I ordered an apple tart at a cafe in Tokyo. This is what the waitress brought.
Source: http://imgur.com/fWSRP
I ordered an apple tart at a cafe in Tokyo. Waitress brought..
March 25, 2012, 7:06 pm : Posted by in Food - (0 Comments)Year After a Massive Earthquake & Tsunami in Japan-Town of Okuma is Eerily Empty
March 8, 2012, 5:54 pm : Posted by in Japan | Japan - Help Recovery - (0 Comments)NBC – Rock Center – Richard Engel Journeys to Fukushima Evacuation zone
Nearly a year after a massive earthquake and tsunami in Japan swallowed whole towns and left more than 15,000 people dead and hundreds of thousands of people displaced, the nuclear town of Okuma is eerily empty.
The 9.0 magnitude earthquake led to a triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Plant and led to mandatory evacuations 12 miles around the power plant. NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel journeyed to the exclusion zone and discovered a ghost town. Restaurants, grocery stores, factories remained as they were left on Mar. 11, 2011.
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Japan Amazing Lunchboxes, Work of Art for Children (Video)
February 15, 2012, 12:52 am : Posted by in Food | Japan - (0 Comments)Making a packed lunch for your children to take to school is a chore performed by parents around the world.
But in Japan, it is not just the taste and healthiness of the meal that is important – but how it looks.
The country’s ancient emphasis on food presentation has been transformed into a trend for character bento – packed lunches made to look like pandas, teddy bears or even real people.
The BBC’s Tokyo correspondent Roland Buerk has been finding out more.
The Close-up series focuses on aspects of life in countries and cities around the world. What may seem ordinary and familiar to the people who live there can be surprising to those who do not.
Google Street View Tours Travels Through Japanese Caves (Photos)
February 14, 2012, 10:01 pm : Posted by in Japan - (0 Comments)Last week, Google Japan took its popular Street View in a new direction: underground. The search giant commissioned a photography crew to explore a centuries-old mine and popular limestone cave in Japan. The result is a stunning 360-degree photo tour that gives people around the world the opportunity to visit sites they probably wouldn’t see otherwise.
This is the entrance to the Okubo-mabu mineshaft at Omori, Ota City in the Shimane Prefecture of Japan. The Iwami Ginzan silver mines, one of the largest in the world during the 16th and 17th centuries, officially became a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1997.
Jerry Seinfeld Competes for a New Acura NSX
January 31, 2012, 8:56 pm : Posted by in Car - (0 Comments)Experience the Tsunami Affected Areas of Japan through Street View
December 13, 2011, 8:19 pm : Posted by in Japan - Help Recovery - (0 Comments)A virtual tour via Street View profoundly illustrates how much these natural disasters have transformed these communities. If you start inland and venture out toward the coast, you’ll see the idyllic countryside change dramatically, becoming cluttered with mountains of rubble and debris as you get closer to the ocean. In the cities, buildings that once stood proud are now empty spaces.
Click to see Japan using Street View
In the bottom left corner of each image you’ll also see a month and year that tells you when a particular photograph was taken. When looking at images of the magnificent cities side-by-side with images of the ruins left in their place, this additional context demonstrates how truly life-changing this tragedy has been for those who live there and witnessed the destruction of their homes, neighborhoods and even entire districts. This timestamp feature has been the most requested Street View feature for the last few years, and it is now available on Street View imagery worldwide. Professionals such as historians, architects, city planners and tourism boards—as well as regular users including travelers and home-buyers—can now get a sense of how fresh the online photos are for a locations that interests them.
In the case of the post-tsunami imagery of Japan, we hope this particular digital archiving project will be useful to researchers and scientists who study the effects of natural disasters. We also believe that the imagery is a useful tool for anyone around the world who wants to better understand the extent of the damage. Seeing the street-level imagery of the affected areas puts the plight of these communities into perspective and ensures that the memories of the disaster remain relevant and tangible for future generations.
8 Ferraris, Lamborghini, 3 Mercedes Sports Cars Create a 1 Million Dollar Crash in Japan
December 5, 2011, 11:35 pm : Posted by in Car - (0 Comments)TOKYO — A botched lane change led to a spectacular traffic pileup in Japan over the weekend that left a highway strewn with the smashed wreckage of eight Ferraris, a Lamborghini and three Mercedes sports cars.
The crash drew international attention not only for its stunning price — the vehicles collectively cost more than $1 million — but also for the rare glimpse of Japan’s superrich, who tend to avoid ostentatious public displays of wealth. Local police officials were quoted as saying that they had never seen so many expensive cars in one place, much less involved in a single accident.
News reports gave no names and few details about the cars’ drivers, beyond quoting police officials as saying their ages ranged from 37 to 60. But they clearly form a select group in Japan, where fewer than 500 Ferraris were sold last year.
The cars appeared to be part of an outing of luxury automobile enthusiasts, traveling north together from the island of Kyushu to a festival in the city of Hiroshima, on the southern end of the main island of Honshu. As the convoy sped through rain in the western prefecture of Yamaguchi, one of the Ferrari drivers, trying to change lanes, struck the median and spun out of control. Evasive maneuvers by other cars, which also included two Toyotas, sent them smashing into each other.
According to The Associated Press, 10 of the people involved in the wreck received treatment for minor injuries.
News reports quoted eyewitnesses as saying that at the time of the accident, the procession appeared to be traveling at 85 to 100 miles per hour, well over the speed limit of 60.
Bloomberg News quoted a traffic official, Mitsuyoshi Isejima, as saying that the driver suspected of causing the pileup, a 60-year-old self-employed man, could face up to three months in prison or a fine of 100,000 yen, about $1,300.
The police closed the highway for six hours as they cleared away the ruined vehicles. Television footage showed several red Ferraris with bumpers or engine hoods torn off, bodies crumpled. One had plowed nose-first into a guardrail.
Mr. Isejima, for one, had little sympathy.
“It was a gathering of narcissists,” Bloomberg quoted him as saying.