DEE ESS ELL ARR

  Two posts in one day! Er, yeah.... Another one of my wishes from the past 3 years or so has also been granted!  Yup, finally got my shaky hands on a nice D-SLR.  At first I was going to give myself a little graduation present.  But then my dad offered to help me out with it.  And I was like.... kinda hesitant, so we settled on half.  And then after more discussing with both parents, it turned into a full on graduation present from them!  But then I felt bad, because the camera I picked out was kinda pricey.

  I picked the beastly Canon EOS 7D.  Good video features, pretty good image quality (I had to compromise a bit on this one for the video features - but I'm not pixel-perfect critical on my images anyway), and a fairly rugged body.  Those 720p videos of our Senior Design project were filmed on that baby.  And I also got some very pretty pictures of us completely trashing our apartment.  Yes, we had a little senior design lab in our living room.

  So anyway, I'm not graduating just yet.  I will after the summer.  But I got the camera early because of the Japan trip.  (I keep saying trip, but I really have to remind myself that this is a study abroad program).  But, there will be two weeks after the summer semester is over for me to trek around!  There will definitely be pictures from that.  So, I'll be vacationing in and around Kyoto and Tokyo from the 5th of July through the 17th of July.  If anyone else is gonna be in the area, we could meet up and hang out - wouldn't that be awesome?

  Speaking of vacation time ... I seem to be vacationing at the wrong time.  Everything seems to be happening after I go home.  It's quite sad.  A lot of the big summer festivals are at the beginning of August.  Something I am slightly disappointed about, it seems I went in the wrong year, because the Green Tokyo Gundam Project would've fallen into my vacation schedule... had I gone one year ago.  But to make matters eeeeeeeeven worse!  They're re-erecting this beast in Shizuoka this year. On July 24th.  A week after I go home.  I suppose it's a little out of the way of my vacation plans, but still! I'll have an unlimited rail pass...  And to top it all off, the life-sized model gods are taunting me.  This time, its a life-sized Evangelion unit.  And it opens on the 23rd of July.

  So, if I had stayed about a week longer, these would be a part of my picture collection. But unfortunately, 3 weeks is a long time for vacation.  It would've been better if the summer study program had lasted another week.  *sigh.  Oh well.  There should be some good landscape and scenic pictures though.  Hopefully I can grab some good night pics of Tokyo.