Random photos of stations I have visited

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Some more videos of Enoshima:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 9, 2023 by mojo

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Normal service has been resumed.

 

 

I was very tempted by that calculator. I love unusual display devices. Not sure what it uses exactly, maybe nixie tubes or a VFD with fancy font.

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Matsudo, Chiba.

Edited January 9, 2023 by mojo

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Apologies to whoever's house this is, but wow. Japanese homes are so well designed and absolutely huge compared to British ones. So many little details, from the carport to the nice entranceway. Carports are basically illegal in the UK.

 

Low maintenance but very nice garden, overhangs for shade in the summer and to keep some rain off the windows. Decent size porch that actually protects you from rain when unlocking the door. Oh yeah, and it's Japan so no problem leaving your umbrella and bike outside, no need to drag all that mess indoors. Nice balcony that offers utility and some privacy.

 

Overall it's about 3x as big as a typical UK home too, and this is not at all uncommon based on my observations. It's also very nicely rendered and clean. British houses get loads of random pipes and wires bolted to them because they aren't actually designed in any real sense. Just built for as little money as possible and then random utilities get installed by sticking pipes wherever it's cheapest.

 

Oh and of course it's detached. Most UK houses are attached directly to another, transmitting all the noise and creating conflicts whenever any maintenance needs doing. I haven't checked but I expect this house is quite affordable compared to UK ones. So depressing.

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Misato.

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I'd like to see the underside of these platforms.

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While most cabling in Japanese stuff is extremely neat and tidy, utility poles seem to be an exception.

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Yoshikawa station. I wonder what the deal with that building between the tracks is. Looks like it was put there after the station was built. There must be something down there for the tracks to have diverged that much.

 

The next station along is Lake Town, where there is a massive Aeon outlet mall. I wish I had stopped by, but didn't have time. Been there before, they have some good restaurants.

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Ichikawa.

 

 

 

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Road sign in Ichikawa. Considering how low Japanese speed limits are... And overall Japanese drivers seem to be pretty good.

 

 

That LaserDisc player is kinda rare. The big slot can take one of three modules, a Sega Megadrive one, an NEC PC Engine one, or a Karaoke one. Basically you can play interactive games on it, like the arcade version which ran Dragon's Lair and a few others.

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Some more signage at the Asakusa station of the Tsukuba Express line.

 

One thing I should get more photos of are labels. Japan loves labelling stuff. The stations are full of adhesive labels on everything. They have giant commercial printers for them, but you can get home versions. Well, I did get a home version... About that...

 

There are a few brands, the two big ones seem to be King Jim and Casio NameLand. I got into the Casio ones but in hindsight King Jim might be better. There are machines with a keypad, but now people are switching to printers with Bluetooth or WiFi. The big advantage of the latter is that it's so much easier to edit labels on your phone/labet or PC. Especially if your Japanese reading isn't that good.

 

The only real issue with the Casio ones is that the app isn't available outside Japan. You can side-load it and it works just fine. Hopefully it stays that way as some Japan only apps won't open if they think you are outside the country, although a VPN is usually enough to fool them.

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Sandwich in Lumine Shinjuku. Met a friend, and wow that was a lot of meat.

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17 minutes ago, mojo said:

 

Yoshikawa station. I wonder what the deal with that building between the tracks is. Looks like it was put there after the station was built. There must be something down there for the tracks to have diverged that much.

 

 

'Twas once the diverging point for the Musashino Marshalling Yard (武蔵野操車場), which is long gone and buried under redevelopment.

 

See aerial photo in this article: https://www.excite.co.jp/news/article/TetsudoCh_11681252/

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Some more signage from the Akihabara terminal of the Tsukuba Express line.

 

The second one says that hawking for customers in the street is banned. I thought there were a lot fewer maids on the streets than there were before. I wonder what the story is, did something happen? It did get a bit much at times, there were a lot of them but I figured that the pandemic caused a lot of them to go out of business.

 

Still, there were some maids out there so I don't know if it's just not enforced or what.

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When it's one of those mornings and normal coffee isn't enough, you need MAX COFFEE.

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Haven't seen a single carriage train for quite a few years, but this trip I saw a few and used one.

 

Kizarazu station.

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A rare desktop form factor MSX machine.

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The story here is that the bus didn't arrive after I waited about 20 minutes past the due time, and Google maps suggested I try a train instead. It said walk through these fields, so I did.

 

The problem with Google Maps is that it often underestimates walking time. Ended up just missing the train and waiting for another bus.

 

The busses in Chiba are not great. I should have rented a car, but I was feeling kinda tired and didn't trust myself to drive in unfamiliar territory. Probably the right decision, in the end I made multiple mistakes that day which were just annoying rather than a car accident.