Category: Tokyo

Check this impressive interactive panoramic one gigapixel photo captured from Roppongi Hills in Tokyo

I had been several times around Jimbocho, near Tokyo Station, but up until recently I hadn’t had the time to enjoy the famous streets where you can find plenty of second hand books. Last month, I could finally go there and snoop around the bookstores. I wasn’t expecting to find so many stores! There are dozens of stores full of books from decades and even centuries ago, manuscripts, scrolls, old magazines, ukiyo-e art, drafts of novels by famous authors (I saw drafts of Haruki Murakami novels!), developed photographs of famous photographers, etc. I ended up buying a couple of old maps from Tokyo (handwritten maps from 90 years ago), a Daido Moriyama photograph book and another one by Nobuyoshi Araki.

These are some of the photos that I took during my visit, using my new iPhone 4.

Since I have a Kindle I go less often to my favorite bookstore Kinokuniya, but I recently went there for a while to see the latest Japanese book releases. I found shelves and sections dedicated completely to books about the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in Tohoku, whose consequences we are still living in Japan.

There are books that compile, explain, analyze and reflect on everything that has happened, others explain how to be prepared for a nuclear catastrophe, some others analyze what needs to be done from now on so that Japan can recover from the damage, other books are focused on the economy, others on how to reconstruct the most affected areas, etc.

Here I leave you a talk that Hiroshi Ishii gave last month at TEDxTokyo in Miraikan