as i mentioned in my previous post, christmas in japan is identical with illumination…it’s so different with indonesia, where christmas atmosphere is rarely felt anywhere, except in shopping malls, and church of course…well, christian is also a minority in japan, but japanese people kinda celebrate christmas just for fun, for the party, and for commercial purpose also ^^

having christmas in japan is not as passionate as when i was back in indonesia, where i have this awesome church and community so i can really feel the true essence of christmas…but anyway, i like this illumination thing…especially for being a good photography object…

there are a lot of famous places for illumination in tokyo, and so far i have visited three of them, odaiba, omotesando, and roppongi…

here are some of the photos i took (click the picture to see larger size):

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Venus Fort Illumination, looks like meteor shower

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Rainbow Bridge showing its rainbow color (usually it’s just plain) with a huge christmas tree on the seaside park

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Big christmas tree in Mediage, Odaiba

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Bells and lights along the Omotesando Street

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Illumination along Omotesando Street

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Illumination Tree in Tokyo Midtown, Roppongi

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Small Christmas Tree in Tokyo Midtown

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Illumination Park in Tokyo Midtown

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Another illumination in Tokyo Midtown

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View of the street in Roppongi Hills with Tokyo Tower in the background

christmas in japan is identical with illumination, where ornament lights are decorating almost every part of the city (i will tell more about it in my next post)…i think they make a very good photo object, so i really want to take a lot of pictures of them…i went on my first illumination photo hunting around odaiba, near my dorm…i took quite a lot of good pictures, but i didn’t feel satisfied enough…it’s like the lights aren’t felt alive in the photos…it’s not like what i imagined that the lights will shine even in a 2D picture…

so i tried googling, ask some experts about how to make the lights shine in my photo…so i got one easy method for that…use a star filter a.k.a cross filter…i tried to search for it, and i found some kinds of cross filter here in japan: cross, snow cross, and sunny cross…the expert who gave me some tips mentioned that there are 4-star or 8-star filter, and i found out the differences, cross is 4-star, snow cross is 6-star, and sunny cross is 8-star…n-star here means how many lines it will create for the shining effect…

finally i decided to buy the cross (4-star) one, a PRO1 digital series from kenko, costs about 2200yen in murauchi.com…
and these are pictures i took with and without filter…you can see the difference…

i’ve hunted some more illumination photos with it, and it works great…now my illumination photos become more alive and beautiful…i will show some in my next post…

a new one piece movie came out in the cinema last saturday…i heard the news for quite a long time and i like one piece but i didn’t really intend to watch it in the cinema for some reasons, especially the language barrier, my japanese is not good enough to watch movies without subtitles…but then i heard another news that the audience will get a present, the 0th volume of the comic book…i got interested in that…so i tried to find some information about it…then there are some other presents for buying the advance ticket voucher…at first i didn’t really care about that, because i intended to watch it in the cinema near my dorm but it doesn’t provide the voucher…but then some things happened and i can’t watch it there on the first day of the movie…so well, to make it worthy, i’ll just find the voucher to get more present…

after i searched for information about that, i decided to watch it in wald9 cinema in shinjuku…i couldn’t get much information about it, i also asked my friend but he didn’t know either…so i just tried to go there by myself on D-3 (wednesday)…i went to the ticket counter and i was told to buy the voucher in the cinema shop…there was a short queue there, and it seemed they were in the same business as me…then came my turn and i told the clerk i want to buy the one piece voucher, then she asked me something but i didn’t put much attention to it, i thought she asked about which present that i want, but then she asked again and showing the ticket and saying like “can’t be used for others”…i still didn’t get it, but i just said ok for that (i realized it afterwards that she was asking about the type of ticket, for adult or children ^^), and then she asked about the present…there were 3 kinds of present, poster, can badge, and markers…i chose the can badge…i was told that i need to exchange that voucher for the real ticket in the ticket counter…i thought i can only do it on the D-Day, so i planned to just came very early on the day…

the next day, i tried to see the schedule for the movie in the cinema webpage, but it’s not out yet…but then i saw there’s a one piece news…i opened it, and saw that the ticket can be bought two days before the show…so if i wanted to watch it on sunday, i had to buy it that day…so i went to shinjuku again at night after the lab seminar finished and after i went to kanda to buy something…i arrived at wald9 at around 8.30 i think, and i was too late…the ticket for the whole saturday had been sold out…so i went there for nothing…

i wasn’t very sure about the present, is it going to be given only on the first day or not…but i decided to watch it on sunday anyway because i already bought the ticket voucher or it will be a waste, so i tried to go there again on friday afternoon…when i got there, most of the tickets are sold already
, but i can only watch it at night on sunday, and fortunately there are still quite a lot of seats for the night show…

the D-Day, on my way to the cinema, i saw two boys in the train reading the same one piece comic book, and it’s the 0th volume, so i thought that it should still be given, not only on the first day…and there i went, got the presents, the comic book and a card for an arcade game…here is the picture:

so i got some lessons from this experience:
1. you can get some presents from watching movie in cinema in japan, especially japanese movies…either it’s from buying advanced ticket voucher (前売券), first day of the show (i got a certificate for being one of the first in the world who watched transformers revenge of the fallen), or even just for watching it (it’s limited though)…
2. you need to check the news in the official movie website or the cinema website often for the details because it may be different for each movie or each cinema…
3. for popular movies (japanese ones especially), you have to be prepared to get the ticket as early as possible for getting the tickets of the first days…

(Oneechanbara)

i found this japanese movie accidentally and i tried to watch it…found some informations that it’s based on a video game…the story is about a time in the future when a scientist tried to resurrect dead people, but become zombies instead…these zombies started to attack people and they become zombies also (sound cliché, eh?^^)…and there’s a girl in bikini -i don’t understand why she only wears bikini in a cold weather ^^- named Aya (Eri Otoguri) accompanied by a fat guy named Katsuji (he can’t really do anything actually) slaying the zombies with her sword skill…then they met with another gun-user-zombie-slayer girl named Reiko…all with different purpose -Aya looking for her sister, Saki,  who killed their father, Katsuji just trying to do something for her sister, and Reiko wanting to kill the scientist who made her lost her daughter- they joined together to find the mad scientist with Saki…

the story is kinda boring, easy to guess, and weird (it’s like the zombies are chasing them on purpose, wherever they go, a lot of zombies just follow them ^^)…i don’t like the make-up for the zombies, kinda poorly done…but i like the fighting scene, just like watching someone playing a video game like Devil May Cry or something, with some special effects like blood splatting on the screen…and watching a cute girl in bikini slaying zombies, as a man i admit it’s entertaining ^^ but overall, it’s just a mediocre movie…

again what i get from this movie is about self-esteem…in the story, the first reason Saki became bad is because she felt not worthy enough…she lost to her sister in a sparring, and her mother told her that Aya is the one who will be the decessor of their clan…she felt weak, and that’s when the mad scientist persuade her to kill her own father in order to become strong…it’s kinda similar with a lot of people in this real world, they compare themselves to someone else that and start to feel unworthy that bring the devil to start deceiving them…maybe just simple things like smoking to make them seem cool (it’s not cool at all), or wearing branded clothes while they don’t have so much money (and they suffer bcos of that)…

again, as i’ve written in other posts, don’t ever think that you’re unworthy…don’t compare yourself with others…you are special just the way you are…although people around you may be better than you in some point, you must have something (that maybe just not realized yet) that is better than them…just do your best with what you have, live your life to the fullest…

one member of a primitive tribe named Zed (Jack Black) was banished from his village and he used that chance to pursue his dream, to see the outside world that he has never seen before…he thought that he is the chosen one by God to make the journey…so his journey began, together with his friend Oh, he met some people from the Bible, got through a lot of trouble and adventures, trying to save his tribe from the slavery…

i don’t like this movie, it’s not a good movie i could say, i don’t recommend this movie…but there’s one thing that i got…in the end of the movie, when people finally call him as the chosen one, he said “Maybe we can all make our own destiny. Maybe we could all be chosen.”

i think he got a point there…yeah, our destiny are not decided by anyone else, not by our moms or dads, our boyfriends or girlfriends, or our leaders, but our destiny are decided by ourselves, every one of us…yes, God has chosen us from the beginning of the life…as the Bible says in Psalms 139:16 “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”

I imagined this like a choose-your-own-story book that i used to read back when i was a kid (have you ever read something like that?) the book has one main story, about certain character(s), and how will it end is decided on how you choose the way…God already write all the story, He makes us the main character, and He’s giving us the freedom to choose how our story go…do you want a good destiny, a happy ending??then make a good choice on your story…

this is a movie starred by Bruce Willis, one of my favorite actor, about an era in the future when everyone use surrogate robots to take their place in whatever they do…they can choose any kind of surrogates and control them from their rooms, so they don’t need to go outside to do their jobs, and they don’t need to be afraid of any diseases or accidents that may occur out there…until one day a murder case is found where the operators (the actual person of a surrogate) also died as their surrogates were killed with a special weapon…as a FBI agent, Tom Greer (Willis), try to solve the case…

i think this movie is not that good…i agree with someone’s comment in imdb about this movie and about Mr.Willis: “As an actor, he has 70+ projects contained within his historical biography and the guy keeps making bad films mediocre and mediocre films watchable.”…yeah, maybe this movie is still ok because of him…

in my opinion, a surrogate is amazing, being seen from its technology, i don’t know when will something like that be actually realized, maybe still 50 years from now…but from the social aspects, it brings a very bad effects indeed…nowadays, with internet technology, people’s social life is quite bad already, where a lot of people prefers to just stay at home, do everything from home, because internet makes lots of things easier…in some ways its good, not so many time wasted for commutation to other places, but it makes people have a bad character i think…i’ve heard somewhere that physical contacts with others have good effects for the growth of someone, especially mentally…i don’t know whether it’s true or not, but i think it has a point…imagine if you have a surrogate, and you control it from your room with only signals from your brain, so you never use your real body at all, not speaking, not walking…that real body will just be like a “thing” that can only think, not a human body anymore…that’s why i was a little bit wondering watching this movie, when in the end everyone don’t use surrogate anymore, and they just seem normal, can walk normally, talk normally…

in this movie, there’s a scene where Greer asked his wife to go on a trip somewhere, with their actual body, but she refused because she feels safer with her surrogate body, she thinks that she’s beautiful in that body…as i already mentioned in a previous post, we think that we’re not good enough, so we’re trying to be someone else…that’s what i think those people are thinking, that’s one of the reason why they always use their surrogates…even the motto of the surrogate company says “do what you want, be what you want”…every people are not satisfied with themselves, so they choose very handsome or beautiful surrogates to take place of themselves, they’re wearing their mask so other people can accept them…we have to take off that mask…we need to be thankful for what we are, because we are perfect just as we were created…

this blog officially got its 4000th hit yesterday…i’m very sorry if i didn’t update it regularly, but i’ll try to write again…

maybe i’ll try to write something from movies i watch again, because the statistics shown that the most popular post is the Bridge to Terabithia…well, actually i got a lot of things from the movies i watch, but i was too lazy to write something…hahaha…but yeah, i’ll try…

thanks to all of the visitors and keep enjoying my blog…God bless!!

anyone of you know that you are special??you are unique, no one else like you in the whole world…even for twins, thay may look similar outside, but they can’t be totally the same, especially inside of them…yes, God is awesome, He created everyone of us, every people in this world, since the beginning of the earth until now, different…and God has a special reasons for that, just like a product designer who has a lot of reasons why he creates a product as it is…

just like Nokia, for example, in one time of product launching, they may launch several types at once, some maybe have similar looks, but all different, each of them has a special purpose to be made like that…maybe for some people the low-end one is good enough (i remember one of my friend who still loved his old Nokia 8250 even there were a lot of much better ones), but for other people, the high-end is better…but in the other hand, some people may think bad of the others…so it’s just a different perspective on what is good and what is not…but i’m sure in a creator’s perspective, what he created is good…

the same goes with us human…God created us good, perfect…some people may have big bodies, but some are small…some have round face, some with long face…some have white skin, some have darker skin…so many differences, but all of us are good in God’s perspective…

but there comes the devil that tries to make some standards of good and bad for us…he makes us have a thinking to be in those standards, if we don’t have the “good” standards, then we are bad…then we started to think bad of ourselves, we have no more confidence in ourselves, and we tried so hard to become someone “better” even it may hurt ourselves…

i have a friend here, a girl, who is quite good looking i think, and i think a lot of people likes her…but she always says that she’s fat and ugly, because of her past when people around her built those thinkings to her…she always tries to have a diet although her body is ideal enough, and she thinks that no good man will like her because she says she’s ugly…sometimes we are just trapped into similar kind of thinking like this…

don’t let our selves being deceived by the devil all the time, and the only way to get out from it is just see ourselves from God’s perspective…don’t listen to what people says about us, especially when it’s a bad thing, but listen only to what God says…and stop also making standards to people, saying bad things about them…believe me, every one of us, including YOU, are precious in His eyes…

i just wrote a new blog about my spiritual life journal, please visit: http://itsjustlight.wordpress.com/

almost half a year since my last post, and for some reasons i think i will try to write again here…

huff…actually i don’t have any topics to write here right now, but i just feel like writing…maybe because i’m not in a very good mood today *since yesterday to be exact* because of several things…it’s like a lot of things is in my head and it’s almost full, but i don’t know where to put it out…so here i am ended up writing here…

recently i think God is trying to process me again and again…i’m not really sure what He is up to, but things coming are quite bothering me, and i don’t think i can endure this alone…yeah, but i have to get through this…I CAN DO ALL THINGS THROUGH CHRIST WHO STRENGTHENS ME!!