Take a picture, it'll last longer

I’m a really crappy photographer, but in this modern world I can totally get away with it!

I’ll instagram anything, I kid you not. My sandwich? Sure – add Earlybird filter and voila.

Picture of a boring road. Polarize it. Ooh so arty.

See I’m a regular Annie Lebovitz. JOKING, I’M SO JOKING.
But seriously it is kind of nice that you can take the mundane and ordinary and make it seem a little special.

And if you’re like me, there is a whole lot of mundane and ordinary in your phone.

I love these cute, vintagey, hipster photos but what the heck do you do with them? Especially when you live in the “arse-end” of the world (excuse my French) and no one will ship things to you?

Google, my friend, is your friend.

I found quite a few companies offering to print your instagrams and iphone photos, but as mentioned above – a lot of them wouldn’t ship to Australia. And the rest were kind of vague with size and price, which is always comforting on the internet...

But eventually I narrowed my sights on two different products. ImageBlocks and Printsagram.

Imageblocks is based in Melbourne (hooray local!) and they turn your iphone photos into wooden blocks.

At $35 a piece they would make a fantastic birthday pressie and man are they fun!

Since it’s been a year without our sweet old pup Jem, I decided to get a cute block made up of my favourite photo of her to give to my parents.

Next up is Printstagram. I’ve seen a few people in the blogging world order stickers from here, but as much as I love those adhesive-backed-beauties, I have little to no use for them. Stickers tend to end up on the bottom of my shoe or on my elbows *damn apple stickers) and aren’t treated with the love and respect they deserve.

So instead I turned all my weird and wonderful iPhone photos from Japan into a little book! And shy of a month later they have just turned up on my desk.

You get two mini books, each with 50 photos and all for $12. Nice huh! Admittedly it ends up being a little more like $24 when you factor in the shipping, but to have a cute reminder of my holiday with little to no effort on my behalf? Worth it! I was a little lazy and ordered two of the same book – one for me and one for Oh.

I love it!! It’s great that I can flick through a little book and remember all the silly bits of our holiday. Namely the thousands of Choco Cro we ate, or the many times Owen's eyes rolled in my general direction.

You can also order little prints from them too. One set of 48, again for $12. I think I’ll order these next time – they would look really cute strung up like a little garland I think!

I definitely recommend them – although keep in mind the shipping takes a while. And I naively thought they’d be coming from the US of A, when in fact they were shipped from Taiwan. No biggie, just the old adage about a assuming making a something out of something.

But in short, get printing! There are pictures of sandwiches, shoes or beloved pets pulling silly faces just sitting on your phone with their fancy filters, itching to be shared with the world!

I think I'm turning Japanese - Part 1

Hello hello!!
I'm writing from my teeny tiny hotel room in Shibuya, Tokyo and boy it is COLD. But being the (overly) prepared person that I am I've got it covered with fleece-lined leggings. Might I suggest you get yourself a pair of these bad boys the second winter hits? These things work miracles - pretty sure I could walk on water in them (and still be warm I bet!).

And to make the whole experience a little more authentic, we've just had an earthquake. Obviously nothing to severe if I'm still sitting at a desk blogging... but still bizarre none the less. It took me a good minute to 1) realise we didn't have a vibrating bed and 2) wake Owen up to ask if this was in fact an earthquake he was sleeping through.

Earthquake aside we are having so much fun! I'll admit I had a minor freakout when we first landed because I forgot how damn hard it can be to communicate here. We speak zero Japanese bar the very simple thank yous and yes and there really aren't a lot of English signs (not that there should be, we are in Japan after all)... so safe to say we've looked pretty stupid on a number of occasions including being told to move by Shinto priests because we were in the way of their religion procession. But that is half the fun of travelling right? Or so I'm going to keep telling myself.

We've walked all over the place and have eaten more crepes and even more okonomiyaki than I'm willing to admit. My current theory is they cancel each other out. Please don't correct me, I simply don't want to know.

 The three steps to okonomiyaki:

Step 1 - stare longingly at hot plate

Step 2: push food around with chopsticks in an attempt to look useful

Step 3: eat said food before it is finished to annoy your dining companion. Enjoy!

Kidding! He actually cooked mine for me so I shouldn't be such an ungrateful git. He's proving to be my near-perfect travelling companion... dealing with my extreme nervousness and he's tagging along for some shopping and even encouraging me to buy things. Winner!

We've hit up lots of different suburbs and while a lot of stuff is closed over this time of year, we haven't really been bothered by it. There is always something to see and do - it is Tokyo after all. And I'm not willing to disclose just how much yen we've spent on videos games except to say... it's a lot.

 Exhibit A: Emma's idea of fun...driving along Rainbow Road. Exhibit B: Owen's idea of fun... punching a panda.

Last night being NYE we had a nice dinner (drinking Japanese cocktails... and Spanish wine... ticks for authenticity!) and loitered around the Shibuya crossing with just a few (thousand) other drunks. When the clock struck 12 everyone waited patiently (if patient means loud and involves throwing glow sticks) for the lights to change so everyone could surge onto the crossing and wish each other a happy new year. It was kind of similar to being in a sweaty moshpit at BDO but with less nakedness due to the single digit temperature (not to say there was none..) and a lot more good will. And today the city is pretty quiet so we did a little bit of shopping and someone else is busy sleeping.

You can bet I'm busy tracking down every Kit Kat flavour and trying every novelty food/drink I can get my hands on. But that my friends is a post for another day!

Anywayyyy enough yabbering on. I'm going to get me some deliciously cheap noodles for lunch (heart vending machine noodle houses, so much less fuss). And here is my unashamed photo dump of Shibuya/Yoyogi Park/Harajuku - half iPhone, half new camera (thanks mama and papa - birthday present! 26 years young!). Happy New Year! And sayonara!

Lessons in being thrifty - travel edition

They say change is as good as a holiday right? Well I'm banking on that being true and the change being my hair colour, because I can't exactly afford a round the world ticket at the moment. But as I was previously explaining (or was it complaining? eh...tomato tomato... okay, that doesn't work on the internet) I'm learning to be creative with my financial situation... or lack there of.

Step 1 - be eternally grateful your grandparents built a shack near a beach for you 70 years ago (yes, just for me I'm sure) and then thank all your relatives for letting you stay there for free on the best weekend in March. And shriek like a girl every time you run to the outdoor toilet in the dark (it's part of the authentic experience). If you don't have said shack, ring your oldest living relation and demand to know why.

Step 2 - make crepes with your mumma and pretend you're in gay ol' Paris (even though you've never been there and they probs don't have Sunbeam over there. Hey lets not get caught up in details people). Optional is how much crepe mixture you get on the crepe iron... I think the less is more approach works well for me. No crepe iron or just too lazy? Buy a french stick or raid garden for escargot... a good wash and they'll be right.

Step 3 - flick through happy snaps from previous holidays and be grateful you've already had a few nice trips, appreciating that not everyone is quite so lucky. Or alternatively flick through happy snaps from previous holidays and slide into a mild depression at the thought that you're sitting at your computer writing a blog entry instead of maxing out your credit card at Urban Outfitters in the East Village or hurrying across the Shibuya crossing with oh.. you know... a couple of hundred other people. (If you've read my whole "About Me" spiel, you'll know that Japan and the Japanese people have a big chunk of my heart reserved specifically for them... probably equal to the square metres that chocolate and or Youtube videos of animals sneezing current take up combined and times by two (yup I have a heart so big I must talk in square metre). We totally intend(ed) to head back there later this year and I'm hoping that's still a possibility.) 
Cue photo dump...

But c'est la vie. I've done both of those things and more so I'm just going to count myself pretty damn lucky and pinch my pennies (oh so hard) til my time rolls around again. And probably start from Step 1 again... oh man, I'm going to be so sick of crepes by the time I can afford a holiday.