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 [...]
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 [...]
Red Light District
Share A selection of photos from a personal project I’ve been working on recently. Street photography is pretty much how I started out, and I still love it. But not much time for wandering the backstreets of Tokyo these days. For want of imagination I’ve called the project Tokyo Red. Other name suggestions welcome!
English teacher in Japan portraits
Share I blogged about this back in April, but the exhibition has just opened at the correspondent’s club so here are some more photos and a short interview with the photographer Gary McLeod. Gary has been making portraits of English teachers in Japan. Each image consists of about 300 individual photos taken with a Nikon [...]
Back to the plastic food factory
Share I did a story last year on plastic food samples – the kind you see in the windows of restaurants and cafes everywhere in Japan. Well it was so interesting that I went back to the factory to take some photos of my own just before Christmas. (I was working with a photographer for [...]
Tokyo Commuter Hell
Share Tokyo commuters My corner of photojournalism isn’t exactly front-line war reporting. But I think this story was about the closest I’ve come to being physically assaulted in Japan so far. Two years ago I was writing about the Tokyo transport system (pdf) and went out to get some rush hour train photos. (Only just [...]
Tokyo Game Show 2008 photo slideshow
Share Tokyo Game Show 2008 from Tony McNicol on Vimeo. Here’s a link to my Tokyo Games Show photos
Tokyo Game Show 2008
Share I survived Tokyo Game Show 2008! Imagine 8 hours imprisoned in a dark cavernous space packed with hundreds of excited Japanese otaku. Two winges: 1) Why was there a queue of about a hundred journalists at the press desk come 10am opening. Surely the world’s largest game expo could organise online registration? 2) Why [...]
Tokyo Design Festa
Share This is a slideshow from Design Festa at Big Site last year. Lots of weird photos of weird art and weird people. Just testing out You Tube on this blog. More recent slideshows soon. a link to my You Tube channel
Tokyo Tower
Share I stumbled across this guy (not literally, but almost!) on my way to a Tsukiji fish market shoot VERY early one morning. He was wearing a pretty nice suit, so not sure why he hadn’t found himself a capsule hotel. Got as close as I could with the wide angle (which is closer than [...]
Akihabara tour
Share More photos from “otaku Mecca” Akihabara. Last week I took a tour organized by a startup called GI Jane. I was surprised to see so many foreigners on the streets. I’m not sure where these guys were from (maybe Italy?) but they certainly looked the part. I caught them outside the Radio Kaikan which [...]
otaku dominoes
Share I was at the Big Site exhibition hall in Odaiba last weekend covering one of Tokyo’s many otaku events. (Deep deep into geek territory for a series of articles on Japanese pop culture exports right now) This one was for model makers and figure collectors: everything from Tamiya tanks to latex Godzillas I got [...]
