I spent the first 5 days of my adventure in Tokyo; staying in the Shinjuku area. Shinjuku is amazing, full of Japanese culture and it moves fast: I’d say it’s like New York + Las Vegas x 100. Crazy. In fact, after 3-4 days, it overwhelmed me just to step out of my hotel and get a cup of coffee in the morning. So many people, 24×7.

However, Shinjuku also has the largest train station in Tokyo and it was located right across the street from my hotel. Therefore, I was easily able to jump on a train and quickly get to any part of Tokyo. Have you seen the Tokyo train system? Holy crap. Extremely well organized and split-second precision….but how can a white dude like me figure out what to do? Luckily, my friends, Mark and Masako were there on my second day to show me how to work the train system. After a quick lesson…I was on my way and unstoppable.I spent my first full day with Mark and Masako. After training me on the train system and other important Tokyo survival facts, we strolled around the downtown and government areas (in Shinjuku). Lots of amazing architecture. Each structure, a unique work of building art. With a style that is, as my friend Andrew Goldfarb says,  ”almost like walking into the future.”

We went in the main government building and sat in on some important government debate. I have no idea what they were talking about so I can’t tell you. But it was a big room with Japanese people dressed up nice and they all seemed serious. Although we did catch one dude asleep in his chair!. Then, it was up to the very top floor of this huge tower (the name escapes me, need to ask Mark.) This gave us a great view over all of Tokyo. 

After we had lunch, Mark and Masako headed off on their own while I hoped around the train station, jumping on and off trains just to get some practice.Next day, I spent exploring Ginza, one of the “high end” areas where there is lots of fancy shopping, etc. Being Christmas time, there were tons of people running around with nice Xmas cheer everywhere. I had gone all morning without any coffee, so my main objective was to find java house quick!!! 

Also in Ginza, is an old and famous Kabuki theater and a large and busy fish market.

I walked around for quite a while – over a nice bridge – I was looking for the Sony building, but I could not find the “main” one. Grabbed some lunch and jumped on the train to visit another area, Shimbashi. It was starting to get dark and I had no idea what I was doing, but I cruised around and took some cool photos of the alleys of Shimbashi. I’m a big fan of photos of alleys…not sure why…but I just love the vibe a good alley can give. I have to say that Japan has the coolest alleys I’ve ever seen.

After sunset in Shimbashi, I was on the train back to Shinjuku.  

I’m finally getting some time to blog about my adventures in Japan. I’m in Phuket now, after spending 11 days in Japan and then a few days in Bangkok. I landed in Japan on Dec. 12th (I think) and made my way from Narita airport to the Shinjuku area of Tokyo.

When the bus dropped me off, somewhere in the enormous Shinjuku train station (largest station in Tokyo), I really had no idea where I was; I only knew that my hotel was supposedly close by. So I just started walking… 

The streets were jammed with cars and the sidewalks were moving a hundred miles an hour with people racing to get somewhere…it was around 7:00pm, so I thought this was the commute crowd. I would soon learn that this is how things moved in Shinuku 24×7.Keep in mind, I was dragging my 300-pound suitcase and laptop with me. I had not slept in a long time and I was on the plane for 12 hours. After walking for a while, and not bumping into my hotel, I thought I’d ask someone where I was and how to find my way. I had a little map with me and I asked a young girl who was handing out some flyers for something (skin care?) She could not speak English, but when I pointed to the spot on the map, she new exactly where it was and directed my back two blocks and made a sign that I was to turn left. It worked! I found my place.The hotel was genius. Basically, everything in the room was 1 big piece: the bed, the desk and a chair were all connected together and in the bathroom, the shower, sink and toilet were also all 1 piece connected like they were literally folded out and hooked up from a packaged combo set at IKEA. 

I was pretty beat my first night, but did manage to venture out for some food. Again, not much English going on as far as signs and people’s speak. I was intently looking for a place to eat where they had nice big photos of the food; and I wanted noodles tonight. Surprisingly, it took me a while to find some pics of noodle food. You’d think in Japan, there would be noodles around every corner; but no….at least no photos of noodles. It seemed like most of the food porn was of crazy looking fish and BBQ meat (of which I could not recognize).

At last, I did find me a nice beautiful photo of a bowl of noodles. Yes, that is what I want. I went into the establishment and after the guy said something to me (assuming he told me to take a seat), I pointed directly to the noodle shot in the menu. He understood and I was on my way. Now, you might be asking yourself, as I was, how did I know exactly what was coming with those noodles? There appeared to be some other stuff in there….what would it be? When the noodles appeared a short while later, I concluded that the other ingredients appeared to be chicken and vegetables.  Dam it was HOT…I mean temperature-wise. I had to wait another 10-15 minutes, and even toss in an ice-cube, before I could actually start eating it. Wow…seriously the best dam noodles I have ever had! Amazing. 

Next post….exploring Shinjuku, temples, castles, Kyoto, stay tuned…. 

Well my friends, I’m off for a 4-5 week trip in Asia; starting with Japan. I leave tomorrow. I’ve got my Flip camera and I’ll be sure to post fun updates and photos of my adventure. I’m bringing my brand new Mac Book Pro, along with some great reading material: Cocoa Programming using Object C, Pragmatic AJAX, AS 3.0 Design Patterns and Scalable Web Development. You’re typical, fun vacation reading. Sonia is off to India in a couple weeks as well. Have a great holiday! 

Wow, another great Adobe MAX. (Actually, it ended 2 weeks ago, but I’ve been too swamped to get to my blog!) This year’s MAX was very action-packed for me: I was invited to attend the Adobe partner/agency summit, where about 15-20 peeps from my industry get to hang out with Adobe leaders for a full day, learning about the new things Adobe is up to as well as offering ideas for the future; then, AKQA was up for 2 MAX Awards, so I attended the awards ceremony and party; and then I spoke, along with Charles Dunan, at our MAX session: Delivering Integrated Content Across Multiple Channels (i.e. Multi Channel). Whew, all this jammed-packed in to 3-4 days….not to mention all the great sessions, keynotes, and parties I attended.

Everything went great. AKQA won one of the two awards we were nominated for: The Coke Happiness Factory website, done by our New York office; congrats guys! The Agency Summit, which I also attended last year, was fun and informative as well. It was so cool to see some of the ideas we had discussed for new Adobe tools actually make it in to CS4! The new video stuff in After Effects is sooooo amazing.

Our session on Multi Channel marketing went really well too. I was so impressed with my co-presenter, Charles. It was his first speaking engagement (and at MAX no less!) and he did a great job. We had a solid turn out, lots of good questions and our final feedback was excellent (thanks everyone). More on this later…gotta pack for my trip to Japan next week….