Forrest Brown

Outside of one of the south entrances to Shinjuku station is a little area were it looks like several homeless people are living. I was walking by the area one day and noticed that the homeless guys had set up a little fish tank.

If you live in a city where the major form of transportation is trains and subways, and you want to play a musical instrument, it’s probably a good idea to carefully consider what kind of instrument you would like to play.

This guy chose poorly. Having to cary a double bass on a busy Tokyo train would really suck.

She did a little better job with her choice of musical instruments.

Much better

While in Japan I saw these Haagen Dazs ads for their Crispy Sandwich everywhere. I wasn’t sure at first what bothered me about the ad. But then I realized that the way she’s holding the ice-cream sandwich is completely strange. Who would hold an ice-sandwich like that? The sandwich is pretty obviously Photoshopped in after the photo was taken. Also, it looks like they wanted to change the angle of the middle finger, but now it makes a strange bend like someone broke her finger.

I don’t normally think about Japan and a Brazilian Samba Carnival together, but that’s what happens every summer in Japan’s version of the Rio Carnival in the Asakusa district of Tokyo. Almost 5000 participants paraded through the streets of Asakusa in wild, sexy and sometimes strange costumes. This year was the 30th anniversary of the Asakusa Samba Carnival.

One of the reasons for a Japanese Samba Carnival is that Japan and Brazil have had a long connection, with Brazil having the largest population of Japanese outside of Japan because of the over 200,000 Japanese farmers who moved to Brazil to work on the coffee plantations in the early 1900′s.

When I think of Samba, the first thing that comes to mind is women is elaborate, sexy outfits that don’t hide a whole lot and the Asakusa Samba Carnival was no different. Here’s some of the sexier photos I shot.

Her outfit really is not hiding much

The Asakusa Samba Carnival is made up of almost 20 different groups of performers. With local groups from Japan and also groups from Brazil. Some of the bigger groups had several hundred people in them made up of marching bands, dancers, singers, other performers and usually also a parade float. Each of the groups had a different theme that everyone in that group was coordinated to. Many of the themes seemed pretty normal, but as the parade when on, the themes seemed to get stranger and stranger, with themes like Egypt, Mexico, Food, Space, The Zodiac, and some that were so strange that I wasn’t sure what the theme was other then to maybe see how strange they could be.

Hairy chested men in dresses is always a bit strange

Egyptian Theme. This guy was really getting into his role.

This group had a food theme

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Here’s a few more photos from the Asakusa Samba Carnival that didn’t really fit into the other categories.

Sometimes you need to make adjustments.

One of the store owners along the parade route had a couple of step ladders set up in front of their store and were selling time on them.

It looks like she had a wardrobe malfunction.

All of the Samba groups had people walking along side with coolers full of drinks. This poor girl looked like she was really overloaded.

2010 Awa Odori Dance Festival in Koenji Tokyo.