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Around the city 4
Apr 27 2009 23:59 | 18 Comments
...and seconds after the end of Around the city 3", Around the city 4 begins.
Approaching Nagoya Station from the back as a 300 Series Shinkansen arrives.
Even closer to the station.
Police car. Heres something interesting about Japanese police cars... First of all, that box on the roof. Inside of it is a mechanism which raises the lights by a good 50cm in the air so they're visible from farther away, only saw it once myself. Second of all, the cars they convert for police use. Unlike say, United States where there are only a few models which are used by police, namely the CVPI, Charger PP, and the Impala PP, in Japan police uses a MUCH wider variety of cars. Nissan GT-Rs, Honda NSXs and Subaru Impreza SRX STis just to name a few. Take a look at some of their vehicles in this Wikipedia article.
Walking next to the station.
The building with a bunch of brand logos plastered all over it, is the BIC CAMERA store I mentioned in the Around the city 3 article.
Entrance to a large underground shopping area on the back side of Nagoya Station.
Someone waiting for something.
Taxis stalking potential customers.
Walking though the underground shopping area.
Tons of restaurants, stores and other things there.
A not very large, but extremely packed (with books, not people) book store.
Walking though Nagoya Station to get to the other side. Faster to just go right though then to go around.
The towers sticking out of Nagoya Station are full of stores, offices and restaurants. One of the many stores there is Tokyu Hands which has well... a lot of cool crap for the lack of a better description. Absolutely loved this display with Gundams. Reflection is of me, will post a full photo one of these days...
Seriously, how freakin' cool is that.
Smoke made out of cotton. Also quite impressive paint jobs on the Gundams/Mobile Suits and all the surrounding stuff. Anyone here a fan of Gundams?
For those who live in United States, I think the closet store to Tokyu Hands would be Michaels, tons of equipment for crafts and other DYI stuff.
Though its quite hard to get any photos of any stores in Japan as often whenever you take out a camera someone from the staff comes to you and asks you not to take any photos. Pfft.
Sigh, I wish I had such cool train sets when I was 8... All I had were a bunch of Hot Wheels cars and some of their other toys.
Then after drooling over the awesome toy trains, went to the Toyota HQ building again to look at the city during the day.
Going up.
Speaking of up, Pixar's new movie "UP" is coming out on May 29th. Anyone looking forward to it? The trailers so far have looked pretty mediocre. I mean the quality is as always with Pixar, most excellent, but the plot seems a bit... silly. Why couldn't they make something as good as "The Incredibles" this year... Some birthday present this will be...
And finally at the top.
Love the fact that both the elevators and the elevator shafts are made of glass.
Quite a nice view. You can even see the mountains in the background.
Accidentally ended up focusing on the window frame rather then on the city. Just one of the downfalls of not having a viewfinder on the LX3. Problem is that even if I do get one to stick onto the LX3, it still won't show me exactly what I'm shooting.
Then next to the Midland Square building (part of which is Toyota's HQ) stands the very pretty MODE/HAL/ISEN school building. MODE HAL and ISEN are trade schools. MODE specializes primarily in things like fashion, make up and interior design. HAL has things like audio, automotive and game design. Finally ISEN has more medical courses like nursing, different therapies, emergency room care and so on.
On the second floor of the building. Some cool looking conference room and a ton of G4 iMacs.
Really a ton of iMacs. Click on the image above for bigger.
Near Nagoya Station a 6 meter high mannequin which everyone calls Nana-chan. Every month or so, she gets a change of clothes depending the time of year. In the summer wears a bikini, during winter is dressed up like Santa Claus. Been standing there since 1973 from what I hear. Fun fact: she weighs about 600 kilos. Another fun fact: iPhoto's face recognition function successfully found her in every single photo where she is in the picture.
On one of the streets behind the station.
Waiting to cross the road...
...and suddenly, out of nowhere, a Chrysler PT Cruiser! Only saw 2 of them in all my time in Japan, in fact they were the only Chrysler vehicles I saw.
And a photo of a random house on the way home. Thats it for this installment of Around the city/Around the Neighborhood or something. Really do need to organize all my photos somehow differently, don't like the current scheme at all.
Prometheus
I was gonna post my top 3 photots but like seriously every pic is like too sick! For some reason though, the action figure with the spear photo has the X factor. I am not even into figures or anything but I actually want it now >_
Seantaku
These are really great! Each photo makes me want to visit Japan more and more. Just gotta save up the money. Heh.
Matthew
"there are only a few models which are used by police"
Camaro, Caprice, Celebrity, Charger, Crown Vic, Durango, Econoline, Excursion, Explorer, Expedition, Express, F-150, H1, Impala, Intrepid, Lumina, Magnum, Malibu, Marquis, Mustang, Sebring, Suburban, Tahoe, Taurus, Trailblazer, Yukon... and this doesn't even cover the few-of cars like Corvettes, paddywagons, and surveillance vans
Michael Flux
@Matthew
Camaro - Was a single one ever actually made and used beyond the couple with police stickers used for some shows?
Caprice - Has been dead for almost 14 years now (excluding the Middle Eastern model which isn't sold in US anyways)
Celebrity - Seriously? The Chevy Celeb?
Charger - Yes, as I said.
Crown Vic - Yes, as said. CVPI = Crown Vic Police Interceptor (the PI being the only model they ever used as the regular ones fall apart too quickly).
Durango - Extremely rarely used.
Econoline - Not counting vans as they're only used for transport, not pursuit.
Excursion - Rarely used. More of a people mover then anything.
Explorer - ditto Durango.
Expedition - ditto Excursion (are you just naming the whole Ford fleet?)
Express - ditto Econoline
F-150 - ditto all the other SUVs
H1 - Just as often as they use tanks for catching criminals -_^
Impala - Yes, as I said.
Intrepid - Fine, I'll partly give you that. But it hasn't been manufactured in 5-6 years.
Lumina - Hasn't been made in 10 years.
Magnum - Wagon version of the Charger.
Malibu - Lump it together with the Impala, close enough.
Marquis - Rebadged Crown Vic.
Mustang - Very rarely.
Sebring - While I know they're being used, rarely, haven't seen one in person ever.
Suburban - As all the other SUVs
Tahoe - Again as all other SUVs
Taurus - Used to be used in the mid 90s. Haven't been used since as far as I know.
Trailblazer - Same as other SUVs
Yukon - Psst, same car as Tahoe.
chun
my husband is a fan of gundam ^^ gotta show him the pix you took of the display!
Michael Flux
@chun
Who isn't. Best robot anime ever! ^_^
sanguinerose
Those Gundam on display are really cool.
Michael Flux
@sanguinerose, Yeah, I'm not really a big fan of just "normal" models where people just stand them up straight and they're just there clean and shiny. But these, with the "war" paint jobs, and "in action" I absolutely love.
KrisBelucci
I really liked this post. Can I copy it to my site? Thank you in advance.
Michael Flux
@KrisBelucci,
Take a look at this please.
Twenty two thousand three hundred. That is the number of times, at the time of posting this reply, that the exact same phrase, down to the last character was copied and pasted. At least that is the number of times Google has seen it.
So to answer your question... well, I'm not going to even bother answering it since I highly doubt my answer will somehow influence your decision to repost this post as your own.
CrisBetewsky
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