As promised, I said earlier that I will blog about my trip to Japan to receive an Award by the Photo City Sagamihara organising committee. Well, I arrived in Narita Airport yesterday evening after a smooth flight. Everything here works! Its as simple and functional as that. My luggage was already on the carousel only 10 minutes after landing. That's an impossibility for Heathrow, or KLIA for that matter.
I was greeted by Otsuka Mitsuhiro from the Cultural & International Relations Division of the Sagamihara City Hall, who spoke good English, and his white-gloved limo driver, whose name I did not get. The highways are smooth, and fast, the streets are clean and orderly. Sagamihara City which I learned is twinned with Toronto, is about 40 kms south-west of Tokyo with a population of about 700,000. Today, I am helping the organisers hang my 20 framed photographs from the Outside Looking In book, at the City Hall for the public exhibition which begins on Saturday and ends on the 29th October.
A bit about the award. Photo City Sagamihara or PCS started as a cultural project to create awareness in photography amongst amateurs and professionals in the local area and abroad in 2001. Each year since 2002 the PCS commitee awards a Grand Prix Asia Prize to an Asia photographer, and Malaysia was the nation they selected from for 2007. Past winners came from Thailand, Vietnam,Taiwan, Korea and China.
Last evening at 10.23 pm (Japan time) Malaysia sent their first astronaut into space from Baikonur in the form of Dr Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor. Congratulations Dr Shukor, another Malaysia Boleh! achievement. I desperately wanted to watch the live telecast but the blast-off wasn't covered here on Japanese TV. I searched in vain also for internet webcasts from Malaysian TV station websites but again drew a blank. I guess in years to come, when people ask where I was on this very special day, I can say I was tucked away in a neat little hotel in the suburbs of Tokyo watching Japanese gameshows on TV. Sigh..
More later....
I was greeted by Otsuka Mitsuhiro from the Cultural & International Relations Division of the Sagamihara City Hall, who spoke good English, and his white-gloved limo driver, whose name I did not get. The highways are smooth, and fast, the streets are clean and orderly. Sagamihara City which I learned is twinned with Toronto, is about 40 kms south-west of Tokyo with a population of about 700,000. Today, I am helping the organisers hang my 20 framed photographs from the Outside Looking In book, at the City Hall for the public exhibition which begins on Saturday and ends on the 29th October.
A bit about the award. Photo City Sagamihara or PCS started as a cultural project to create awareness in photography amongst amateurs and professionals in the local area and abroad in 2001. Each year since 2002 the PCS commitee awards a Grand Prix Asia Prize to an Asia photographer, and Malaysia was the nation they selected from for 2007. Past winners came from Thailand, Vietnam,Taiwan, Korea and China.
Last evening at 10.23 pm (Japan time) Malaysia sent their first astronaut into space from Baikonur in the form of Dr Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor. Congratulations Dr Shukor, another Malaysia Boleh! achievement. I desperately wanted to watch the live telecast but the blast-off wasn't covered here on Japanese TV. I searched in vain also for internet webcasts from Malaysian TV station websites but again drew a blank. I guess in years to come, when people ask where I was on this very special day, I can say I was tucked away in a neat little hotel in the suburbs of Tokyo watching Japanese gameshows on TV. Sigh..
More later....
2 comments:
Aren't those Japanese Game shows interesting... when I was there a week back, I can't get enough of it...
Another thing to note was that Japan is a Photography nation, from old aunty to young girls, they carry SLRs...
check out the photography museum while you were there...
Hello Kew, thanks for dropping by. Will try to get to the Photography Museum, next week. Unfortunately I can't understand a word of japanese, so watching the gameshows is pure guesswork.
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