Daily Photo

(Suffering from a slight backlog of posts due to a lack of time; normal service will resume at the weekend).

This is Tennozu Isle Station (天王洲アイル駅) on the Rinkai Line. Not of any particular interest or significance except as a commuter destination - though hopefully only for a couple of weeks. Still, it's close to the sparkling waters of Tokyo Bay, which is quite reassuring to my penguiny self.

That's very kind of them to arrange some snow especially for my penguiny self:

(Takeshita-dori in Harajuku, about 30 minutes ago)

I've now had the pleasure of having my fingerprints taken for the second time in my life (the first time was about 10 years ago, for my alien registration card). The actual process was very quick, to the point I wouldn't be surprised if the machine was in "pretend" mode and the data was being thrown away. Ironically it must have been my fastest trip through Narita ever: from leaving the plane to stumbling jet-lagged and bleary-eyed (or jet-eyed and bleary-lagged) out into the arrivals hall took about 25 minutes.

Added: In case you're wondering, "yokoso" means "welcome" in Japanese, and "Yokoso! Japan" is the offical slogan of Japan's tourism marketing agency.

This, believe it or not, is an internet café in Berlin. Well, actually it's a normal café / bar theoretically specialising in Arabic food which has found a niche in a very crowded market as an internet café, offering both PC terminals and free wifi as well as its normal menu.

As I currently work mainly from home, it's useful to get out once or twice a day - stops me going crazy - and since the start of the year, when a comprehensive smoking ban came into effect, my radius of action has vastly increased. Now, don't get me wrong: I wouldn't want to stop anyone from enjoying a cigarrette, but I would greatly appreciate it if they'd do it somewhere where I am not, as I would like to enjoy my time with a nice coffee, beer and / or meal without their contribution in the form of an unavoidable layer of stink coating my clothing, hair etc.

Unfortunately the law as it stands in Berlin allows establishments with a separate room to provide a smoking area, and this place - the Al Hamra (warning: Flash-only website) - has a basement for smokers, and while I didn't notice anything at the time, coming home my clothes have still managed to gain a certain stale, tarry smell which they didn't have before. Still, the situation is vastly better than it was before.

Which brings me to Japan, where the situation is also improving - recently taxis in Tokyo instituted an almost complete ban - but has quite a way to go, especially where restaurants and cafes not belonging to major chains are concerned. By total coincidence I came across a website called "Kinen Style" (禁煙スタイル, Smoke-Free Style), a very useful website with user-supplied data listing businesses throughout Japan with no-smoking policies. There's also an English version, but with hardly any entries.

I wonder how long it will be before smoke-free businesses in Japan are the rule, not the exception?

Two weeks to go :-).

Online booking and "e-tickets" are all very nice and convenient, but without having flight times printed in some form or another, long-distance travel isn't so much fun.

In a moment of madness (well, they had the better deal going) I opted for Air France via Paris, which inevitably involves the Tour de Charles de Gaulle, aka a mad sprint between terminals because no matter how much time you allow for connections, it isn't enough. Maybe I should take performance-enhancing substances?

This will be my first trip to Japan since the introduction of fingerprinting at immigration. Wonder how they will deal with my little stubby penguin wings?

The kind people at Apress have just sent me two PHP-related books to review. Both look pretty interesting and nicely complement a project I'm doing at the moment, so I'll be taking a closer look over the next few days. (Don't worry: I won't be posting the reviews here!).

The past couple of days it's been freezing cold and ice has formed on ponds and fountains. This isn't German-style bicycle parking; rather it's some sort of art at Potsdamer Platz, a new city district (think a smaller-scale version of Tokyo Midtown or the Shiodome Shiosite complex) built after the Berlin Wall came down.

No direct Japan connection in this photo, but a bit further to the left there's a building by Japanese architect Isozaki Arata (磯崎新), the former Volksbank Center.

Well, the New Year resolution about a daily photo didn't last long, did it? Unfortunately an icky tooth has been preventing me from engaging in more pleasurable habits such as blogging, but while out and about on the town today (well, actually at the local shopping centre) I managed to snap this fascinating Japan-related photo: