KAMPOL

I’m not in Tokyo at this time but am in Sendai and Kobe. Here Cherry blossom are everywhere for about a week to enjoy in April. This was a chance to experience some authentic Japanese apart from manga and Harajuku girls.

We stay in very nice and traditional hotel and yes it has a hot spring here. So basically life here apart from working with fashion shooting for Honeymoon & Travel, it is about sight seeing around town, relaxing in hot spring and yes having a big Japanese feat most of the meal!

The food we have here are much more a surprise. Every evening at the hotel they always serve some kind of feat to us (am already forgot what it called in Japanese). It had all kind of Japanese food you could imagine including ‘uni’ or Sea Urchin  (I must say I don’t really like it, but well I’m not a raw food lover anyway). So every dinner, food will start serve one after another (sure lot of Sake too) for over two and a half hours. It absolutely made me felt like a KING!!!!!

I also had a chance to try fresh young Sake that not look like Sake but MILK in Sendai.. It has very sweet taste with a strong alcohol. I must confess I’m not enjoy that much would prefer a normal Sake to drink than sweet alcohol!

And when am in Kobe, What else could it be but try the best beef in Japan and I want to assure you all.. IT THE BEST BEEF I’VE EVER TRY! and everyone should try when you are there.

At the very last day we stop by doing some shopping and I brought some interesting stuffs from Issey Miyake and Comme Des Garçon (there are pretty much cheap in here compare to Bangkok and London, I mean quite reasonably price here) before pack our bags and head to the airport. And I hope in very very near future I be back there in Japan real soon.

It has been a long time since I’m visited Moscow and recently just look through the old photo files on the disk and what i found is a memories.

It was a trip for work actually not even much a holiday but apart from stressful situation to get the fashion shooting done for Wallpaper* magazine, I would say it pretty much a HOLIDAY for me. Moscow is very interesting city, my top favorite things here is Architecture, Sculpture of the important people and also monument around the city too. I know lot of you guys especially American would list this country on last as a holiday destination.

And well if you wanna know they are a dark side of the city too. Apart from beautiful building, It is a traffic that is very bad start from 4pm to midnight. That I think it might be a result of road systems in town that build to be a circle of ring road from the centre and sure too many cars in here as well. The guys that is our Russian guide, (we need a guide to survive here as no one speak english! I mean very few) called their own town as ‘Lord of The Ring’ town dub from the road system…

I was in Moscow probably the best time of the year! Well, how could you imagine how hard it is to live in temperature -30ºC until you try once and this i called it the best time of the year to experience it. It was in late December and early January. All the lake and all canal already turn to be an ice.

The hard part to live here i think it is the night! It was so cold that i could not even walk round with bare face and nothing on my head. I’m sorry PETA but I think this is the place that seem resonably to wear ‘Animal Fur’ to keep you warm. I mean yes you could wear some man-made fabric but that I’m sure would require so many layering and might cost you more than having a one off fur coat that would be with you for a lifetime. Anyway, PETA I only have rabbit fur hat! Apart from that scarf and coat are just wool, and a nylon bomber jacket inside with 4 more cotton layering, ok!?…

The sun in here at this time of year would come out around 5hrs that it! I think it about 9am. to 2pm. then it start to get dark as a night. This is the reason why lot of picture I took look very much like sunset picture, eventhough it support to be sunrise at about 9am. or 10am.

One of the most beautiful thing in here is the tube station or they called it METRO. It is decorated with a real palace touch for common people. Every stations has a different theme of story but they are all contained hi-standard luxury apart from the train itself, well, a bit more communist minimalism theme in green army style train.

We decided to go for a fast food for a meal. Even though, McDonald is just round the corner but we decided to have ‘Kumpir’ or Jack Potato that is quite popular fast food in Russia. These Jack Potato shop in Russia is like a McDonald that happen to be in every street near you and easy to get and for me look more healthy than BigMac for sure.

Here a link to some our fashion picture for Wallpaper* Thai edition, Russian issue. It was a real hard work againt the cold weather. I remember that our 120 film camera stop working because of the very low temperature and poraloid seem useless as it not develope any picture on it and adding to all those troubles our models start to had problem with the cold as well. Luckily that our 645 Digital camera managed to safe our trip!