For our last full day in Tokyo the plan was to visit Ginza in the morning and we already had purchased tickets for an evening performance in the Suntory Hall.

Ginza subway station. Unlike other stations we have see, there are automatic fences that block the way if there is no train.

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For a few years already I was planning to do some fireworks photography and today we finally managed to go to the Independence Day festival in Knoxville with a camera and tripod.

Seems some amount of practice is needed for best results, but even for my first try I have some interesting shots.

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In the evening of day 7 we decided to go to the Chidori ga Fuchi part of the moat around the emperor palace. We have  seen some spectacular pictures of beautifully lit sakura trees at night and wanted to capture something like that.

We arrived during a day time, though the sky was overcast and not pretty. Yet right after exiting the subway station the atmosphere looked quite different from the rest of Tokyo. We immediately saw a lot of sakura trees and people with cameras taking pictures.

Moat during the day.

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On Sunday our plan was to go to Harajuku, this is a famous place in Tokyo. People of strange fashion meet there and there are a lot of fashion shops too.
Another of the VOLKS shops is located there so we wanted to visit it too.

This building is near Shinjuku station and it is the second biggest educational building in the world. It's named Mode Gakuen Cocoon Tower.

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And now a report from the second day of NY Dolpa 4.

The second day opening was scheduled at 10:30, so we arrived at 9:44 to be sure to get some chance of buying limited things on sale that we were not able to preorder.

Of course even at 9:44 there was a huge line standing outside of FIT this time

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Aside from the trip to NY dolpa we also have been to New York itself of course. Actually we spent most of the time in New Jersey, just across the river from Manhattan, since hotels and food are much cheaper this way.

The dolpa was held at Fashion Institute of Technology, and there was this high-tech parking nearby that reminded me of Japanese parking.

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We just returned from Dolls Party in New York organized by VOLKS. (June 19-20, 2010).

The event short name is "dolpa" and VOLKS tries to hold it annually for the people who bought their dolls to appreciate the customers and let everybody enjoy and show off their dolls to others. Usually some special limited edition dolls are created for each event too with a chance for participants to have a chance at buying.

The party was centered around "Alice in Wonderland" theme.

Since we live in TN and the air travel was somewhat expensive we decided to go by car which turned out to be not so hard.

This was a first dolpa we attended.

When we arrived some 20 minutes before starting time there was a huge line already.

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After we finished our dinner in Izakaya, it was already dark. Ihara-san and his family headed home and we decided to wander around some more and to take some night pictures.

Rainbow bridge at night.

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The day 6 was preplanned long before we came to Japan. On this day we decided to go to Hamarikyu Garden and then to Odaiba with our friend (and then - coworker) Ihara-san who greatly helped us to prepare for the trip too.

So we met at Shiodome station at 13:30 with him and his wife and daughter and entered the Garden.

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Today I want to introduce you to very delicious fried Japanese dumplings that are called Yaki-Gyōza (焼き餃子).
Actually gyōza (ギョーザ) (or Jiǎozi (饺子) as they are called in China) are Chinese dumplings and they are very popular in China and Japan.
The most prominent differences of Japanese-style gyōza from Chinese style jiaozi are the rich garlic flavor, which is less noticeable in the Chinese version, and the fact that Japanese-style gyōza are very lightly flavored with salt, soy, and that the Gyoza wrappers are much thinner than the Chinese counterpart.
The most popular preparation method is the pan-fried style
And that is why today in the menu we have:

Yaki-Gyōza - Pan-Fried Style Dumplings!


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