Pray for Japan
Share Each January crowds of people visit Meiji Jingu shrine in Tokyo for “hatsumode” - first prayers of the year. I took these portraits right in front of the main shrine. Some people bent their heads for seconds, some for minutes. I was hard not to imagine what people were praying for. Perhaps for a better year in [...]
Daruma-rama
Share Wishing everyone a happy and prosperous 2012! (From last year’s Daruma Fair at Jindaiji temple in Chofu near Tokyo) http://www.jindaiji.or.jp/event/darumaichi.php
The Chiba Jeebies
Share Wandering around the wilds of Chiba prefecture a couple of months ago. By the time I took the last photo I was hopelessly lost and eventually someone had to come and find me. My mobile phone battery had run out and, as I discovered, there aren’t many public telephones in the Japanese countryside. Apologies [...]
Trip to the top of the Tokyo Sky Tree
Share The Tokyo Sky Tree isn’t scheduled to open to the public until next year but the good people at the Foreign Correspondent’s Club organised a press tour late last month. Here’s a story I did for the press club magazine. It was a good trip, though the weather was terrible; quite a view, even [...]
Moving on
Share My time as editor of EURObiZ Japan came to an end on Friday. But here’s my swansong, some portraits of my talented colleagues at Paradigm. Thanks for a fantastic two years (and for letting me take your photographs)! (Tokyo photojournalist on Facebook) David Paddy Naoko
Some more corporate portraits
Share A last selection from the corporate portraits I’ve been doing for EURObiZ Japan. With these I always try to include something from the person’s work in the photo. Some people/occupations can be harder than others. But I always do my best to make them look relaxed, and happy with their jobs. I get the [...]
Brrrrr
Share Here’s one way to cool down a little during the Tokyo summer . . . Back in 2008 I took part in a press tour to the Shiretoko peninsula way up on the northeast tip of Hokkaido. It was a fantastic trip, including a visit out to the ice-flows on an ice-breaker. Sadly, global [...]
Tsukiji portraits
Share Not only is Tsukiji fish market one of best places in Tokyo to visit, its one of the most photogenic too. A few years ago I did a small project photographing people who work in the market. I have around 100 impromptu portraits. Usually, I just approached people explained what I was doing, asked [...]
Sento painter
Share Sento bathhouse painter Toshimitsu Hayakawa was one of the most remarkable people I’ve photographed. Sadly, he passed away in 2009, only a couple of years after I took these photographs. One of the two last sento bathhouse painters in Tokyo, he was in his seventies and still working. He was a modest and kind [...]
Children’s Day in Ishinomaki
Share This is the last of the sets of photos I took up in tsumnami-devastated Ishinomaki over Golden Week. The morning of 5 May I drove from Sendai to Ishinomaki with rakugo artist Dianne Orrett and a couple of her Chindon’ya friends. We spent the day together as they performed at the Ishinomaki Mangattan and [...]
Tokyo Sinfonia in Tohoku
Share This is another story from Golden week. I travelled up to the disaster zone with the Tokyo Sinfonia who played several concerts in the refugee centers. This was another privileged experience. Two months after the quake, the authorities were reluctant to let anyone into the centers – least of all photographers. But it was [...]
Ishinomaki during Golden Week
Share These photos were taken just under two months after the March 11th earthquake and tsunami. I was up in Ishinomaki during the Golden Week holidays to do a story for the magazine on a story for the magazine I edit. To be honest, I had my doubts about whether I should post these, or [...]
Chiba surfing
Share Surf’s up. Recently had chance to visit a surfing “Mecca” in Chiba with my brother-in-law. Beats Sunday morning pushing a trolley around Itoyokado. Time to invest in one of these? (Tokyo Photojournalist on Facebook)
Drinking Japan
Share I had a lovely surprise today. A while ago I sent my friend Chris Bunting some photos for a book he was working on. Well, the book is out – and what a fantastic book it is too. My photos are the ones of the sake brewery (not the cover photo, the sake casks [...]
Cherry blossom 2011
Share Cherry blossom. It’s a challenge to find a new way to shoot sakura any year, but this year was particularly difficult. (These were taken using a Takumar 55mm lens on a Nikon D700) (Tokyo Photojournalist on Facebook)
One week later
Share Even at a time like this, people need music. Perhaps, at a time like this, they need it more than ever. On Tuesday I received this email from Robert Ryker, Music Director of the Tokyo Sinfonia. It was about a concert that some time ago we’d arranged I’d photograph – I was surprised to [...]
Ginza darkly
Share Japan is a dark place in more ways than one at the moment. The terrible suffering in north Japan is constantly on everyone’s minds, as is the nuclear power station crisis in Fukushima. Meanwhile, homes and businesses are trying to save as much electricity as possible. Ginza is normally one of the busiest brightest [...]
Leaving Tokyo
Share The atmosphere is Tokyo right now is hard to describe: a mixture of horror, weariness and unease. Like everyone else here I’ve been glued to the TV and internet for days. Yesterday morning was the low point so far for me. When the media started reporting on rising radiation at the Fukushima plant I [...]
Stranded by the earthquake
Share I am stuck in my Tokyo office tonight. All the trains have stopped. I went down to Shinagawa station to see what was happening and take some photos. Glad I have a heated office to sleep in and a blanket at least. UPDATE: March 12th 10.30am Finally got home at 5am this morning: car [...]
Tokyo marathon 2011
Share I took about two hundred portraits of runners at the Tokyo Marathon last Sunday, 100 at the start and 100 at the finish – all with my trusty nifty-fifty. I had a press pass courtesy of EURObiZ Japan. They’ll be a photo story in the magazine soon. I wanted to show the excitement of [...]
Food for thought
Share I’ve had a few stories in the Foreign Correspondent’s Club of Japan magazine before now, but this is the first time on the cover. A project close to my heart too. As I wrote in the text (see below) to go with these portraits, I have enormous respect for the people producing Japan’s fantastic [...]
Sado jizo shrine
Share These photos are from a trip to the island of Sado in 2009, when I spent a couple of days driving around looking for places and people to feature in the travel story I was writing. I found this shrine a short drive up into the hills. It is named “Nashinoki Jizo” after the [...]
Pied Piper
Share Noto town in Kanazawa prefecture has lost two thirds of its residents since the 1970s, its sons and daughters leaving for jobs in the city. Remaining behind are silence, empty streets, pork barrel civic projects, pachinko parlours, the loyal, and the old. This is a story repeated in rural areas all over Japan. And [...]
Waiting for the flood
Share Here’s an unlikely Tokyo tourist attraction, definitely in the category of places I would NEVER have gone if I wasn’t a journalist. Apparently, this is the largest flood protection civil engineering project in the world. It is open to the public and the tours are free, but you need to speak some Japanese. I [...]
