The Hotel Fooo in Ikebukuro is a “Love Hotel” which means you usually don’t check in to sleep. Depending on the time of day and how much you pay, most patrons are required to leave within 4 or 5 hours. Run by the Happy Hotel Group, ホテル Fooo （フゥー） is right across the street from a Buddhist temple and cemetery (本立寺) that I was checking out. If you look closely, you can see I didn’t bother to get off my bike to take this photo. My A’s hat rested proudly on my head at the time.

Posted on October 28th, 2012 under Japan. Tags: ikebukuro, signs. Comments Off on Love Hotel in Ikebukuro

Best Buy Theater marquee in Times Square for Kreator, Accept, Steve Vai, and Kansas

Today’s top photo I took this past summer in New York. Unfortunately, I will not be in New York tomorrow night to witness this event. But I did get to see Accept and Kreator (below) last summer.

Mille Petrozza, Kreator

Posted on September 6th, 2012 under Other. Tags: accept, kreator, new york, signs. Comments Off on Kreator and Accept tomorrow night on Times Square

Today’s photo is of the location from which I took yesterday’s pic. After taking these photos we went in for a really good hamburger.

Posted on September 4th, 2012 under Japan. Tags: night photography, odaiba, signs, Tokyo. Comments: 2

The sign above this ancient business says the business is called Matsuya and the product is food. I walked past this place hundreds of times in Tokyo and never once saw a customer. Occasionally I saw an old person inside, sleeping in a chair waiting for a customer. I wondered how long this store had been there. 40 years? 60 years? Could it have actually survived the war? Probably not. My best guess is that it went up shortly after the war but probably was rebuilt to look just like the pre-war store.

食料品店 means the store sells food; however, the only food-like items are in the vending machines outside the store. All I ever saw were flowers and plants–and not really nice, fresh ones like the other flower stores in Tokyo. These flowers always had an old and about-to-die look, sort of like the rest of the place.

Posted on August 27th, 2012 under Japan. Tags: buildings, nishi-waseda, signs, Tokyo. Comments Off on Food (and flower) shop in Nishiwaseda

On my Tanzawa hike, not far from Tokyo and the most heavily populated metropolis in the world, I saw this sign which says something like, “Danger! Do not ever enter”. Really? Are lions back there? I wanted to enter just to see what was so dangerous in this country which has been so completely controlled and tamed.

For some reason fear is a big factor when people are hiking in Japan. I’ve seen bears, snakes, and other potentially dangerous wildlife on hikes in Oregon, but in Japan the biggest threat, in my experience, are the black crows. Even so, most Japanese hikers head out with bells ringing to scare away the (non-existent) beasts.

Posted on May 1st, 2012 under Japan. Tags: hiking, signs. Comments: 1