Dogo Onsen was about 10 minutes walk away and as I went out dressed in yukata to head towards the baths, I was given a small carry basket (bucket?) with a towel in it. The tag on the basket says “funaya” ふなや for Funaya Hotel. Some others in the street also had this baskets with their own hotel names on it.

Funaya Hotel basket

The main entrance to the hotel

Getting ready for the evening session at the first floor restaurant

Very nice traditional lobby area and gift shop beyond that

The architecture was a mix of old and modern, with some beautiful greenery surrounding the hotel

The crossover between old and new buildings

Cute little display

A chance to buy some local produce タルト

Coffee shop area overlooking the gardens

A little bit of rain starting to fall

The special exhibition space, showing some of the history of the hotel

Pictures of the Prince making a visit

The Emperor and Prince in the photos here on the wall from a previous visit

Interesting architecture on these arches, very nicely done.

Old style telephone box

You can see the Dogo Onsen photos here.

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Shibuya Hikarie

It was a beautiful day again today in Tokyo, with blue skies and higher temperatures. Winter did not seem that cold this year, but today felt like it was definitely coming to an end.

Out in shibuya, I wanted to take some pictures of the sky, so decided to catch the new Hikarie building at Shibuya station in the frame. Well, the building is so big, it took most of the frame actually.

These are HDR images made from a single RAW file. The camera is saving the raw files at about 12MB per image alongside the in camera JPEG converted image which is about 4MB. When it hits the web the pixels are reduced down from about 4000×3000 pixels to 960×620 pixels, which helps cut the image size a bit. Compression also with that brings it further down to about 200-300K per image.

I darkened the top picture a bit with Picasa before uploading it. I often get asked about whether I use Photoshop, but despite trying many times I haven’t been able to get it to work for me.

Shibuya Hikarie with blue skies

My main tool is Picasa for resizing images and exporting them to web friendly compressions. For HDR I also use PhotoMatix, sometimes from 5 or 7 images, sometimes, like today, just from the 1 RAW file.

If you want to see how to make great HDR photos, I recomend Trey Ratcliffe’s site at StuckInCustoms

The Hikarie name got hikaried a bit by the sun

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Kyoto Station Building

Kyoto Station

With such a great train culture, there are also some interesting stations to visit in Japan. Tokyo Station still has some of the red brick buildings left, but here at Kyoto Station, you can see modern Japanese breezy station building with plenty of character. Dark polished surfaces surrounded with rich colors. Modern Kyoto.

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The emergency exit sign at the entrance to the trunk room. Beware of shady characters!

In the basement of my mansion, along with the garbage room, the bicycle sheds and the car parks, there are also 2 floors of trunk rooms. The storage space here is for residents who can’t fit everything inside their rooms upstairs. The floor space inside the trunk rooms is quite limited, but its great to have somewhere to throw the empty suitcases, seasonal clothing etc.

I felt like I was in a seen from 'Men in Black' or 'The Matrix' when I was walking down this corridor. Doors upon doors with little space between them

... and then I came upon my door

Inside the space is pretty tight, but it does the job alright. Hope nobody has any bodies stored down here

The whole place is air conditioned and each room has its own individual light. It’s actually very well organised for a basement facility in a mansion.

Entry way to trunk room number 9 and 10

Do you have trunk rooms in your part of the world? Are they bigger than this?

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Nice sea creatures here enjoying a sunny day

The lines across are from the shade of a power line. Even indirectly, the power lines can spoil the view ^_^.

What type of construction site decorations do you see at your place?

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Measuring the sounds and vibration levels at this construction site

Construction noise is always a problem if you live close by to a big hole in the ground that is slowly having pieces of steel welded together to form a building. There is always a lot of construction happening in Tokyo and on larger building sites you may see these meters showing the amount of sound or vibration being emitted from the site.

It is a good idea to allow the public to see that the building site is making an effort to reduce the inconvenience to neighbors.

It is a pity the politicians don’t do the same and have meters on the top of their cars showing how much noise their loud speakers are emitting during election time.

The entrance to the construction site in Shibuya

More Information

• A company that rents out these devices
• The pdf explanation from the company about devices

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Shinagawa InterCity complex 品川インターシティ

Shinagawa is one of the major stations on the Yamanote-sen. It also has platforms for the Shinkansen, Narita Express、Tokaido-honsen, Shonan-Liner and other local trains, JR and Keihin-kyuko lines. In total it has 15 JR regular platforms, 4 Shinkansen platforms and 3 Keihin-kyuko platforms.

The Takanawa Side of the station has been long built up by Seibu and their Prince Hotel group. The East or Harbor side had for many years been hard to access and vastly unpopular. It was seen as an area of land where factories and warehouses stood which the average person didn’t need to visit.

The Harbor side of Shinagawa Station after redevelopment

With the end of the Bubble years, the large tracts of land which Japan Railways owned throughout the country were designated for development and sold off to repay JR’s mounting debts. The East side of Shinagawa was one such area.

In 1994 the Shinagawa InterCity complex was built, housing convention facilities and office space and in 2003 the Shinagawa Grand Commons project was opened housing major corporations offices, such as Canon, Sony and Obayashi-gumi. InterContinental also has a hotel in one of the buildings.

Towers reflected upon Towers

Looking up at the Towers, it is hard to find them through the trees

Whilst the office buildings soar into the sky, a nice feature of the Shinagawa Grand Commons / InterCity project is the park area established in the area between the main buildings. The area is well designed with plenty of greenery and water features.

There is space in the middle for small orchestras or stage performances to take place with plenty of room for spectators to take a break from the hot summer and soak up the cool breezes that pass through the park.

The stage is surrounded by plenty of greenery

Live in Tokyo concert

On this weekend, I went to see the ‘Live in Tokyo’ festival being held in the Shinagawa Grand Commons Park. The event is being held from August 8 to 16, 2009. It covers a range of artists and allows the public to experience concerts in the Park.

The band strikes up the beat for the crowd

The kids enjoying the show as well

Live in Tokyo brochure

Many different acts to enjoy

Lots of variety

There was also a flea market in the park which seemed to be attracting quite a bit of attention.

Weekend flea market at Shinagawa Intercity

Something for everyone at the flea market

The architecture is not stunningly different, but all of the buildings have a sleek look about them which still seems to retain a friendly feeling. Rather than hiding people away inside the building there are walkways and multiple entrace-ways to keep a flow of traffic within site.

Walkways from one side of the complex to the other

Buildings to either side, the park and the walkways in the middle

More walkways with the park below

There are also some nice reflection patterns to be seen from the park and the walkways. One building seems to mirror off the next without appearing too heavy and close.

An apartment building reflected in the office tower

A closeup look at the apartment building reflection

More reflections. This time from a water feature in the park

This symbol on the ground in the park, shows the boundary line between the 2 properties.

Boundary Marker

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The old bath-tub pre renovation

Condominium buildings in Japan are called Mansions. In some countries you might think a mansion would be set in a beautiful countryside estate with a huge building in the grounds. In Japan, a typical mansion will be a 10 story concrete building in the middle of the city surrounded by more mansions.

Since the Japanese YEN 10,000 note is called ’1 man’ or ichi-man （一万） it was once joked that apartments that cost up to just under $1 million dollars or YEN 100,000,000 were mansions and those from $1 million and above were called okushions, from the word ‘oku’ (億) meaning 100 million or approx $1 million.

There are a lot of okushions in Japan particularly in the bigger cities. Tokyo has many.

With the price of land still high despite some recent economic troubles, many people looking to buy their own property face the decision of whether to move further out of central Tokyo and buy something new, or maybe look at the option of buying an old place and renovating it into something unique to their own tastes.

One firm that has just started working in Japan that is focused on renovation of old mansions is BAKOKO. I spoke with them recently about a project they had just finished.

Most people don’t think that buying a home around Tokyo would be affordable, but unlike London or New York we were surprised when we didn’t find ourselves priced out of the market here.

New to Tokyo, we decided to transform a typical ‘mansion’ apartment into a contemporary Japanese home. We settled on an small apartment in an eastern suburb, only 30 minutes by train from Central Tokyo. With a distant view of majestic Mt. Fuji to the West and a gaudy neon-lit ‘love hotel’ to the East it truly embodies the modern paradoxes of Japan.

The renovations are quite stunning. When you compare the very old style of the interior with how the finished product turned out the difference is amazing. They have also done well to retain a modern Japanese feel to the apartment, which particularly can be see in the tatami room. (nice touch with the flowers).

Here are some of the comments from BAKOKO on how they went about the renovating process.

planning out the first stages of renovation

the old kitchen area

Before demolition, the apartment was typical of Tokyo’s rapid urbanisation of the 1960′s and 70′s. The small 37m² (400ft²) unit was divided into two Japanese-style rooms with tatami (reed mat) flooring separated by paper (fusuma) sliding screens and a western kitchen. It was quaint and cozy, but that type of interior was simply made for a different generation.

We gutted the unit and transformed it into one room, but with space in short-supply we found that retaining some traditional Japanese features made sense. For instance, new tatami mat area serves as flexible space for entertaining, contemplation, and occasional dining during the day. As is typical in Japan, a futon and blankets are unfolded onto the floor mats from the adjacent closet at bedtime.

The construction begins to take shape

Once the work started it looks like BAKOKO got things moving quickly and the finished product came up looking very clean and bright. The difference between old and new is easy to see.

new tatami mats, fresh feel, traditional image retained

Sliding doors run along nearly the entire length of the opposite wall, concealing a walk-in closet, full-height mirror, book shelves and a hot (pink) desk. We do a lot of work from home. The sliding wall allows us to quickly shut away our personal clutter when a client comes over. However, its equally vital to be able to shut your work away and forget about it at the end of a hard day.

the work area can be closed off after hours by sliding doors

A green line of foliage hangs above the dining kitchen counter, indirectly lit by a thin recessed strip of light opposite. Since standard fluorescent light strips are relatively inexpensive, we seized the opportunity to be creative with built-in architectural lighting features that create subtle effects and atmosphere throughout the interior.

counter kitchen, new lighting and some greenery

The bathroom was divided into a new wet room with Hinoki timber floor (or sunoko) accessed from a small changing room with compact sink and mirrored vanity unit. Typical of modern Japanese bathrooms, the small, but very deep bathtub has no faucet. Instead, it is filled from digital consoles in the kitchen and bathroom.

The computerised system allows users to set the bath water temperature and remotely reheat it either on-demand or by setting a timer. A chirpy female voice chimes in when the bath is ready. The system also controls the hot water for the rest of the household.

very different to the photo from above with the lime green tub

Japanese style squat toilets are common in most older apartments and a reform of this area goes without asking.

no question about changing this

Ensconced in mat black walls and illuminated within a halo cast from the concealed light above is the Washlet. From a control panel on the side of the western style toilet the user can operate an built-in bidet function.

this looks a bit more inviting

It looks like the renovations designed and carried out by BAKOKO have dramatically improved the livability of this mansion and no doubt increased its sale price as well.

bright and airy. nice finishes to the newly renovated mansion

If you are interested in renovating your own mansion in Japan or just want to find out what options might be available, you can give Alastair a call at Main website for BAKOKO get some details.

We’re looking forward to pushing the envelope and building some very cool projects here!

Alastair will be speaking about a computational design and construction project at the next at the next Pecha Kucha at Superdeluxe (July 29th, 7pm).

More Information

• Main website for BAKOKO
• Flickr Photos of pre renovations
• Flickr Photos of post renovations
• BAKOKO’s full set of photos on flickr
• Follow @BAKOKO on Twitter

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Ride your bike straight in and snack

As well as being big on technology, Japan has many world class architects and designers. Some of the design work is for buildings and public spaces, whilst other work is items we might not even have thought about.

STORE MUU design studio based in Tokyo are a team of designers who have an interesting portfolio of works.

photo from Product Design Catalogue 2009

Their website contains more examples of their work.

Would you consider riding your bicycle to a roadside snack area?

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Price reduced to clear. US 70,000 off

After the bursting of the “Bubble Years” in Japan it took property prices a long time to stabilize. Some parts of Tokyo were more resilient than others, like Omotesando 表参道 and Aoyama　青山.

I was passing by this place in Daikanyama 代官山 advertised as an open inspection on the weekend and was surprised to see the sign saying “reduced by US 70,000″ (７００万円値下げました). The sign also shows that the monthly repayments on this place are about US 1,270. YEN 127,473, with no deposit required.

The apartment shown here is 55.86 metres square with 2 rooms and a kitchen. The building is really old (about 30 years) and whilst the apartment has been reformed very nicely, the price of US400,000 (JPY 4,180万円) still seems very high.

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The sign says 'Land for sale'. Actually a building design and permit are shown for this lot

I have 2 sets of photos here. One showing a small building lot and the other a much bigger project that is being developed between Daikanyama (代官山) and Shibuya (渋谷), in Uguisudani-cho (鶯谷町).

This is the building design. Looks quite modern and airy

The construction formal notice

In this case, the building is going to be a 5 story commercial office building possibly with shops, with a basement floor also. The height will be 15.119 metres. The notice says that construction will start on 1st June 2008 and finish on 31st Jan 2009. Looks like this building either is not going ahead or is being delayed for a long time!

This is the block of land for the building. Not a huge block

A major apartment project is being constructed in Uguisudani-cho at the moment on the site of some old danchi (団地), public apartment tenements. The land area is quite large and the work is moving at a rapid pace.

The demolishing work on the old danchi blocks is in full swing

Stage 1 is getting off the ground. You can see more danchi to the left yet to be fully demolished

The formal notification of construction and permits

Some guards on duty outside one of the gates

The apartment blocks, built in 1958, are so well known they even rate their own mention on wikipedia.

Here are some pictures showing the apartment blocks and quite a lot of leafy foliage. I am not sure the new apartment will have so much greenery. http://danchi100k.com/file0125/

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What is that creature doing on the building?

This building always makes me think when I go past it. How did the architect convince the building owner this would be a good idea? How did they present this to the city planning organization? How did they get approval? How did they not get objections from the neighboring building owners?

In a city where strange architecture can be found in many places and building codes seem to be quite flexible with regard to design appearance, it is not the strangest building I have ever seen. The “why” seems like it could have a multitude of answers anyone of which could be right, but I always wonder about the “how?”.

I found today a site in English written by the architect which talks about the design concept for this building and some of their other works, where they state:

There is no common standard in Tokyo that defines what a new building should be. There is not so much as a single concept of how individual buildings should be built in order to create the ideal city nor any strict legal regulations to achieve such a goal.

http://www.makoto-architect.com/aos/aos1.htm

The discussion of design they give is quite in depth and interesting. It really is worth reading in full. Here is another excerpt specifically related to this building:

The Aoyama Technical College building is also intended to restore the fundamental strength that buildings ought to have. Ancient structures, from the Pyramids to the great cathedrals, possessed the awesome power of large spaces. Most of modern architecture, it seems to me, has lost this basic power. Architecture ought to be something capable of moving people’s hearts and giving them a physical thrill in a way possible in no other art. That power deserves to be restored. Another purpose of this building is to assure that anyone who might see it experiences, both mentally and physically, an definitive feeling of excitement.

I certainly feel a certain mental anguish whenever I walk past the building and am grateful that we are shown the back of the creature to the main road rather than its front. The ability of design to raise questions in peoples minds and give them a “thrill” is no doubt being achieved here also.

Prefer to be looking at the backend rather than the fangs !!

Here is the Japanese language site of the School, where interestingly they do not prominently display the building on the front page. http://www.aoyamaseizu.ac.jp/

Trying to attack the other buildings

What is your take on this building and Japanese city planning / architecture design in general ? Do designers of small buildings with interesting shapes have too much license to depart from what is considered normal ?

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