So, a couple of years ago, on one of my trips to Japan, I recorded (audio only) a complete circuit of the Yamanote line.  It didn’t actually come out very well, since I wasn’t using a very good microphone and most of the “interesting” stuff – station jingles and the like – were outside the train and therefore very muffled when heard inside the train.

Nonetheless, I had an audio recording of a train going around a loop.  Exciting.  So I went through in Audacity and cleaned up the bigger clicks and pops, and then I had a slightly cleaner audio recording of a train going around a loop, which was – lemme tell ya – just as exciting.

I had an idea pop into my head on Friday, though, and it was this:

I would take the audio recording, toss it in to iMovie, and then add still photos of the outside of each of the stations on the Yamanote line, synchronized to the train pulling into each station.  It would still be pretty dull, but it would be a little more interesting.

This actually started off pretty well.  I had photos of a few stations myself, and I figured the rest would just be a matter of quick Google Image Searches.

I mean, how hard could it be?

Come to find out, it’s not hard to find photos of, oh, Shibuya-eki or Harajuku-eki.

It’s when you get down to Nishi-Nippori-eki and, of course, Uguisudani-eki… then, then you run into trouble, because nobody seems to go to Japan with the intent of going to Uguisudani, let alone taking photographs of the train station there.

It also made me realize that, since I’ve never gotten off the Yamanote at Uguisudani, even when I did find a photo of the station there, it wasn’t exactly nostalgia-inducing.  Not to single out Uguisudani here, I’ve never gotten off at Meguro or Takananobaba or, well, most of the stations on the loop if you’re going to be picky.

Still, it was kind of an interesting project to undertake.  I managed to find at least some photo for every station or neighborhood, and I dropped them into the same iMovie project as the audio file.  Now I just need to sync them up properly, which will take the real time.  Figure I’ll tackle that another weekend.