Tokyo, Japan

29 Apr 2012

Single trips, Photography

Japan Snapshots

Japan Snapshots

A slim, ten-storey white apartment block with stacked balconies stands alone against an overcast sky above a busy road, a lit café on its ground floor.
Cityscapes
Closed steel subway doors, each window carrying a sticker of a cartoon bear pointing at the gap, with a Japanese warning to mind the opening doors.
Signage on subway doors
Two women in matching brown jackets and red sashes work a crowded food stall from behind, plastic cups and a wooden tub of ice on the counter, shoppers packing the arcade beyond.
Busy food stall in Tokyo
A boy rinses his hands at a shrine's stone water basin under a red wooden canopy, a woman watching beside him and a stone lion guardian behind.
Cleansing the body and spirit of impurities (kegare)
A quiet, rain-wet street of low two-storey houses and shopfronts under a tangle of power lines, a pedestrian with an umbrella passing and a crosswalk in the foreground.
Shitamachi, Tokyo
A spring vegetable bento on a train tray table: a wooden box of rice and small compartments of vegetables under cling film, beside its pastel lid and wrapped chopsticks.
Shinkansen delights, Nagano
A bride in a white kimono and a groom in black pose before a blossoming cherry tree in a temple garden of pines and gravel, a photographer crouched in front of them.
Wedding photos near Kiyomizu-dera, Kyoto
A long line of uniformed school children files across a gravel courtyard in front of a long, low temple hall with a grey tiled roof and Japanese flags at its entrance.
School children, Kyoto
A hillside crowded with small, moss-covered stone Jizō statues, each tied with a coloured cloth bib in orange, yellow, green, blue or red.
Jizō statues, guardians of the travelers
From behind, a small boy in a blue Superman T-shirt rides on his father's shoulders above a crowded street of traditional tiled-roof shops.
Super dad with superman
A temple garden of raked white gravel, round stepping stones and green maples, curving towards a wooden pavilion with a dark tiled roof.
Arashiyama, Kyoto
A still, dark pond scattered with lily pads mirrors the dense green maples and tall pines rising above it.
Arashiyama, Kyoto
Four women in elaborate maiko costume, faces painted white, pose on a stone-paved street as a crowd of tourists photographs them.
Posing geishas, Kyoto
A woman in gloves and an apron kneels on moss beside an orange tub, weeding a temple garden edged with low curved bamboo fencing.
Gardener, Kyoto
Slender bamboo trunks rising from a mossy, leaf-strewn slope, framed by bright green maple leaves in the foreground.
Arashiyama bamboo grove, Kyoto
Low view along a path through a towering bamboo grove, fallen leaves in the foreground, brushwood fences either side and blurred walkers in the distance.
Arashiyama bamboo grove, Kyoto
The thatched roof of a temple building half hidden among lush green shrubs and maples under a grey sky.
Arashiyama, Kyoto
Looking out over overlapping grey tiled rooftops of a small harbour town, the sea and hills faint in the hazy distance.
Rooftops, Tomonoura
An old fishing boat loaded with blue and green barrels moored in a calm harbour, a stone quay and lamppost in the foreground and low houses along the shore.
Ponyo, Tomonoura
Two round traffic mirrors on a utility pole reflect a narrow street of old wooden houses, mounted over a weathered tiled roof.
Side streets, Tomonoura
A woman leans into the ticket window of a rounded, ochre stucco building draped in ivy, a large Totoro figure sitting behind the curved front window.
Ticket booth at the Ghibli museum
A sumo wrestler in a pink-patterned yukata sits alone on a bench across the tracks of an open-air train platform.
Sumo athlete at the train station
A very narrow, wood-clad house just one door wide squeezed between two ordinary white houses on a quiet street, power lines crossing the sky above.
Narrowly living, Tokyo
Crowds crossing the Shibuya scramble crossing from above, zebra stripes running in every direction beneath department stores and billboards under a cloudy sky.
Shibuya, Tokyo

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Note

All photos taken across Japan with a Sony Alpha NEX-C3 16 mm

Further reading

Single trips timeline

Japan
Iran
USA
Apr 28
Apr 29
Mar 12
Mar 16
Mar 22
Mar 26
Mar 27
Apr 20
Sep 21
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