Amazingly Japan has 17 public holidays. The way the holidays fall this year I end up with 6 long weekends this fall. They have arranged them in such a way that you get a lot of long weekends. A few fall on Thursdays so you take Friday as a vacation day and get a 4 day weekend. This weekend happens to be one of them; 文化の日, or Culture Day was on Friday. I didn't realize until the end of day on Thursday that Friday was a holiday. It was a nice surprise. I'm glad I'm not traveling much this fall so I can stay home with my family to enjoy them.

I do have one last trip for the year. I'm going to go to Florida to visit my parents in early December. I haven't seen them in two years so I'm excited to be able to spend a week with them. I was able to book round trip Business Class Tickets using miles for only 65K miles each way. Usually I'm booking a bit last minute or I have very strict dates as I'm trying to fit it around other travel that I end up paying 170K mile each way. Being fairly flexible with the departure and return dates got me a great deal. If you think about a mile being worth roughly a dollar that's like getting a round trip business class trip to Asia for $1,000 USD.

I haven't picked my guitars up in a few months as I have been focused on a few other priorities. I decided I want to start playing again even if it's just for 10 or 15 minutes a day. I figured I can find 15 minutes in my day. I remembered I have a lifetime subscription at Your Guitar Sage. The owner Erich gave away lifetime subscriptions to veterans last Veterans Day. How nice of him! If you play, or want to, and haven't checked out Your Guitar Sage you should. It's a no-nonsense site for learning all of the skills you need to play guitar step by step. Erich is a fantastic teacher and explains things in a really easy to understand way. He also has an excellent YouTube channel where he teaches a lot of popular songs and guitar techniques.

Next Saturday, November 11th, ShootTokyo turns 7! Thank You to those of you that have been along for the ride. I appreciate you sticking with me.

I occasionally go back and read some old posts. There is so much content on this site now. If you haven't checked out the archives - please do. The site has really grown and changed over the years. There is 81 months of content. This is still my favorite blog post ever.

Today's Configuration: Leica MP with a Summilux 35mm f/1.4 on Portra 400 film

Parts of Tokyo are often greener than people expect. Most people who haven't been to Tokyo think of Shinjuku or Bladerunner. I think Tokyo actually does a pretty good job of keeping it green, or at least having a lot of 'green accents'. I often go for a walk after lunch, or in place of lunch, behind Roppongi Hills down into Azabu. It's a nice downhill walk and you feel like you are escaping the city.

It's amazing this is an operational fruit stand. I couldn't imagine putting that away each day. Its actually hard to imagine that someone make it this way this morning on purpose. I wanted to stop and straighten it up for them.

Tokyo has had a few typhoons passing through over the past few weeks. The skies are extremely clear after typhoons but this was it was exceptionally windy. Something in the design of Roppongi Hills makes a massive wind tunnel on very windy days. It's sort of a design flaw. They have the entire center area roped off and guards posted with mega phones warning people about the wind. It was actually surprisingly strong.