K.C.'s Garage

Northeast Tokyo holds the ward of Asakusa. This area has many temples and religious sites, the most famous being the Sensō-ji Temple, which was build in 645 AD and is Tokyo's oldest temple. While wandering up the Akasuka shopping area towards the Sensō-ji Temple I was able to sample lots of interesting local treats, including some really neat little pastries that were like half-cookie, half-donut. An older man was operating a large machine producing these treats, which appeared to be wildly popular with the visitors to the area. They were quite good warm and fresh off the machine. The Sensō-ji Temple itself is magnificent. It is surrounded in ritual and you get the feeling instantly that the huge souvenir market is an integral part of the temple. Just outside the steps of the temple sits a huge cauldron with incense burning. Visitors pause by the incense and waft the smoke onto themselves before heading up towards the temple. After visiting the temple I wandered thro...

Well, I made it. Fifteen hours of flying, three hours of train rides, and one confusing taxi ride and I'm at my hotel room in Tokyo. The room is nice, but very small. The mattress is a bit firmer than I prefer, but I'm sure I'll have no trouble sleeping on it tonight. View from hotel room After settling and changing clothes I decided to go back out and wander around a bit. The hotel is in Chiyoda-ku, which seems to be a quiet business district. It is also directly adjacent to a subway station though, so getting around will be fairly simple. I wandered into the subway station with no clue how it works. Luckily, it's pretty standard fare as metro transit systems go - you buy a mag card at a machine, it lets you in the gate, and when you leave at the other end if you didn't have enough money on the card you have to go to another machine and put a litte more money on. I'll probably opt for that system most of the time, as the fare tables make no sense to me wh...

Well, early Tuesday morning they blew up the Frontier in Las Vegas. As some of you know, I was thrown out of the post-closed but pre-demolition Frontier in August while trying to photograph it. I did get as far in as the main tower lobby, but didn't get my camera set up before the head of security decided to do his rounds and escort me to the fence with a stern lecture. I had been thinking of going back and trying again, but another trip to Las Vegas so soon just wasn't in the cards for me - so to speak. One of many YouTube videos of the implosion: The creator of this video has some good pre-implosion interior shots up on http://thestrippodcast.blogspot.com/ . Here's a picture of the New Frontier tower I took in August:

This elementary school sits forgotten and boarded up in a South-Atlanta neighborhood. It is in good company, as many of the neighboring houses also sit forgotten and boarded up. The school was closed in 2004.

Wandering through an old neighborhood, I ran across this old garage with the front door open.