Past Entries...

100 posts since April, 2016!
posted this in: Personal, Ramblings
364 Words

This is the 100th post in this blog 🙂

This year, one of my goals is to blog and journal a bit more consistently. I have a bit of a weird process, but we’ll see if I can keep it up 🙂

My day to day, and default “journal” I reach for, is on my phone using the Day One app. I’ve been using this since it first came out in 2011, and it is in fact one of the reasons I kept to using an iPhone (the other being my medical data in my diabetes sensor apps from back then too).

Since roughly about November 24th, I’ve been managing to pop in at least an entry per day; so my hope is to keep that “chain” going – and manage a post in the Day One app per day.

These entries generally just tend to be photos, or really short entries about thoughts/happenings throughout the day. It’s easy for me to reach for my phone and I have a lockscreen shortcut to Day One.

Following that, I’ve started making longer form blog entries into this blog that you’re reading right now!

And finally, the hard copy “bullet” journals – I used to keep these bullet journals as my day-to-day things, but nowadays my phone will suffice for that with short Day One entries. So these Bullet Journals are actually kind of historical objects that I’d write/draw/scribble in retroactively. At least, that’s the plan…

I keep these paper journals consistently in a Moleskine Classic Soft Cover Notebook Large Size (Amazon Link for the books) that’s grid-drawn for easy planning and sketching things. I started the 2023 bullet journal, and kind of took a break. So I’ve got to catch up on them all, and make sure I more consistently take the time to keep the 2025 book up to date too (it’s a good place to doodle around and be a bit creative).

So here’s me publicly saying that I’ll blog and journal more consistently! And we’ll see if I really keep up at a minimum, the daily entries into Day One and from there, I can further update the blog site, and my paper journals.

posted this in: General
111 Words

A quarter century into the new millennium!

Panko (L) loves being sociable (poor Sora(R)! 🤣)

A start to the year that was full of cleaning, fun, and dinner with my beloved family.

2024 was a whirlwind of a year – I moved house (again!), I finished the year no longer a bachelor, and I even managed to get in a trip to Japan 🙂

The year has truly been something else – and I’ve managed to “solidify” the technology side of life at present, even with this blog maintaining its uptime finally!

2024 definitely ended on a more positive note than 2023 did; and I’m excited to see what happens going forward this year in 2025 🙂

posted this in: Food, Personal, Travel
483 Words

Went on a bit of a trek all over Sydney yesterday for a date day with Annie – it’s a bit unusual as usually we just have a single destination that we kind of go and check out, then head home afterwards. Instead this time, we went to:

  • 2 Foodies in Mt. Pritchard for super authentic Pho, and Vietnamese Food
  • Bondi Junction Westfield to watch War of the Rohirrim (great film!) and just check it out
  • Macquarie Centre for dinner (Claypot Kitchen ♥)

Crossing Sydney as a whole multiple times was interesting, kept the day rolling along, and was a good day out!

I picked up Annie, and we trekked it over to 2 Foodies (https://www.instagram.com/2foodies_)

2Foodies was absolutely delicious

The food was super delicious at 2Foodies – it was extremely authentic and it was full of Vietnamese people ordering for their busy Sunday lunches! Annie went with a fresh Noodle Salad, and I went with Pho – with Beef Balls, Brisket and Rare beef and a Coconut Juice drink on the side!

We smashed our food so hard 😋

Neither of us had been to Mt. Pritchard before and we sure as heck picked a sunny, hot day to visit. Parking was a nightmare at the Petrol Station where 2 Foodies is located – so next time we go, we’ll definitely look for street parking.

Tummies full, we made our way to Bondi Junction’s Westfield Shopping Center — I’d never been before, always only passed the center. But this time around we were going to watch the new LOTR animated movie, The War of the Rohirrim.

Driving the M8 route from Liverpool all the way to Bondi was definitely a new experience for both of us, and it was kind of amazing seeing that Sydney had such a long underground tunnel for cars to travel. We made good time though, thanks to it!

A fantastic movie – a strong 8.5 / 10 for me! Definitely will enjoy this on home release too!

I was impressed by the movie – it was an anime film that sparked a lot of Stranger of the Sword meets Princess Mononoke to me – and those films I rate probably a 9.5/10 – some of my favourite anime films of all time!

Imaginations inspired, we left – looking for dinner we actually decided to completely forgo eating at Bondi – the Westfield was incredibly disappointing. And headed “towards home” for a favourite at Macquarie Shopping Centre; Claypot Kitchen.

A favourite. Definitely a food we could eat every day without getting sick of it!

All in all, it was a fun day – and we’ve resolved to go on more “adventures” to check out more of Sydney together in the future. As Sydney natives – sometimes we just don’t really see things to do or enjoy in Sydney as much as it’s “home” for us.

Hopefully this opens our eyes up to more!

posted this in: Hardware, Software, Technology
320 Words

Previously I ran a server rack on a 1000/1000mbps symmetrical service to my home (Ethernet provisioned from an ISP) to provide a number of personal media services to myself, friends and family.

Having had to relocate across 3 properties in the last 12 months however, drastically changed things – and I’ve since fallen back to a single 4RU server that’s packed to the gills with storage, and uses generic off-the-shelf consumer parts to keep going. There’s been a lot of benefits to this actually.

  • It’s simple to get replacement parts
  • Noise is kept to a minimum
  • Reliability and up-time is a little less than enterprise hardware, but otherwise acceptably usable

With my recent trip to Japan and return – I’ve found the need to actually back up all my photos and media into a singular place that’s much easier to manage. So now I just run a single monolithic server called JT-SERVER which provides all the services I need.

Services I’ve built up to use nowadays are:

That’s it – nowadays there’s very little I do in the way of other things. A game server is still desirable but it’s not the highest priority for now. Maybe in the near future I might run:

  • Minecraft (resuming previous efforts)
  • Satisfactory (occasional)
  • Factorio (occasional)

But otherwise most gaming requirements and needs for my “village” of friends and family aren’t necessary.

I think over the course of 2024, I’ve had to be much leaner, out of necessity. And I’ve come to find that some things just aren’t that necessary for “me and mine”. As I go into 2025, I head in with the goal of not buying any new technology, but rather just maintaining the status quo of what I have, and building a necessary platform of services for myself and my loved ones. It’ll be minimal, and a lot more wallet friendly, I think.

posted this in: Events, Food, Personal, Travel
619 Words

Day 5 continues!

We went to visit the Gundam statue – the life size version of the MG RX-0 Unicorn Gundam 🙂 we spent most of our time at a shopping center called Diver CIty.

Diver City actually had a couple of things we wanted to see and do, but it’s always been a shopping center that I’ve visited every time I’ve been to Japan – without fail so far!

Doraemon Department Store

Annie is a big fan of Doraemon, a long-running anime franchise that was (in my opinion) one of the first series to really gain worldwide recognition. I didn’t get some happy snaps of the Doraemon store, but Annie did! So these pictures are very much courtesy of her ♥

She ended up spending a little bit of time there, buying a few things to remember the trip by, and there’s already a shopping wishlist for our next visit 🙂

A Quick Break, and on to Gundam Base!

Finally as it rounded off towards evening, Annie and I had a quick snack of some McDonald’s and took a brief break before heading to the Gundam Base store – which has always been amazing!

Then onto the main attraction…

I’ve never been able to see the Factory side – as it’s always closed for Maintenance for some reason in the last couple years (last year I couldn’t see it either). However, on display were the World Championship Gunpla Builders winners models on display!

Let’s get to the galleries of the entries!


GBWC 12th Tournament – Under 20s


GWBC 12th Tournament – Under 14s


GWBC 12th Tournament – Over 21s


All these models were INCREDIBLE to see – and the customisations each of the entrants did were mind blowing and so creative. As an amateur Gunpla builder who just started this year, it was a huge inspiration!

Of course, we succumbed to the store limited editions and Annie even picked up her first Gunpla model! It was Haro! Very cute ♥

We were actually both pretty tired at this point so as we wandered out towards the exit of the center I actually caught a sign I wasn’t expecting!

Hololive! Collaborating with Round1 Entertainment Center (arcade/sports games etc)
L-R: Irys, Ina, Fubuki, Okayu, Gura, Fuwawa, Mococo!

What a pleasant surprise! Hololive hold a special place in my heart as around the time they started becoming popular in Western culture, it was a really tough patch in my life and watching them saw me through it. So it was pleasantly surprising to see Hololive doing a little better in Japan and increasing in popularity!

On our way out, Annie spotted a Doraemon claw-game machine at Round 1 near the entrance, and she won!


Dinner

We ended up heading back to the hotel and honestly resting/snoozing for a couple hours before heading out to a nearby popular curry rice chain, CoCo Curry House. Finally got my chance to show Annie this amazing food chain; it’s still a classic hit, and they do 20 levels of spice now instead of the 10 from last year that my friends and I had encountered!

A classic Chicken Katsu Curry, with Cheese/Potato Croquette 🙂

Definitely my favourite “not-fancy” Curry Rice place – hearty, and tasty, and consistently decent. CoCo Curry house sits at a solid 7/10 for me!

posted this in: Events, Food, Travel
415 Words

Day 5 marked the first sort of “free exploration” days we had. We had a final tour booking at the Ginza Art Aquarium Museum, but after that, we were free to explore everything.

The entrance to the Art Aquarium museum was actually pretty odd! We had to go up to the 9th floor, then take an escalator down to the 8th floor where the dedicated entrance was 😲

The entrance looked surprisingly discreet for the museum
There was an awesome lantern display when we went in

The room was actually pretty small – the mirrored wall DOES do a good job making the room feel much larger!

The tanks were surprisingly sparse, but at the same time – very intricate; the tanks overflow with water into a pump system.

There were lots of cool and nice photos – however, the overall museum size was a lot smaller than we expected and it was quite lackluster. The ambience was pretty good for the museum however, it was quiet, relaxed, and darkened and cool in temperature.

I don’t think I’d recommend this museum for a visit sadly.


Shopping in Ginza

We stopped by Uniqlo – can definitely recommend going – the pricing in Japan is (generally) much cheaper than in Sydney. We didn’t end up buying anything, but the Ginza Uniqlo store is the flagship;

After Uniqlo – we grabbed a waffle a delicious chocolate waffle from an artisanal store called MANNEKEN! It was delicious and tasty grabbing an exclusive Christmas Chocolate dipped waffle (“Chocolate Marble”)! Definitely excellent! We loved the waffle – 8.5/10!

Gobbling down the waffle – we decided to walk towards the flagship MUJI store, and worked up a bigger appetite for lunch.

Lunch at the Muji Diner (B1F on the store map!)

Sydney’s MUJI stores don’t have an eatery included

Annie ordered a drink, and tiramisu; I ordered a set meal:

  • Anitpasto (assorted meats)
  • Pasta Course (Pomodoro Sauce)
  • Beef Consomme
  • Pork ribs

All of that for $28 AUD! I was shocked at how cheap it is – a meal like that in Sydney would’ve set me back probably around $60!

After such a huge lunch – we ended up making our way to Odaiba – which was where the life size Gundam, and a great shopping center – Diver City. But that’s for the next blog entry 🙂

posted this in: Events, Food, Personal, Travel
1,702 Words

Day 4 begins with a really sketchy meetup just outside Tokyo Station, with a tour guide who’s holding a pink plushy heart for us to identify her by…

I was actually concerned enough that I shared my location with the gang on Discord, and my sister in the “Find My…” app.

Suffice to say – the tour did start off shaky, but we were ok! We were underway to some destinations near the foot of Mt. Fuji – at this time of year, it was too cold to go up the mountain itself and in fact it’s banned for tour groups at this time of year due to how risky it is. Experienced climbers would have to privately organise their own climbs if they wanted to.

About 90 minutes out from Tokyo, we started to see signs of Mt. Fuji – and honestly, it’s gorgeous. I didn’t expect it to affect me, but seeing such a huge mountain physically in the distance from me is very different from looking at a picture of it.

I can see why the ancients worshiped this mountain.

Honestly, it wasn’t until writing this blog post, that I noticed I caught the Fuji NATIONAL PARK sign! We were going at about 120km/h on the highway, so catching this was sheer luck 🤯

There were four destinations we’d be visiting – taking us about 12 hours for the day:

  • Gassho Village
  • Oishi Park
  • Oshino Hakkai
  • Arakurayama Sengen Park

There was a slight change in the destinations due to one of them being under maintenance after some weather damage. Still, we were promised that there were still plenty of beautiful locations and photo opportunities for us 🙂


Gassho Village

Our first stop – there was a nice crisp gentle breeze – interestingly there were stands and stalls with Fuji apples, Taiyaki, and other goods for sale. There was even a Halal uh… Kebab shop available! 😅 We were definitely in a tourist trap. It wasn’t horrible, but I at least, personally felt a bit silly with the village. I twas nice to look at the layout of the village – but our tour guide let slip that it was a rebuilt village after being destroyed by a large landslide in the 90s; so now no one was allowed to live there, only work there as a tourist spot.

Still, we weren’t going to discount everything and it was nice to see how things “used to be”.

It definitely let us take some nice photos at least 😋

We took a look around, and ended up buying a couple snacks – a Taiyaki, and a Fuji apple (because of course, Fuji apples at Mt. Fuji!)

Fuji-san! Please have a Fuji Apple!

The apple was, ok! It actually hit the spot – although it didn’t feel as nice texture wise as the Fuji apples we get in Australia 😂

On to our next stop!


Oishi Park

This was by Lake Kawaguchiko it offered honestly GORGEOUS views of Mt. Fuji – but was PACKED with people from other tour busses. I managed to pick up a souvenir for my sister (a Fuji-san Carabiner Mug) and Annie and I managed to take some lovely photos together.

As we approached Oishi Park – Fuji san was wearing his hat! (Photo taken from inside the bus as we drove along the narrowest, windiest roads I’d ever been on, it looked like we were going to hit EVERYTHING anytime we went round a bend)
As the late morning sun worked its way to noon, this was gorgeous – and the flower gardens were beautiful. Busy as heck though!

And of course, for a laugh – I had a “senior moment” and accidentally snapped myself with a selfie shot while trying to use my phone camera…

Our group was doing pretty well, and our next destination we would be able to stop by for a bit, and have lunch! So we were pretty eager to move on…


Oshino Hakkai

Oshino Hakkai was a another traditional village area – with a more modern part attached where people actually lived this time round.

The village itself was home to several aquifers that were fresh spring water sources, fed by the snow melting from Mt. Fuji and more. It was apparently safe to drink (we didn’t try) – and there were beautiful ponds with Koi as well.

Again, there were so many people here. So many tour busses and it was impossible to not notice that the overwhelming majority of the tourists were people speaking Mandarin.

This water wheel was our rendezvous point for the tour group! Except there were 6 other bus loads of people here…
You can really see how busy the area was with tourists!
These are the natural springs and streams the tourists are surrounding…
One of the many Koi ponds note the “Lawson” bench in the back middle of the photo – Annie and I ended up just sitting here to eat our food
This building in the middle of the photo is actually one of the EXTREMELY busy restaurants available to visitors
Even with a huge crowd, the place was still beautiful to look at and see. It’d be amazing if it was more private though!

There were a couple restaurants and eateries that were available, but the pricing was ridiculous (Sydney restaurant prices for very small plates of what looked like food I’d make back in university). So we opted to grab some snacks to power us on to dinner from the nearby Lawson.

Filled bellies, and a little stressed from the insane crowds of this place – we headed back to the bus a few minutes early. With so many people in the way, I can only imagine how frustrated the locals are. Multiple times a car had to move through the main street and hundreds of people had to move out of the way, same with the small farm workers nearby having to see all of us plaguing the area of their beautiful village, it made me feel a little bit self conscious.

I hope they continue to have and enjoy their beautiful region, and tourism doesn’t ruin the area.

We moved on to our next destination, and honestly we were pretty tired at this point. Meet up was at 7am, so it was an early start, and we’d done a lot of walking around!


Arakurayama Sengen Park

We actually stopped by a shrine, and observation deck here – and again, it was in a residential area. I couldn’t help but feel we were really intruding.

Annie and I were pretty tired and really just wanted to go to the bathroom, so we made the climb to the first level – and BOY it was a steep climb. Exhausting!

We were also greeted by the most horrifyingly dirty toilets we’d ever experienced in Japan, hands down, without question.

We were buggered, and I ended up not actually taking any photos of Mt. Fuji from the shrine’s view. I did however, take a photo of the Shrine. I’m not particularly religious, but I am spiritual, and didn’t want to do what I felt might intrude on what people might feel about this place. So I took a quick snap from a distance, and we went back to the bus to wait in the warmth (at this point it was VERY chilly in the wind, and I think Annie might’ve chilled herself and caught a cold 🙁 ).

Beautiful, except for again, the crowds haha…

Finally, it was time to head back to Tokyo – it was becoming late evening, and I think everyone on the bus was snoozing quite a bit 🙂


Back to Tokyo (Tokyo Station)

Once we got back, it was a pretty lovely evening view of Tokyo Station – admittedly it was SUPER COLD (about 3°C) – and we were hurrying around looking for something to eat.

A Journaling Shop!

On the way, we found the Traveler’s Factory Station store in Tokyo Station; and it was amazing! I spent so much money there, picking up just about everything to explore the product line. I’m very much into journaling (particularly bullet journaling, and logging my life like with this blog! 😂)

It’s a fairly recent hobby and only started around Christmas time in 2020. Although to some varying degree, I have been blogging on this site in one incarnation or another since 2016. And earlier than that well… it’s all lost to the void. I’m trying to piece together things from earlier, but really it’s a project that’ll be ranted about in another post for another time 🙂

I was a bit absent minded from exhaustion at this point in the day, and forgot to take photos of the cute little store itself, and only managed to snap a couple shots of products (despite buying nearly the entire store).

Passport sized Traveler’s notebooks – as you can see, they were about $45 AUD each at the time of this photo

I ended up spending something close to $380 AUD on stuff from Traveler’s Factory.

Some of the swag, including passport size notebooks for myself and a friend, and some stationery also for friends!
Some more swag! This time the full standard size including a limited edition Tokyo Station notebook, as well as Sarah’s Fuji San cup ☺️

Dinner: Kamukura Ramen

We stopped by Kamukura Ramen – finally ticking off something the list that I wanted to show Annie 🙂 it’s a favourite amongst the Only Snacks gang – so it was great to try it out in Tokyo station, the seating was comfortable and the food was soothing. 8.5/10

Kimchi Ramen + a small rice bowl serve!

We were pretty buggered, and the winter chill had finally started to get to us, so that was the end of Day 4, we headed on back to the hotel for a big rest 🙂

posted this in: Events, Food, Personal, Travel
718 Words

Day 3 was dedicated to being in Disneyland – I’ve been every single time I’ve come to Tokyo and in fact, I’ll probably go for the evening session to see the fireworks and parade next time.

We managed to arrive at around about 9:30am – with no queues getting into the park and no issues 🙂 the weather was fantastic, so we took a photo just before going into the world bazaar entry section.

We got in with next to no queues whatsoever! It was fantastic!
Full regalia for Christmas decorations were installed across the whole park!
Annie’s first view of Disney Castle

First thing we did was tick off a “bucket list” moment for Annie – going on a rollercoaster 🙂 she actually chose Big Thunder Mountain – that’s my girl! Jumping straight in 🙂

The queue was insane – it was probably a 2 hour wait all up

I didn’t take any footage – but Annie braved the rollercoaster (I love them) – and she wasn’t even on shaky legs when we exited the ride! Although, we decided to have a break and get a quick bite to eat, so we walked backwards slightly to the New Orleans area, to Cafe Orleans.

Focaccia, Gumbo, Teas, and a Whisky Coffee cocktail (alcoholic!)

The food was all New Orleans inspired, with a delicious Gumbo and Focaccia sandwich. It was actually quite decent, and surprisingly satisfying! Probably a solid 7/10.

Annie actually came up with a really sweet, cute idea – a few times before I had seen these “pressed 100 yen medallion” machines that spit out token memorabilia. It turns out each distinct area in the park has a machine, and accordingly themed medallions.

We grabbed the first 3 near the Bazaar, and Westernland

We caught the afternoon parade, which actually was more of a problem than a feature for us – as it cuts the paths in the park, making navigating difficult, we ended up being stuck on the Westernland/Jungle side of the park and couldn’t make our way to the other side till the parade was done.

Once we managed to make our way round to Fantasyland – of course, everyone’s favourite Winnie the Pooh and Beauty and the Beast rides (these are two major favourites with the crowds at the park) had to be ridden.

My interest in maps, continues!

Winnie the Pooh was actually a 2 hour wait, the line was super slow – and they didn’t allow for fast-pass selection, so we had no choice. We enjoyed the ride, and the wait wasn’t horrible as we got to chat and people watch and chill together. We discovered every time I leaned or rested somewhere for a break, the line would proceed 😂 it became a bit of a meme for us!

We then decided to hit up the village – sadly no Gaston or Belle walking around today, but we headed to the tavern for some food too!

Hunter’s Pie (left), Croque Monsieur Sandwich, and Coke

Honestly, the food was the best here. Maybe we were just craving heavy, carby foods – but it was really satisfying, a solid 8/10 for this.

We also ended up collecting a few more medallions along the way! All that was left to collect were the Futuretown ones, and we’d have them all!

Bellies full, we made our way to the Beauty and the Beast ride, suffice to say – the queue was long! Longer than Winnie the Pooh 😮

The ride was great, it’s very similar to Winnie the Pooh – but the effects are better. It’s definitely a great ride, but I think the time commitment required to get on it is too great. Winnie the Pooh’s ride remained the better of the two for Annie and I.

It was evening as things drew to a close – and of course, we managed to catch a selfie in front of Disney Castle!

And we managed to catch all the medallions! Sadly, Space Mountain was still under maintenance when we walked by 🙁

Disneyland remains a great attraction to see and do. Even without hopping on all the rides, there’s so many food options that I’ve yet to try, and I’ve eaten something different every single time I’ve been there. I’d go again just for enjoying the environment, the ambience, and the food 🙂

posted this in: Events, Personal, Travel
1,459 Words

Day 2 continues! This is definitely the highlight of my trip – oddly enough, I don’t consider myself a massive Harry Potter fan, but I do love the movies and the universe, products (merch) and experiences tied to it. In the same way that I’m a Star Wars fan – Harry Potter is a franchise that has captured at least part of my imagination!

Straight out of the station, we were greeted by a Patronus, so we knew we were in the right place!

The gates were tall iron gates too, keeping out the riff raff. Security was surprisingly tight at the studios – I suppose because of all the authentic, original set pieces, etc.

Walking in, we had to go through metal detectors, bag searches (strictly no extended selfie sticks allowed) and a few other checks, which was very surprising actually…! All under the watchful eye of a dragon (it’s the one that chased Harry, I forget what it’s called)

The tour was actually suggested as being about 5 hours long, which at first, was difficult to believe, but they really meant it when they told us – the tour is FULL of stuff to see, and learn about. To quote the celebrities in the intro video “It’s a love letter to all things about creating the movies and stories from the Wizarding World”.

A quick snap of the fire evacuation map actually reveals a fair bit about the structure of the tour. There’s no scale, but this building is GIGANTIC 🤯

Beginning the Tour…

There’s only an intro cinematic we’re all forced to watch where they go over some rules about photography (there’s a couple of zones we can’t take photos in) – and then the tour begins. You start by watching things on a cinema screen (which you can’t record of course) – then the screen moves up to reveal the ACTUAL doors to the Great Hall in Hogwarts used in the movies – I asked a nearby staff member and these aren’t the actual doors from the movie sets, but the Great Hall beyond it, IS one of the two actual Great Hall sets used. It’s even real sandstone, I was gobsmacked.

They asked a little girl to cast a spell to open the doors as it was her birthday, it was very cute 😊

And it was obviously gob-smacking walking through this… (no YouTube upload this time!)

Hagrid! 1:1 scale mannequins
None of the actors for McGonagall, Dumbledore, Snape are still alive 😭

There was a strong focus on the architecture of the movies – with such grand vistas, and epic set pieces, of course – there were SO many whitebox concept models and other things that helped directors, actors and crew alike visualise how they were putting things together, or framing shots, etc.

It was incredibly fascinating checking everything out and there’s FAR too many photos to show off. Here’s a select few especially surrounding the magical staircases at Hogwarts’ student accommodations.

The stairs in question were amazing to see in action!
Of course, obligatory couples photo – Annie, me, and my chins 😂

The house common rooms – consisted of actual pieces from the sets – these were NOT recreations.

Griffyndor Common Room
Slytherin commons

Annie and I were sorted into house Slytherin actually, so it’s been interesting seeing parts of it across the sets, and merchandise, etc.

I definitely need to buy Annie a Slytherin school cloak 😏

For the Quidditch fans, there was a lot of stuff surrounding the games, and the brooms used in Quidditch.

Dumbledore’s office – also another actual set piece, and not a recreation
More of Dumbledore’s office
The mirrored entrance to, “Room of Requirement” I think it was called? I only saw this in passing, sadly
All the wands used by key characters in the films
Bellatrix Lestrange, Lucius Malfoy costumes

There was an entire costume section too on the characters both from the Harry Potter series and the Fantastic Beasts series. I wish I had taken more pictures, but due to lighting it was nearly impossible to get photos without the reflections of everybody appearing in the glass. It’s truly awesome seeing the costumes and the styles they designed for various characters, factions and regions in the Potterverse.

Anyone that knows me, is aware that I’m a fan of books, bookbindings, and all such things. We got to see a few pieces in detail, as well as the set pieces used in scenes involving Hermione doing research at times.

And of course, there was an actual costume for He Who Shall Not be Named as well! (1:1 Ralph Fiennes mannequin!)

Cue the ehhhheheehhhehehehhhhhhh creepy laugh 😂

A break in the tour: halfway point & butter beer!

A brisk, swift walk through the creepy forest bit with Dementors, Spiders and Centaurs (none of which Annie appreciated haha) and we found ourselves at an intermission area, with Hagrid’s hut, and a quick chance to try out some “authentic” Butter Beer.

It was delicious! And you get to keep the mugs! I’ve actually brought these home with me to Sydney 🙂

It was a nice little break! I got to drink Butter Beer, and collect a few mugs for some friends back in Sydney as well 🙂

After a short break – we were ducked into a hall – that had the Hogwarts’ Express. In full size, from the movie sets. Again, this wasn’t a reproduction either, and it was stunning to see at life size – the train itself isn’t actually at full scale of a real train surprisingly, this is one of the ones made for distance shots in the film. Filming and photography wasn’t allowed on board, sadly.

You CAN actually board the train and have a look inside – Annie and I missed this, so …. next time! ♥

At the end of the train platform/yard building – you take a turn, and get gobsmacked with this…

This again, was not a recreation – but some of the set pieces have been adjoined together due to space constraints. This was part of the Ministry of Magic set, and honestly, jaw dropping.

Further beyond, we got to see Diagon Alley! Some parts of the set were brought in and assembled here too

Of course, Ollivander’s is always going to be featured in any tour of Harry Potter!

The amount of detailing that’d gone into the sets, with signwriting, books, ALL the detritus in the film, all of it was made to a fairly high level of authenticity. It was stunning to see!

The Black family tree – this Tapestry was stunningly large too
The Marauder’s Map – one of my favourite bits from the movies – you can actually buy replicas of this (which I promptly did) to bring home and put up on the wall too

I’m an enjoyer of maps, coins, medallions, books – anything with sentimental “core memory” triggering properties for me, I try to collect. And now that I’ve seen the above photo of the Marauder’s map again – I think I won’t put up the one I have at home just yet, but rather I should encase it similarly to how it is here – so I’ll need an extra map or two.

The grand finale of the tour

You finally come to a large, darkened hall – and honestly it’s just… so impressive, there’s a full scale model of Hogwarts that they used for concepts and visualization. The model itself was used in the movies as well! This was the absolute finale to the tour, with a catwalk that spirals the model, before leading back to the main food hall, merchandising stores, and entry hall.

We made it! We saw the tour, and it was bright and sunny when we went in, and pitch black night when we went out! The merch store after the tour and the dining hall itself – is an additional hour, EASILY if you’re planning to buy stuff (we did) and look at stuff, in addition to eating food!

Highly, highly recommended, this tour was one of the two highlights of the trip for me (the other being a Mt. Fuji tour!) – and it was a joy seeing all the behind the scenes stuff. I hadn’t even included all the pictures for this of things like the VFX section, the Foley Artists section, sound and audio combinations, the animatronics, and more!

Truly a must see, if you make it Tokyo 🙂

posted this in: Events, Personal, Travel
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Day 2 continues! After TeamLabs Borderless, Annie and I decided to make our way to the Making of Harry Potter tour; but on the way, we stumbled into an art gallery display! It was amazing!

There was a lot of cool stuff – including one of my favourite manga artists Ogure Ito (Oh Great!) — who draws AMAZING art that I love a lot. I won’t bore everyone with a long winded rant, but please enjoy this gallery of some of the photos we took!

Click on the images to view a larger version!

Interestingly – they expressly prohibit video recording!

I think this might actually be in place to counteract the rise of nuisance streamers in Tokyo. It’s a tragedy that their awesome, high-trust society, is being ruined by brain-rot kids from America (presumably as that’s all whom the headlines are about nowadays).

The gallery was peaceful, quiet, and we saw a few other tourists but all of them were fantastically respectful and appreciative of the art!

I didn’t capture ALL the pieces in the Gallery – there were quite a few more, but they were from series and individual one-shots that never made it to the West.