Wow ! Long time no see ! I have been incredibly busier than I expected for the last month. I thought I'd have a (too) quiet 2 weeks vacation for Christmass and new year but it turned out I was out all the time (..party all the time, party all the time, party all the tiiiiiiime ...).

Thing is, as you can probably guess, I haven't been visiting much... or not at all ! Just spending my last students moments in this amazing country . So, not much to say about visits. But I went on a trip thursday to get you some pictures . I went to 横浜 (Yokohama), slightly south of 東京 (Tokyo).

So basically, there are two major interesting things in 横浜. First one is the みなとみらい (Minato Mirai) district which is a business area, the main interest being that this is where stands the tallest tower of Japan: The Landmark Tower: 296 meters (not that tall, by the way). This tower holds hundreds of shops of any kind in a very classy and fancy environment ! Quite a nice place to go shopping... when you got money (this thing that buys my alnight trips to tokyo once or twice a week)...
Anyway, the place also offers a great view of the harbour from the 69th floor. View that was unfortunately a bit foggy because of some clouds... Still, it was worth the ride to the 69th floor cause the elevator travels at the impressive speed of 12.5 m/s (45km/h, world's second fastest elevator).

But even at 265 meters high, the view is not as outstanding at you might think ! The most beautiful part being the harbour and the see. But the other 4 orientations seemed to me like nothing special. I was a bit disappointed but... hey, I had a 12.5 m/s ride so ...

The second main interesting sight of 横浜 is 横浜中華街 (Yokohama Chinatown). The biggest one in Japan, one of the biggest in the world. You can find more information on wikipedia. I tried to take some pictures to show you how chinese the area looks...

I can't describe the feeling, but imagine walking down tight streets, all full of restaurants (over 200 in the area) and other chinese shops. Really a nice place to go or shop for food !! There are also outstanding temples ! Really amazing ! It's funny how shiny and colorful buddhist temples look while, for example, churches look sooo grey and sad ! If I had to chose a religion from their buildings, that would certainly be something that good looking (ok, that was stupid... ) !

I've got two more pictures here. Quite representative of the mood over there ! First, a huge stuffed panda portrait, because Chinese and Japanese people are fond of them (for a reason still unknown...) and some shiny piggy banks, because 2007 is the year of the Fire Pig !

Thanks to Europe aids and because it's Christmass , I decided to get myself a little present . So I bought my first SLR camera (Sony Alpha 100). That explains the changes in the pictures sizes. One thing though, since it was my first shots with it, I made a mistake and took over exposed pictures all along the afternoon (note: i manually set the exposure to +1 the day before and forgot to put it back to default).... I know, it's stupid . That explains the over exposed shots you're looking at. I promiss I'll do better next time ....