Thanks! By September of 1990 (I bought my first video camera in February of that year) I had gotten used to using a video camera and smoothed things out a little. Even so, there were good and bad days - I guess I was focused (on video recording) on Friday, September 28th, 1990!
You cannot know this, but Your videos of 1990/91 are bringing back personal memories to me. I was there at the time, also making long walks through Tokyo, all what was around Yamanote line. I just had no budget for a camera like this. Arigatou!
Lyle Hiroshi Saxon There's a famous song from the 80's called party like it's 1999.. my comment was a (failed) attempted joke. Anyways, thanks for the lovely uploads.
:) Sorry about that. I'm a famously out-of-touch person. Back as a student with a part-time job at a restaurant, one evening this guy I worked with wanted to insult me and he said: "Yer mother" and I (honestly not knowing that insult at the time) looked over an older woman nearby and said "No, that's not my mother." Sometimes being clueless is quite useful (my not knowing it was an insult made the whole thing into a joke instead of a confrontation), but this time around I wish I had known.... Anyway, thanks for watching! (As for a *reason* for being clueless - being out with a camera all the time cut deeply into my social life.)
90s tokyo is cool wish i was alive in the 90s. but the night life is the one i relly wishe i could have seen in the 90s. still tokyo today is still pretty cool love living here
Such a pure experience, it's like I'm really standing there underneath the tall buildings beside everyone else passing by. Thanks for recording and posting this video.
Thanks for commenting. And I'm really glad it seemed that way to you, because that's what I always tried to do - to record things in a way that showed what it was like to be there - looking around.
I love to see how society works in a regular day and your videos exposes that really well. No Hollywood fantasies, nor fake people on TV. Just Real World
Hi! I'm very glad to read this, as that was always my intention - to show the city as it was - not the tourist things or sensationalist things, but just day-to-day scenes.
just look like jakarta today.. indonesia actually re use their old trains in jakarta to be used as their commuter lines.. so it look exactly like jakarta.. without smartphones
I was only 12 months old when this vlog was made. 😯 My dad’s first visit to Japan was in 1992. When he rode the Shinkansen, he was so thrilled by it that he even bought me a model Shinkansen train from Tomy Pla-Rail as a birthday present.
I was born in 1990. There is so much that has stayed the same as well as majorly changed. For example, I take SUICA passes for granted but the tickets were all you had for the trains then.
I'm don't mean anything bad by it, but it's amazing to me in this video just how little Japan seems to have changed in nearly 30 years. Other than the hairstyles and car models everything looks like I would typically expect most parts of the city to look here. I'm sure there are lots of small things I'm not noticing but it still doesn't look like long ago. I'm guessing this was also right before the economic crash...
It's one of those things - in some respects it's a very short time ago and in other respects it's a very long time ago. As far as major-major change goes, it's just one generation ago, and there were no city destroying events in that period, like a devastating earthquake (the 2011 one notwithstanding), or WW-II, etc. I began putting the year at the front of the title just to distinguish this analog material from the early 1990's from current material that I post. Unfortunately, having the date at the front gives the impression that the focus is on it being a long time ago, but it's not. Whether things have changed a lot, or not changed much at all, 1990 is certainly not 2017. It also depends on what part of the city you're looking at - the east side of Shinagawa Station for example, has changed beyond recognition. The "Marunouchi Building" was a completely different building since destroyed and replaced with a new high-rise with the exact same name, etc. etc. Also keep in mind that the young people in this video are around 50 years old, so the current young people are their children basically. One final thought - I read a journal of a foreigner's written from 1859-1866 ("Japan Through American Eyes: The Journal of Francis Hall, 1859-1866") and I also found several incidences related in the book surprisingly the same as contemporary Japan. This is an element of tradition - that the cultural elements of a country are passed on to the next generation. I could go on and on and on and on endlessly on this subject! Actually, trying to understand *what* the city is and how it's changing was the motivating force that drove me to burn out four cameras in three and a half years recording this material....
Thank you! In total, there is over 300 hours of material.... Some of it is watchable, some of it is really bad, but it contains a lot of information about that period of time (in Japan) - from 1990 through to 1993.
Thanks for commenting! It seemed like a natural thing to do to me, but people were always laughing at me, and a Very Common comment was "But you can't see what you're taking!", so I'd occasionally have them look through the viewfinder to demonstrate that I really was in the picture. One foreign tourist at Meiji Shrine looked at me like I was crazy and asked: "What *are* you doing?", etc. Once they started putting forward-facing display screens on cameras, people started taking their own pictures, and then when RU-vid came along....
Thanks a lot! I've been at it for a while. Back when I took this stuff in 1990, I was't sure how I could use it - I thought maybe I could get some of it on TV, and then RU-vid came along...
There were three models I used - all either Sony or Sony OEM (Sony with another company's name slapped on). First the CCD-V900, then the CCD-V700, and finally CCD-V800. I think this particular video was taken with the CCD-V700. (If I dig out the original tape, I can find out which one.) The way you can tell whether a video I posted is from the CCD-V900 (the oldest of the three - in spite of the higher number), is that the sound recording of the CCD-V900 - although digital - isn't stereo. the CCD-V700 and CCD-V800 were digital stereo. (If you listen with headphones, you can tell the difference pretty clearly - the separation is pretty clear for the stereo recordings.) Incidentally, the picture was recorded in analog NTSC, but the sound was digital on the Hi8 models I used.
Thanks! Just watched the first part again for the first time in several years - and it brings back the time. There was a different kind of energy in the air then than now.....
Can someone explain what is going on at 12:36 onward? Some sort of parade/protest/demonstration? Wondering because all the army-like vehicles and flags...
Thanks for the comment! Yes, I have a bunch of stuff from the Toyoko Line actually. If you're using a desktop computer, if you search for "1991 Toyoko Line" several videos should appear (be sure to search in the search box for my site, not the general RU-vid search box). If you're using a smartphone, I'm not sure it has that extra search box. In any case, here's one of my videos of the Toyoko Line (at night - there are daytime ones as well) from 1991: 1991 東急渋谷駅-日吉駅 東横線 Shibuya to Hiyoshi - Toyoko Line 910720 ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-9sVx7fUgsCg.html
And - the following video (below) is probably a better overview of my 1990's material than this particular video you've just seen: Tokyo-1990-91 / 25年前の東京 (2010 Exhibition Video) ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-197CREjyIyk.html
Thanks for the feedback! You've probably already found this one then, but just in case: 1991年 学芸大学駅辺り Gakugei-Daigaku Station Area (910601) ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-fdw81eGSPWY.html
I just saw that today... I like the "...they’re strange enough that it’s hard to imagine anyone choosing to put them on TV." part, which I take (for some reason) as a big compliment. There's a lot of variability to what I took between 1990 and 1993. Basically I tend to prefer my 1991 footage, as I it's a little smoother than some of the wild stuff I took in 1990 and I was still really into videoing everything.
Yeah, some stuff. If you search for Koenji on my channel (not the main RU-vid search box, but the one for my channel only), a number of things come up - like this one (from 1992): 1992 高円寺駅までの散歩 Walk to Koenji Station 920705 ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-GPFUce950Qg.html
