Yokkaichi City, Mie

Behind A Ramen Shop - Yokkaichi, Mie

I recently got a Holux GPS logger to help make maps of my trips and geocode my photographs. Trying to do the latter led me to download and tryout the new Lightroom 4 beta. I've been using Lightroom since 1 and currently run 2.7. The improvements in 4 are wonderful, although the publishing to flickr is a bit confusing. Most likely I'll sick with Jeffrey Friedl's plugin. I'm extremely happy about the lens correction that gets rid of a lot of the warping and stretching that always annoyed me about my zoom lens. These three photos are a bit of a test for my new workflow.

Tory's Gets a Kiss - Yokkaichi, Mie

I took a stroll down through the shotengai and nightlife district in front of Kintetesu Yokkaichi station last Saturday. The mizushobai district was quite large for the size of the town. There were some interesting snacks. The Suntory Tory's character making an appearance on a snack sign. while another nearby snack was called 酔人 "Drunk Person." There was also a pretty beat up looking x-rated movie theater down a little alley. All of this next to the city's children's park which had a really fun looking playground and rental riding toys. Gotta love spatial relativism.

Ropponica Theater - Yokkaichi, Mie

This was my first time to explore a Mie, Pref. city since walking around rather rural Kameyama a few years back. I was surprised how modern and clean the most of Yokkaichi's ekimae was. With many new buildings and pedestrian walkways. The influence from Nagoya was noticeable here just as the lack of influence was when I arrived in Matsusaka later that day. I was surprised to see a Lalaport run mall, an Animate store, and Vedett-a white Belgium beer-being advertised by a modern looking bar all right there next to the station. However, this modern, clean Japanese landscape quickly faded into the shotengai and mizushobai streets to the east and the old neighborhoods to the west. Not to mention the very bubble-esque  Kintetsu department store that served as an anchor to the entire area.