Tokyo
From Conrad Tokyo
From Conrad Tokyo
From Conrad Tokyo

Seats by the window only seat two people, but there are great water views over Tokyo Bay.

From Conrad Tokyo
From Conrad Tokyo

It was a lovely afternoon tea enjoyed with a great bunch of friends, including a couple of newbies to high tea. Eight has been my record number of attendees in Tokyo. Our little high tea societea obligatory group shot:

From Conrad Tokyo

I highly rate the food here. Service was only a ok. Views are nice too – over the water. The French fizz offer – always a welcome bonus. Oh, I nearly forgot to talk about the tea. Only three teas are on offer here – Assam, Darjeeling and Ceylon. Nothing special. But for those who declined the champagne option, they went through a couple of pots of tea. Everyone chooses a tea and then you need to stick to it. No tea sampling here. Also coffee on offer as well. Once you’ve selected your tea for the afternoon – it’s as much tea as you like (unlimited refills). I went with the ceylon tea. I’m a little ashamed to say that I did not even drink a whole cup of tea. Was too busy drinking the french fizz!!! The Afternoon Tea – American Classic – was really good here. I thoroughly enjoyed the food.

From Conrad Tokyo
From Conrad Tokyo

The Afternoon Tea set on its own (food platter plus tea/coffee) is 3950yen (tax included). For the 2 hour free-flowing sparkling wine offer in conjunction with the Afternoon Tea set is 6000yen. Pretty good value, I say. For an extra 2000yen you can easily down 5-6 glasses of Chandon comfortably. More, if you’re really keen to get bang for your buck. (NB: That the sparkling wine offer is only valid at certain times of the year. Check with the hotel. It ends at the end of September…which is why we went when we did). The afternoon tea here is like the amuse bouche version of afternoon tea – and my bouche was amused. Touché mon amie.

From Conrad Tokyo

I liked that you can totally relax here and take your time. There is no ushering you out the door in a hurry. Afternoon tea is on offer from 2:30pm, so we booked for right on that time. I was running late, so we probably didn’t start until about 3pm. The unlimited sparkling wine is valid for two hours, and then after that you can stay and continue to have as much tea as you like. Most people left at about 6pm, but I stayed back with a couple of the other girls, and we probably didn’t leave until about 7-7.30pm. It got dark, so I was able to take some night shots of the Lounge in Bar mode.

From Conrad Tokyo
From Conrad Tokyo
From Conrad Tokyo
From Conrad Tokyo

Night view:

From Conrad Tokyo
From Conrad Tokyo
From Conrad Tokyo
From Conrad Tokyo
From Conrad Tokyo
From Conrad Tokyo

I do love a champagne afternoon tea.

From Conrad Tokyo
From Conrad Tokyo

The Conrad Hotel is a very nice hotel. Modern and contemporary design. I liked it.

From Conrad Tokyo
From Conrad Tokyo
From Conrad Tokyo
From Conrad Tokyo
From Conrad Tokyo
From Conrad Tokyo

I won’t be doing another afternoon tea for a little while now, which is why I indulged up (not that I need an excuse). For a least another 4-6 weeks. No more teas in September because the next few weekends are taken up with a run race, an ows race and little long weekend trip. And then off overseas for two weeks. The Conrad Hotel, Tokyo is located at Shiodome/Shinbashi area near HamaRikyu Japanese Gardens. From the subway you’ll need to alight at Shiodome station. The hotel is connected to the Shiodome exit. Shiodome station is the most convenient access. If coming by JR, alight at Shinbashi station. I got lost coming from this station. And it took me over 15 minutes to get there, although it should have taken way less than that. It can be a little confusing…so allow a little extra time. Hotel website, afternoon tea menu, info etc can be found here.

Shinbashi by night: Shades of grey

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Yesterday, I did another high tea…but that will be a post for later on this week. Too many photos to sort through at the moment. But after leaving the hotel last night, I walked through the Shinbashi area on my own and did a mini photowalk through the area. It was around 7.30pm and I took some cool dramatic night shots. The weather was kinda crazy over the weekend. We got the fringes of a typhoon so we would get bursts of strong rain and wind, and then fine again. The clouds were pretty cool on this night. The nightsky, clouds and a lot of the tall buildings provided an opportune moment to work on some night shots with the SLR. Lots of shades of grey and night lights. It’s nice change from the macro close-up colourful food photos that will follow later on this week. Here are a fistful of photos of Shinbashi by night. A pair of escalators:

From Shinbashi by night
From Shinbashi by night
From Shinbashi by night
From Shinbashi by night
From Shinbashi by night
From Shinbashi by night
From Shinbashi by night

There are some really interesting skyrise buildings in the Shinbashi district.

From Shinbashi by night

I really like the next photo that I took:

From Shinbashi by night
From Shinbashi by night

 

I wish I could have made the ‘red light’ of the cones pop more in this next photo:

From Shinbashi by night

Building cluster:

From Shinbashi by night

Looking up:

From Shinbashi by night

This next shot is cool. It’s kinda futuristic looking. Tokyo is a city of neon and bright lights, but in Shinbashi, I was able to portray a darker, edgier side to the city.

From Shinbashi by night

I like the composition of this next shot, but I have digitally edited the exposure and contrast of this photo.

From Shinbashi by night
From Shinbashi by night

This was another cool building in Shinbashi….but again, I have edited the next couple of photos, but still the composition is interesting.

From Shinbashi by night
From Shinbashi by night
From Shinbashi by night

This last shot is one of my favourite photos of the night. My symmetry was just a tad unbalanced, and not as perfect as I would have liked it. Again composition was good but I have digitally enhanced the exposure and highlights. As I walked up the stairs and onto the train platform there was a man facing one way and a woman facing the other way – both waiting for their trains. It was kinda cool. It’s a shame the woman has a little less presence in comparison to the man. But it captures so many things. Two people. Opposite directions. Waiting. On their way somewhere.

From Shinbashi by night

And if I could pick a soundtrack song for today’s photo post it would be this song: “Mad World” – by Gary Jules (a cover from the original by Tears for Fears – popularized by the film “Donnie Darko”)