This is a guest post from Sarah Paige. She has written an article about travelling with a GPS unit, don’t forget these can apply to walking devices as well as in car, and also many modern phones will have similar GPS capability too, before you go spending. Enter Sarah:

There is little doubt that GPS units can be worth their weight in gold, especially if you’ll be travelling to unfamiliar places. They save time, ease frustration and best of all, are immensely helpful in getting you from A to B without getting lost. But is a GPS really all it’s cracked up to be?

We weigh up the pros and cons of investing in a GPS unit before you decide on buying a new machine.

The Pros

GPS units are exceptionally handy to have around. These days, many luxury cars come complete with inbuilt GPS systems or you can invest in a portable model that can be fitted on the dashboard of almost any car, including rental vehicles while you’re on holidays. They can be transferred from car to car and work just as well in new and used cars. Perth, Sydney and Melbourne drivers can take their units interstate for the perfect Aussie road trip. Meanwhile, many of the most prolific GPS brands include international maps and support so you can take your unit overseas as well.

But it’s not just for on the road. You can use a GPS navigator as a guide for bushwalking or as a tool to help pinpoint the best fishing locations.

An added bonus, a GPS could save your relationship – seriously! Everyone knows the old cliché of a man and a woman fighting over directions in the car – and that’s because it happens often. Imagine the peace and quiet of driving confidently no matter where you go.

The Cons

For some, the reliance on a GPS unit can become burdensome. After all, GPS units aren’t always right. They can have trouble differentiating between main roads and dirt roads and can occasionally instruct you to drive down a one way street the wrong way if the software hasn’t been updated or if the roads have recently changed.

And of course, the GPS can take away some of the thrill of travelling that comes from seeking out new experiences. Navigating the roads with the confidence of a local means you could miss the hole in the wall restaurant or the great local craft shop off a random back street that you might have otherwise come across.

Going for the middle ground

It’s a good idea to keep a proper road map with you and to study it a bit before a journey into unfamiliar territory. That way, you can be sure of the direction you are supposed to be heading in and aren’t completely reliant on your GPS device.
By only using your GPS when you need it, you can avoid becoming dependent. Yes, a GPS can get you out of sticky situations with a level of ease a road map can’t match. But becoming over reliant on a GPS can mean you never really get to know where you are and how to get somewhere else.

A GPS can be used for a range of things – have a play around and see what you can find out.

What do you think – how reliant are you on your GPS?

Author Bio: Sarah Paige is a self-proclaimed motoring enthusiast and writes about new and used cars. Perth drivers can find more information online.

I’ve featured the Tokyo Tower a few times before, mostly when relating it to my new years celebrations in Tokyo 2010/2011. However I did visit it prior to this and take a trip up the Eiffel Tower inspired design.

Tokyo Tower

I thought I took a video of me walking around it which would save a lot of time in posting, editing and your viewing time, but either a) I didn’t b) I can’t find it or c) I deleted it. Either way that now means I have to do this the old way and present a photo essay of the view.

Fortunately, that’s not a bad thing though. Although a few of these are hosted on FlickR not this site, hence some odd formatting on this post.

It really is quite big up close

Tokyo Tower was built in 1958 and is 6M taller than the Eiffel Tower which it is modelled on. It is painted in white and orange (something to do with air traffic regulations) and therefore is quite a bit more unattractive than it needs to be. It looks nice when lit up at night though.

The views however are outstanding at 145M above ground level (note it’s already on a raised area of land, so is higher than most buildings still). You can see Mount Fuji on a clear day, although it’s not often that clear, Of course at night you can’t see the mountain at all.

Tickets are sold for people to go up at a certain time, but I still found it very busy when I first arrived. You actually get access to 2 floors, so its worth skipping the first floor and going straight to the second, as it’s much less busy as people have already seen the view on the first floor.

It is however surprisingly cheap to go up for a Tokyo attraction, but I recommend you go early in your trip to Tokyo to really get one of the best views and scales of this vast and vibrant city.

2011 turned out to be quite an eventful year for me. Kicking it off with celebration at Zojoji temple and watching Tokyo Tower lit up promised good things. In the same weekend in Tokyo I also discovered Japanese lucky bags, a surprising thrill comes from buying a reasonably priced bag and receiving a highly priced item inside tempted many shoppers.

Of course the big news of the year though came with the March 11th earthquake off the coast of Japan. I wasn’t far off this, just 80km away from the Fukushima nuclear reactors.I declared I was staying and not running away despite pleas from family and friends, and the threat of nuclear explosion. What was worse thought was the tsunami damage in Sendai which I went to visit 5 months after the tsunami. Living close by I also went to help out victims of the disaster.

It wasn’t all pain and misery though. I got to see plenty of cosplay, a very Japanese way of enjoying yourself. Firstly cosplay at Comiket, the largest and extraordinarily busy convention of amateur comic book artists. As well as cosplay at Tokyo game show, which growing up with video games I related to a lot more and had a lot more fun at. I wouldn’t bother with comiket again, but I’d happily go to Tokyo game show again a few times.

A few thoughts this year I also had from my experience of travels is a recommendation to visit vineyards whilst travelling and what stuff to travel with. It’s good to take a cultured break in the middle of bootstrapping everything which is where the vineyard comes in (not to mention free wine all day!), and what  gear to travel with is something that we all should revise and change with time anyway. My thoughts have recently changed even since this post on camera’s as I’ve got myself a nice new Sony NEX-5n which is miles better for travel than my Canon 500d or any other SLR is, and just as capable as long as it has the right lens on it. It’s a shame they weren’t around when I started travelling, but anyone wanting to invest in photography equipment before travel should give that a look now, it’s reinvigorated my interest in photography and my last photo post of new years in London was taken with it to show off it’s capabilities.

To cap the year off after returning to the UK I visited London a couple of times. Floating in a tank of salt water and setting fire to my eye was my first attempt to relax, which half worked. But walking around and rediscovering photography worked a lot better. My last published photo on this site being the London Sunset.

So here’s to 2012, lets hope for a good one, as many people are predicting it’s our last (don’t believe in that bollocks myself though). May you all have a great year and travel to where-ever you wish to and do whatever you please there. I’ve got a couple of plans for this year, but they mostly involve hard work so if they happen or not is another thing completely!

So another year gone, how they seem to fly by so quickly.

Anyway enough drivel, I’ll get a best of 2011 post up soon (probably around March at the rate I work at). January maybe a bit slow for posts as I am working on a new front page for the website and have taken on a distance study course which I need to catch up with, such is life eh?

Thank you for all the support over 2011 and previous years, it’s been an interesting one with the events in Japan and me based in Fukushima, but I made some good friends there. In 2012 I think I will be focusing on my creative side a lot more. Back to basics with writing and photography, bringing higher quality items on here.

To kick us off, here’s a picture I took in London a few weeks back (I’m actually in London for New Years too) of the quality you can expect from me in 2012. Cheers and happy new year:

This continues from part 3 here and is the last in the series.

Rikku from Final Fantasy X & X-2

Softbank robot thing

Street Fighter Cammy ?

Jin and Noel From Blazblue

Taokaka, Litchie and Noel from Blazblue

There is a lot of detail in many of the costumes

Makoto Nanaya from Blazblue

Hard work keeping up appearances

This is the final part everyone! What was your favourites over the 4 cosplay posts?

This continues on from here and here

Mixed Cosplay

I have no idea what this is

Something from Final Fantasy

Metal Gear Solid Guards

Girl with blue hair

A warrior Cosplay

Some evil looking cosplay

Looking good

This is part 2 of the Tokyo Game Show 2011 cosplay collection, for part 1, click here.

Bloke with grey hair and red jacket

Mix of cosplayers

Cosplayer relaxing

Nice looking cosplay

Cloud watches Sephiroth tie his shoelaces

Tifa and Cloud

Some more characters

Some effort has gone into these ones

Part 3 coming later!

Not sure who this is...

This guy paused and kept saying...

Gotcha!

Ryu sorted him out anyway

A selection of cosplay in the dressing area

The crowd's often contained delightful characters

Like Cloud and Aeris

Hazama and Jin from Blazblue - their backs anyway

Metal Gear Solid's Snake

Stay tuned for part 2 later on. Apologises for photo quality, people rush around so quickly at these events it’s hard to get a good snap sometimes.

I’ve always been a gamer and a fan of Japanese games it seemed a great opportunity to go to the Tokyo Game Show annual event whilst it was on, not really knowing what to expect. I was guessing just a few stands from video game designers with some videos showing their latest offerings.

Tokyo Game Show 2011

As it turns out, it was a bit like this, but you can also play the new games too, before they were released anywhere in the world. From an industry who make extra money from special and limited edition versions seemingly all the time now, this felt like quite a bonus. After all, whats better than trying something before everyone else in the world gets to?

Street Fighter X Tekken anyone?

If you’re a gamer I would recommend you going, you’ll get a lot out of it, a bit like if you’re into manga and go to visit Comiket (I wasn’t so got a lot less out of that day). However if you’re not you may still get some enjoyment out of the cosplay (again same as the Comiket cosplay), however I think you’ll get more out of looking at the cosplay of either event if you have some idea on who everyone is trying to dress up as.

Figurines for sale

As well as the developer areas (usually surrounded by long queues of people eagerly awaiting to play demo’s of the latest games), there is also a merchandise area for the bigger companies like Capcom and Square-Enix to sell their junk to people wanting to give their cash for any game tie-in product available (ahem-I did this). Which is also accompanied by long queues (yes a queue to pay money inside an event you already paid money to get into, nice business model that one).

Mario and Sonic goods in fluffy form

There is also speeches and announcements from the developers about their upcoming games and a very big arena with competitive people battle it out in fighting games to win a championship. Don’t take this as a joke though, the prize to win this varies per developer, but Arc System Works who made the Blazblue fighting series offered the equivalent of $100,000 for the winner of it’s competition, who knew video games could be so profitable?

Audience watching the competition

To finish off the days, they had a charity auction of various video game based paraphernalia. The best things were signed items, but I felt it was a missed opportunity to give away some more retro items and create value within the industry. Development drawings or story scripts for example. But still, they raised a lot of money for the Japan relief fun for the years tsunami and earthquake victims so who’s complaining?

Auction of video game items

Within the next few posts I’ll bring you some Cosplay photography from the event :-)