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 [...]
work place 2
Share The magazine I edit, EURObiZ Japan, has been running a monthly column on Europeans working in Tokyo, and I’ve been taking the photos. These are the six most recent portraits. (The first five are here.) This time there are Europeans working in: a glass company, a designer furniture company, advertising, Italian food imports, wine [...]
The sick rose
Share O Rose thou art sick. The invisible worm, That flies in the night In the howling storm: Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy: And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy. William Blake
School of hard knocks
Share I had a three page photo story in this month’s No. 1 Shimbun, the magazine of the Foreign Correspondent’s Club in Tokyo. Here it is below. A little while ago I had the privilege to meet and photograph Doreen Simmons, the incredible 78-year-old sumo expert and commentator on NHK. The job was for one [...]
Sun and sake
Share The biennial festival near our house has become something of a project for me. I helped carry the shrine for the third time this year and took a few portraits while resting my bruised shoulders. These were all shot with a 50mm lens at f2.0 on D200 body. The sensor size on the D200 [...]
Toyohashi
Share Toyohashi city is where I landed in Japan and lived for a few years before coming to Tokyo. It’s not far from Nagoya, not far from the mountains, not far from the sea, not doing very well in the recession. It was a great place to live when I was there – probably still [...]
Festival of the dead
Share It’s been a while since my late post, and it’s even longer since I took these photos last summer. Every August there’s a small obon celebration under the bullet train tracks near our house. Obon is the festival of the dead when Japanese honour their ancestors. A local taiko drumming group comes to our [...]
work place
Share The magazine I edit, EURObiZ Japan, has been running a monthly column on Europeans working in Tokyo, and I’ve been taking the photos. These are the first five portraits. There’s a lady who sells foie gras, two architects, a pattisier, a man who imports Dutch goods and a scuba diving instructor. (Thanks to our [...]
Temple of the golden pavilion
Share Is this the most photographed temple in Japan? I was down in Kyoto last week meeting a Danish tea master (more on that one day) and staying at a Zen Buddhist temple for a night (no photos!). In between the two I had a morning to spare so what to do? My first thought [...]
Nifty-fifty Houston
Share Sixteen shots of Houston – 50mm wide-open. (Set myself a challenge of the simplest camera setting I could think of.) Most of these shots were taken downtown near my hotel.
the Houston flower man
Share When I was in Houston, my friend Katherine took me to see a very special person. The first photo explains. To say thank you for letting me take these pics, last week I posted a few photos and a couple of Anpanman toys to Houston. There is a little bit of Tokyo in Mr [...]
wedding photos
Share This was a bit of a departure for me. My friends Katherine and Gary were married in Houston earlier this month I and flew over to give them their wedding present – photos of the day! I’d never shot a proper wedding before, and I think I was at least as nervous as the [...]
Mega-church
Share I am in Houston Texas this week to photograph my friends’ wedding. Lakewood Church, says Wikipedia, is the largest congregation in the US – what they call a mega-church. The services are held in a converted basketball station that seats about 16,000 people. I attended to the 11am service. Seeing as my last visit [...]
Yasukuni shrine on a sunny spring day
Share Yasukuni Shrine in the center of Tokyo is dedicated to Japan’s war dead. On this spring day the shrine museum was hosting a exhibition on the kamikaze pilots of WW2.
Festival fever
Share More from the festival. These were taken right outside the station just as the portable shrine got moving. The trick with these is to focus while walking backwards and avoiding the waving arms of drunken revelers . . .
Shiny Happy People
Share Beautiful day, gorgeous light, happy people – what more do you need? A few portraits from our local spring festival last weekend. It’s not the first time I have shot the festival, though I took a different approach this time. D700 + 50mm lens. All were taken close to maximum aperture, usually within a [...]
Blooming Japan
Share You know, despite living in Japan for 10 years now, I have never managed to get round to photographing cherry blossom (although I did write about it.) This year I met the challenge head on with a trip to hanami wonderland, Ueno Park. But I have to say that I wasn’t quite ready for [...]
Christmas in Bath
Share This was my first Christmas in the UK for eight years. I’d left my wife and children in Tokyo as our youngest was too small to travel. Just me in my old bedroom in my parents house in the city where I grew up, Bath. With me a Nikon New FM2, a Nikkor 50mm [...]
Popping round for tea
Share One thing the English (I’m from England) and the Japanese share in common – other than constantly talking about the weather – is a love of tea. Last year I was asked to write about green tea and interview Masamitsu Takau, a registered “tea sommelier”. When I checked out his website I was surprised [...]
Jacques Payet, Yoshinkan Aikido master
Share The Yoshinkan Aikido dojo in Takadanobaba, Tokyo. This was the first time I’ve photographed, or even seen, Aikido and was for my new job. I was very kindly invited by 7th Dan master Jacques Payet. My first impression of Aikido training was that it looks like a mixture of effortless grace and intense pain [...]
Tsukiji
Share Tsukiji fish market is quickly turning into the photo destination in Tokyo. It’s colourful, chaoatic and real. It’s open 24 hours a day and about 10,000 people work there. What could be better? (Just ignore the fact that officially the public, including tourists, aren’t allowed in the market). Tsukiji fish market I took my [...]
Sweet and sour
Share When I met Mitsuyasu Uchibori he gave me a business card that read “Summelier No 001″. He is Japan’s premier vinegar sommelier. (Su-memlier is a pun on the Japanese word of vinegar, su.) And quite the showman . . . Uchibori runs a 130 year old vinegar company in central Japan and a chain [...]
Tasting danger
Share As I’ve written on this blog before, Tsukiji is about my favourite place in Tokyo. For anyone who’s interested in food – indeed in Japan – there is a lifetime’s worth of stuff to see, eat, learn and photograph. These photos are from a long feature I did recently on fugu (blowfish). Someone I [...]
135 years of Japanese wine-making
Share I writing this from frigid December Bath in the UK. Brrrr. I think these photos are actually making me feel colder. At the end of summer I travelled up to Katsunuma in Yamanashi prefecture. The area is home to Japan’s largest winemaker, Mercian, and 80 odd little wineries open for visiting and tasting. Katsunuma’s [...]
