Random photos of stations I have visited

[kuro68000]

 

Some more signs. Thomas teaches safety to children. Skip leg day at the gym and take the stairs instead of the escalator. Information on the women only car.

[kuro68000]

[kuro68000]

 

The Hard Off at Inagekaigan had some nice stuff. I'm in two minds about this one. There was a Hard Off at a nearby out of town shopping area that was larger and had an excellent junk section. It closed and then this one opened, but since 3 years passed I can't really say if it's the same stock or what.

 

The junk here was not nearly as good and there wasn't as much of it, but the regular goods were well above average.

[kuro68000]

 

View of the Chiba Urban Monorail from JR Chiba Station.

[kuro68000]

[kuro68000]

 

Yotsukaido eki-mae.

[kuro68000]

 

The fire engines were take from the bus, believe it or not. That bus had extremely clean windows.

[kuro68000]

 

 

Some more walking videos. Still looking for a discrete wearable camera for this kind of thing, but I fear such a thing may not and may never exist.

[kuro68000]

 

I bought a couple of interior design books here. I had actually seen other books I wanted in Book Offs attached to Hard Offs, but always forgot to buy them. I'm actually terrible for that in Hard Off too. One coping mechanism is to review the photos I took before leaving. I tend not to want to carry stuff around the shop, but rather gather it all at the end, but that usually ends up with me forgetting things.

 

 

Based on the prices I'm assuming that there are now flip phone collectors.

[kuro68000]

 

 

[kuro68000]

 

Yotsukaiso and Chiba stations.

[kuro68000]

 

Some lights at Chiba Station.

 

That wraps things up for this trip. Back in the USS... I mean UK. Flight back was better than the flight out, despite on the way out having upgraded to Premium Economy. They gave me a seat by the emergency exit. Decided to try out the in-flight internet option too, 20 bucks for the whole flight with unlimited use. It was okay, could browse websites for much of the flight, with some outages near Russia and over Greenland and Iceland. YouTube worked but the quality was poor. Okay for video essay type stuff. Jet lag was really bad, not sure if that is related to the extended flight or the timing of the departure/arrival. Due to train strikes I had to get a taxi home too, although I fully support the rail staff. Now just waiting for some boxes of stuff I posted to arrive. My X68000 Compact Red Zone already did.

Edited January 15, 2023 by mojo

[marknewton]

G'day Paul,

 

Good to hear that you're back home, safe and well I trust. Thanks once again for all your travel photos and stories, I've found it very informative and entertaining! 👍

 

All the best,

 

Mark.

Edited January 15, 2023 by marknewton

[cteno4]

Paul,

 

thanks for the very fun, vicarious trip to japan. Your photos have been good fodder to mull modeling scenes and details.

 

glad you got your big japan trip finally.

 

cheers,

 

jeff

[kuro68000]

I made some 4k wallpapers from the best photos I took last time...

 

 

Kasukabe, Saitama

 

[kuro68000]

 

Kita-Senju, Tokyo

Edited August 26, 2023 by mojo

[kuro68000]

 

Ishikawacho, near Motomachi and Chinatown, Yokohama

[kuro68000]

 

Shimodate, Ibaraki. A cat lives at this station.

[kuro68000]

 

Yamanashi, Yamanashi

[kuro68000]

 

Kita-Ageo, Saitama

[kuro68000]

 

Minaminakano, Omiya-Higashi, Saitama

[kuro68000]

 

Akihabara, Tokyo

[kuro68000]

 

Koshigaya, Saitama

[miyakoji]

Thanks @mojo.  Also that Google Map link looks excellent.

[kuro68000]

Thanks. My next trip will be in December. Waiting to see what the Google Pixel 8 is like. Rumour has it that they have a new camera sensor that takes even better night time shots.

 

One issue I have, apart from a chronic lack of talent, is getting shots level. The camera app has a level display, but somehow even when I think I have it at 0° some of the photos come out a bit wonky. Maybe it needs sub degree accuracy, or even better I wish it would just rotate the original 50MP image it captures to be level, before reducing it down to 12MP. You can't save the 50MP images, only the binned 12MP ones, even with RAW mode. I can't really do much with RAWs anyway, I tried a few open source apps but couldn't make them look even as good as the phone's automatic processing.

 

I'm thinking about getting a gimbal too, because I'm not very happy with the video I took last time. Might also help with being a tripod and auto-levelling for photos. I just need to find the right one, small and light weight, and ideally easy to clip the phone in and out of. A magsafe case might be the key to that. I'm hoping that between the gimbal and some potential low light improvements in the Pixel 8 I might be able to take some decent walking videos.

 

About the map, I also have one for Hard Off that is now nationwide and organized by region. For rail fan use though it really needs to have Hobby Off added, and the stores rated somehow by how much train stuff they have. It's very hit and miss, some have a lot and others none, and of course it changes all the time and people buy and sell. The limitations of both Google My Maps and the main Google Maps are quite frustrating, but there doesn't seem to be any good (free) alternative.

 

I'd love to be able to build a map with photos on too. The Photos app on Android can show you photos on a map, but it hasn't come to the web version yet.