Squadcar "Misses" cover photo..

A while back I was desperately scrambling through my hard drives trying to find the original photo that we used as the basis for Squadcar's Misses album cover, and last night (by chance) I finally did! As I mentioned in a previous Misses post, this shoot involved my hairdresser Chiho as our model, and five of my friends throwing ideas around and shooting her in all sorts of poses around my apartment. We eventually went through them all and chose this shot of her laying on the bed, and then let our label guy Deguchi-san (Garage) do his thing..

Summer portraits '08

I often end up with many picture of friends that don't really fit into any specific area of the blog, so I thought as summer has come to an end, I will will post some of my (previously unposted) favorite festival portraits..

Stop! STD (Sasa Handa)

The campaign to educate Shibuya's youth community on the potential dangers of risky sexual habits continues, but with a new and fresh face from the Japanese AV industry, Sasa Handa. Previously it was crossover star Nana Natsume that graced this massive billboard that towers over Bunkamura Dori pointing directly at the 109 building. The STOP! STD campaign is one that promotes education and awareness amongst teens, and is run by Soft on Demand, which is reputedly the largest independent adult video company in Japan.

Random night shot.. 12

Shinsen station, Shibuya..

Inside the game centre..

There are some places that don't really take kindly to people taking pictures, and unfortunately these are often places of the more interesting variety. Games centres definitely fall into this category, for reasons which I haven't been able to work out. I managed to do a covert shoot in the big Sega game centre on Dogenzaka the other night, and was able to document some of the action that was going down. I stayed away from the (well monitored) print club booths, and tried to get some good pictures of the more elaborate virtual-reality games. As an interesting postscript, while this centre is open until midnight, children under 16 are not allowed in after 6pm..

Boys and their bikes.. 04

This fully decked out lookin bike dude was spotted on Dogenzaka on Monday night, not exactly the most obvious street to go for a ride, but a great place to be seen..

Dub Party in the park..

These are from about a week and a half ago, I'm getting lazy.. The Yoyogi raves continued throughout the summer bringing electro tunes and poppin beats to anyone (and their dog) within earshot. This little party however was more of the dub variety, with bits of pop classics thrown in to keep everyone moving. The rig was impressive, the music, not so much. Still awesome fun to be out in the park listening to music though..

Random night shot.. 11

Maruyamacho 10 chome. These lights reminded me of the super high watt ones that street food vendors use, hard to look at but great for shooting..

Festival Lanterns in Maruyamacho..

My last summer festival post, I promise..

Took me a while to work it out, but the lanterns which adorn the streets of each locale at festival time are actually sponsored by the shops and vendors that live in each area. This particular Maruyamacho matsuri base, which was in a tiny little park in the middle of the love hotel district, had lanterns with the names of many love hotels and small restaurants which populate the area. Most noteable of which was the lantern from "2 Sweet Ass", which despite the fact that it could easily be well suited as the name of a love hotel, is actually a restaurant!!

The Shibuya Matsuri..

More of the same really, but interesting nonetheless. Last Sunday all of the local Shibuya festival clans converged on Dogenzaka to hoist the Omikoshi one last time. Young and old come together to celebrate this age old tradition whos purpose was once to promote an abundant harvest of rice.

Crazy (young) Ojisan bloke..

Caught this fella at the park last weekend, yet another addition to the colorful collection of extroverts that head down there each weekend to get their fill of "look at me"!

Maruyamacho Matsuri '08

Well into the late evening through both Saturday and Sunday night, groups of jubilant locals carried different Omikoshi through the streets of my neighbourhood. Chanting and whistling and ocassionally even shouting made it impossible to focus on anything other than this wonderful celebration. I am told that up until the Meiji period, the rooster that adorns the top of the mobile Shinto shrine was actually a phallic symbol, which actually does make sense as the matsuri is meant to be some kind of fertility festival. Western influence put paid to the phallas and now we have a different kind of cock! Maruyamacho is also meant to be the last shitamachi (old town) areas on Shibuya, and if the energy of these locals is anything to go by, things won't be changing too much around here real soon..

The Sri Lankan Festival

Wherever you look at the moment there seems to be some kind of celebration of culture happening, and if you wandered down to Yoyogi this weekend that would most certainly have been the case. The Sri Lankan festival is a little more quiet than say the Jamaican, Thai, or Brazillian festivals, but what's lacking in traffic is certainly made up for in the quality of food and entertainment.

Make mine the bbq chicken and gotamba roti..

Random gorgeousness.. 03

Promotion girls at the Brazil festival, Yoyogi park '08. We were sitting beside these girls all day, still not sure what they were promoting as we were kind of distracted..

Creative marketing..

I ride by this American Apparel store in Daikainyama every day, and I guess to some extent I have become relatively desensitized to this very creative way to attract peoples attention, but every so often I still pass it, shake my head, and go..

what the?!?