600 Diggs and site news
My article on Asylum has reached 600 Diggs, and I`m really pleased. The Digg page got a lot of comments, largely it seems about how bad the HDR is. Looking back on those shots, I can see better what people are talking about now. Part of it is a change of monitor- the old one didn`t show the colors so vividly, so they didn`t look so over-saturated. The new one (just using my macbook screen) shows it better.
The Asylum article has sent about 10,000 people to this site so far. That`s pretty amazing. It blows the roof off my monthly page views, taking it from around 50,000 a month to something like 70 or 80,000. About half of those people only stayed for 1 page and less than 10 seconds, but the other half stayed longer so no worries.
In other site news- I`ve changed the look of the site some, and been experimenting with ad-types. I`d like to make a little money from this page, but am realistic about that. It`s a niche thing to cover, and there`s no obvious product to sell. So I`m adding a Paypal donate button (just watched the movie Julie/Julia last night) and we`ll see if that does anything. If you`d like to make a donation, it will be much appreciated.
Ah, final news, am `resurrecting` my old Strange Japan content. At the moment only the Snacks/Drinks page is up, but the others will be returned soon.
I`d love to hear your thoughts on any of the above.
Hello to William Gibson
William Gibson stopped by this website about 9 hours ago and retweeted my Sex Industry in Ruins article. That is awesome. On Twitter he goes by GreatDismal.
GreatDismal RT : Love shacks: Japanese love hotels in ruins http://bit.ly/8pK10A
I`ve read a number of Gibson`s books and always been impressed. Of course I`ve read Neuromancer, also Pattern Recognition and The Difference Engine. Excellent stuff. I suppose he is very interested in all things Japanese, which perhaps help explain what brought him to my site.
Dave Hill’s ‘Girl on an Adventure’
Dave Hill is one of the leading lights in HDR composite photography, layering multiple images together to recreate whatever he can imagine, to stunning and impresive effect. The ‘Dave Hill Effect’ is well-known in photography circles, a certain kind of washed-out, high contrast, stark imagery. Check out a few shots here, and go to his site to see the bulk of it.
Girl on an Adventure
Programming Note
First off- Welcome to all new readers of this site!
Secondly- Thanks to all old and continuing readers. Things have changed a fair bit round here, with a new design and a new emphasis on an old direction, with still a change or two yet to come, and I thank you for sticking with me.
Today’s Programming Note concerns what you can expect on this site in the future. The main announcement is that Out of Ruins (outofruins.org) will now be featuring short stories (and possibly poems) from authors besides myself (MJG). I’ve long wanted to set up my own weird fiction e-zine, and now I have. Boom. I’ll still be posting my own stories up here, but will be careful to delineate which are mine and which are from that week’s featured author. I’ve already had several submissions, and am in the process of accepting a few. They’re weird, and dark, and that’s awesome.
So, future programming, the schedule looks like this:
Mondays- New fiction from featured author.
Tuesdays- New ruins re-post featuring creative commons text and photos sourced from around the net, on cool ruins locations.
Wednesdays- Short fiction from MJG, if I have any.
Thursdays- New original ruins photos and text, from MJG.
I hope in the future to feature dark weird art on this site, as well as interviews with authors/photographers/explorers, and reviews.
All the best,
MJG.
Waseda HDRs
As you’ll know if you’ve been following my recent haikyo explorations, I’m getting interested in the technique of HDR for photography; essentially the process of splicing together several photographs of the same thing (using software that does it all for you) so both light and dark parts of the shot come out even. Here’s one such HDR from my balcony, shot with my Tamron 17-50mm, at 17mm.
You may also have gathered that I sold my zoom lens (not useful for haikyo) and invested in an ultra-wide zoom, a Tokina 11-16mm. I haven’t used it for haikyo yet, but decided to take a replica Waseda HDR shot to get an idea of the difference in zoom power.
Haikyo Roundup
There’s been a lot of haikyoing action happening round the Kanto plain recently, with some new faces (to me) and new info on old locations- here’s the round-up:
Tokyo Times- Lee’s been busy since I last updated here, going to the Underground Vault I found at Yamanakako lake and solving its mystery with the revelation that it was a Sanyo Securities hide-away. He managed to identify one of the vault symbols in the banner of a Sanyo magazine left lying around- keen eyes! Though I think he told me it wasn’t actually him that spotted it. Very honest! After that, he went to a recently abandoned Love Hotel- still hoping to hear the location of it from him 
(Lee….?)
Swifty- A chap called Edmund Yeo headed with some of his friends out to see the Hotel Royale and Sun Hills Car Park (these links to my posts). They reported, as others have recently, that the Hotel Royale is impossible to get access to. Sun Hills was fine though. He added some details on about Sun Hills, which either he Googled (more skilled than me) or read about it in a haikyo book I don’t have:
“[Sun Hills is] a ‘cursed’ hotel that was recently demolished. Its tale was a sad and tragic one. A hotel guest set the place on fire to kill himself and took down parts of the hotel. The owners, debt-ridden, and desperate by the damage caused, hung themselves in the hotel as well.”
Dark. I hadn’t known that when we were there. Edmund is also a short film director with some success- kudos.
Cousin Macho- Tom sent me the email that let me know about Swifty above, and also his own exploration of the Toyo Bowl in Kanagawa recently. He’s got his photos on Flickr.
Misuterareta- This was the first haikyo trip I went on with someone I didn’t really know. Paul and I hooked up over the net, and he suggested a shared haikyo. It was great cos he brought a location to the table I knew nothing of, and likewise did I. We had a good time chatting about the hobby on the long drive into Chiba- but you can read all about that on my post. Together we hit up the Namegawa Island Theme Park, I can’t even remember who tipped me off to it, and to the Yui Grand Love Hotel that Paul’s family tipped him off to.
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