Photographing Japan: Creative Tips, Stories & Inspiration with Pete & Junko
Yeah. So, I’m a a photographer based in New Haven, Connecticut, and I’ve lived for 16 years in Asia. I moved back to the US two years ago, and I run photography workshops and tours. And I would wanted to put together a tour to Japan. It’s one of the most incredible places I’ve ever been to. It’s so awesome for taking photos, super inspiring. And when I was thinking about putting the tour together, I was like, hm, who I really want to work with someone from Japan to to run this, help me run this tour to kind of give a a lot of um cultural insight and just have a kind of insider view into Japan because it can be a challenging culture to to kind of understand if you’re not from there or speak the language. So Junko was in one of my photography workshop uh classes. It was a night photography class. So we both love night photography. You’re gonna you’re going to see a lot of night photography. Junko, you want to say a few words and just introduce yourself? Uh yes, I’m um I as Pete said, we’ve met online through various workshops and he’s kind of been a go-to person for me when I’ve needed help with some night photography work. So, I’ve always been very happy to um be in connection with Pete about his expertise in night photography. Um my background is that I was a teacher and a professor for my entire career and I’ve led tours to Japan uh for 22 years now, but mostly 20 high schoolers at a time and some photography groups. All right. So, all right. Why why Japan or what’s my uh connection with uh Japan? So, if you see the map here of Japan, I taught English at a university in South Korea. And if you look at the bottom of uh South Korea there, you’ll see that little Busousan. That’s Korea’s second largest city. There’s three million people. It’s bigger than Los Angeles. And it’s right across the the water from Fukuoka. There’s a ferry, a fast ferry. It’s a hydrooil. It takes three hours uh to give you an idea to get to Fukuoka. And to make it to Osaka, I think it’s like a 50inute flight and Tokyo is like an hour and 20 minutes. So, even though I was in Korea, it was super close. And of course, I loved photography and I was going often to Japan and traveling around Japan. Uh here’s a picture of me in Busousan with uh one of my classes at the university there. And then people always ask me, well, why did you go to Korea? What I mean, why did you want to go and live there and teach there? So, actually when I was a kid, um I lived there for a year in 1979. That’s my dad on the left and that’s my mom and that’s me popping out from behind her and that’s my my brother, my little brother in the carriage there. So, we lived there for a year and I always wanted to go back to Korea and that’s kind of what brought me back to to Asia. My dad actually taught at a university um on an island uh Jeedju Island which is if you look at the south under South Korea and you go straight down you’ll see an island. That’s Jedju Island. That’s the island I lived on uh way back then. Pete if you straight south of there below to the very bottom. Yeah. Where the where the S is Okinawa. That’s where I grew up. Ah okay. Right. Yeah. So that’s is that down here? Right there. Uhhuh. Okay. Perfect. So, well, you were born in Tokyo, but you grew up in Okinawa, right? Okay. So, all right, let me run through a few uh of my favorite photos from from Japan. This is Kiom Mizua Temple in Kyoto. And this was during the cherry blossoms. And of course, everybody knows the cherry blossoms. It’s Sakura, right, Junko? Yes. Sakura. And this temple is really interesting. It’s one of the largest. This temple doesn’t have a single uh iron bit of ir like an iron nail. I think it’s all made all just with with wood. And um yeah, to to go there during the Sakura season is beautiful. However, it’s really hard to do unless you live nearby, I think, because sometimes you only see the cherry blossoms for 5 days or 7 days. If it rains, if it’s windy, they blow off the trees and you so it’s really hard to to time. Um, this is uh a shrine called Fushimi Inari Shrine. This is also in Kyoto. And you’ve probably seen a bunch of pictures from here. I really wanted to photograph this at night. I love how the light kind of reflects off the the the shrine, the Tory gates. And this is a Shinto shrine. And the name those are names of people on the side of the Tory gates. Is that right, Junko? Like people people in companies who are um supporters like kind of like a they sponsor that or something like that. So, um, yeah, on our there’s a place that we’re going to go to in Tokyo that it’s not the same as this place, but you get a little bit of a similar kind of look. Um, if so, if this is something that you want to photograph, uh, you we’re definitely going to see something like that. This is um, Arashiyama bamboo forest. This is also in Kyoto. So, I went often I would go to Osaka because it was very close to Busousan. And so although I’ve been all over Japan, the place, one of the places I went to and photographed most was around uh Kyoto and Osaka. So a lot of my photos you’re going to see are from there. This is also another really popular spot. Um if you ever go there, I like to I don’t know if you can notice, but I kind of crouched down when I took this shot. Uh I’m really tall. I’m 6’5. And when I stand up, then when you look down, you don’t those um the the fence there on the side looks very small. So, one of the things I do when I shoot is to try and kind of hold my camera lower to the ground. And I wanted to include uh people in the photo because these bamboos are so huge, you don’t really get a sense of how tall they are. They’re just massive. Um, this place is super super crowded with tourists, like packed. And a lot of Japan is packed with tourists. You just can’t avoid it. It’s a very very popular destination. So, one of the things that I like to do when I’m doing taking travel photos is go really early in the morning or late at night. So, this was probably at like 7 a.m. and there were already the 7 or 8 a.m. there were already a few people uh walking through there. Um, and then this obviously uh during the day there’s loads of people walking through these gates. There’s a lot of tourists. It’s not empty. Uh, but at night time almost everyone goes home. It’s you have pretty much the place to yourself. And I really like that because you kind of um get a sense of the place not as like a busy tourist destination, but you kind of just feel like the like you have it to yourself. This is the Abeno Harukas uh tower in Osaka. And so I think it’s about 60 stories high or something like that. One of the tallest buildings in Osaka. And this day there was just an amazing sunset. I liked how everybody kind of pulled out their phones and was taking pictures. If you’ve ever been to Osaka, if you look on the right hand side, there’s a little lit up. It looks like a little mini Eiffel Tower or something like that. And that’s a kind of iconic spot in Osaka. This was uh the intersection right below that uh tower. And before I went up it, um, the sun was setting. And I’m always looking for stuff like this. I on my workshops and tours, I I always tell everyone, you know, look for the light, look at what the light is doing, and then build your photo around that. I One mistake I see a lot of people make is they kind of um they just look for the thing they want to photograph and then whatever the light is doing, it just kind of adds to it. But I always think first the question I’m always asking myself is what’s the light doing? What’s the light doing? And then try and kind of uh create a composition around that. Um if you can see like even there’s a little starburst in the sun. I just kind of moved around until the sun hit the side of uh that building to get that kind of starburst effect. And I also really like the sign in the top that waku waku. I I have no idea what that means. Feeling the excitement. Oh, okay. So So Wakuaku, I love I know Damo is the I think it’s a phone company in Japan, right? Um so anytime you’re traveling also if you for uh to give a a sense of place also uh try and include signs. That’s also something I look out for. Um, so, uh, definitely, um, that was something I was, um, looking for when creating the shot. One of my favorite things to photograph in Japan are these overpasses. And I learned about this uh, years ago on when I used to use Flickr. There was I noticed there’s some Japanese photographers and they were all like photographing these underpasses. They call them the Medusa. And there’s like a like a subgenre of or niche photography group or something that just photographed these overpasses. And they’re fascinating to me because if you notice there’s not a single um uh what do you call it like a support going in the intersection. It’s all like totally clear. And when you think about also that Japan, you know, there’s earthquakes in Japan. The engineering that goes into this is just mindbending. So, I love photographing these underpasses and I even look on Google Maps and you look for intersections. And so, I would just get on a bus, go to some random intersection and spend the evening there just photographing these because I think they’re so cool. Um, and then, um, yeah, I don’t do a lot of black and white night photography, and I Junko does a lot, which I I would like to try more of, and you’ll see that in a little bit. This is Mount Fuji, climbing Mount Fuji. So, I uh, a friend of mine came to visit and she said, “Hey, do you want to climb Mount Fuji?” Sure, let’s go. Um, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. It’s actually not a super technical hike. It is difficult. It takes a long time, but you don’t need ropes or or gear or anything like that. And they have these little huts that you can stay at uh halfway up. And if you look down, you can see on the left there’s one of those huts. But of course, we made the plans last minute. The huts were full. And I said, “Oh, we’ll just hike back down.” Uh but we left late and got stuck there at night and we ended up like although it’s still the sun is setting here. Um it was dark for more than half of the way down like uh but luckily the moon was out. Uh we didn’t have gear. We didn’t have lamps or anything like that. The craziest thing though was the shadow. And if you see at the top that’s the the shadow of Mount Fuji. Uh, Tokyo is about 60 miles north of Mount Fuji. And so I’m I’m guessing that could potentially be more or less, you know, the the summit of Fuji is pointing pretty much to where Tokyo might be. Um, and what was I going to say? Yeah, if you um also again um so my friend there, you see her orange jacket. So always uh try and include uh a person to give a sense of scale that was just so massive. Oh, and what I was gonna say, I did not notice the shadow. Like it was so big. It didn’t hit me right away. It’s like, you know, you’re uh what is the expression? Standing in front of the forest and can’t see the tree. Like it took me a while to actually even realize. I was like, “Oh my god, that’s the shadow. This is Toaii temple in N. N is near Kyoto. I think this is the largest Buddhist temp wooden structure in the world, I think, or something like that. And what’s so cool about this temple is if you look right in the middle, you’ll see uh the head or face of Buddha and the eyes. And I love how it’s just cut out. I don’t even think there’s a window there. So, when you walk up to it and if you look down below a little bit, you can see kind of the base of the Buddha, the robe, it’s so impressive because you’re walking up and you just see this giant brass Buddha peering out at you. I I read somewhere that they had to use at the time I I could be wrong. I think it was copper, maybe. They had to use like all of the copper in Japan at the time to build to make this Buddha. Like that’s how big it is. One of the biggest uh Buddhas. And in terms of settings or photography composition, this is um maybe a 2C exposure or a 3 second exposure. And I decided to go with a a bit of a longer exposure here because what really caught my attention was that when you walk up to this temple at night or even in the daytime, people kind of walk up to it and then they pause. They just it like stops you in your tracks and you’re you have that sense of awe and wonder like, whoa, this is crazy. And so I wanted to use this uh slow shutter speed to kind of show the motion of like people walking up, but then also those people who stood still uh longer, they kind of freeze. You can see more of them in the image. And then if you look in the top left corner, there’s like a bit of somebody they’re walking up with their phone to take the photo. Um and you know, normally that kind of stuff I’m like, ah, it’s a distraction. I don’t want that in the image. But if for me it really added to that sense of like people walking up, stopping, wow, that moment of awe. Uh my camera was on a tripod. Again, I set the tripod down low. I do that a lot. Uh if you set your tripod up really high, you have a higher perspective and then people don’t look as big when you have your camera up really high. So, I like to kind of lower the camera and then you’re kind of looking up and that gives uh people more more presence in the image. All right, next up, Junko. I’m passing the mic to you. So, some things that I thought of as I was listening to you is um you know I’m a foot and a half shorter than you and so I’m always the one who’s standing on tiptoes holding my camera way up high so I can get a perspective that includes tops of people’s heads but not everything. So, we’ll be doing opposite things while we’re there. So, that’ll be fun. Anyway, um as I mentioned before, I’m from Japan, born and raised there and all of my family still lives in Japan except for a few family members. And so when I go to Japan, typically I’m there with family. I’m visiting. I’m not there to photograph. So it’s a rare opportunity when I get to focus on being thinking about my photography. And in 2014, I led a photography group there uh co co-led the trip um trip and we went to various places for photography. And this was our first stop. It’s Shinjuku, which is the central um Tokyo. And I was really captivated by the way in which the clear umbrellas that are so popular in Japan because you can see through them even in crowds uh added to this both a feeling of unification as well as the the differences that you see in the big picture. So a picture from 2014 nature right in the middle of downtown Tokyo. And yes, as Pete says, I do a lot of black and white night photography and I even have one camera that only shoots monochrome. So, okay, I also like to do some architectural things where um people are elements within my photos, but not necessarily a portrait type of person. And what struck me about this scene is that I was photographing a very modern architectural conference center and then I realized that the sidewalk was lit. So, I climbed up three sets of stairs and I looked down on it and waited for the right um scene that I wanted below me to capture, whether it be one person or three people or whatever, right across the sidewalk. Looks a little funny like it could be a person walking down the building, but it’s a lit sidewalk. There’s, you know, Japan, as you’ve already heard many times in and are aware, it’s a blend of a country that really holds on to their tradition as well as embraces the new and the modern. And I started out with showing you some more contemporary feeling things. But this is something that is very much an important part of my trips to Japan. Um, I can show you after we’re back on camera, but I have five of these temple books. And what you see here in front of you is um this particular book I have that I’m holding up on the screen right now. And it’s a temple book that record your visits to temples in Japan. And when you go there, you can have them record your visit. And on each page, it’s a um leperella book, so it opens like an accordion like this. But on each page, they record the name of the temple, a blessing from that temple, and then the date that you went. And it’s handwritten and recorded in a way that at the end of the book, um, at the end of your trip, you have a double-sided record of all the temples that you have gone to. It’s a combination of handwritten calligraphy as well as stamping. And I’ve taken so many photos here over the years that I have somewhere there writing the calligraphy. I think that was in one of the emails that went out from Pete. And in this one, he is putting the official seal from the temple onto the um stamping page. And then what you see in front of him are three I’m not sure if you can tell what they’re, but they’re paper weights. And the paper weights are in the design of the seal of the temple. And they’re very, very heavy, beautiful objects. But they hold down papers so that if you don’t have a book and you just simply want to buy a paper record of having been there, you can purchase a paper record that is the equivalent of um just one one of these pages that’s written. I like the idea of that which is very much the tradition of Japan in the midst of today’s busyiness that we are still taking a moment to appreciate calligraphy as a form of writing. What about um photographing monks? Some people on the tour are asking me already about like can we photograph monks and like what do you do you have any tips about that? What’s the kind of etiquette if you’re going to a temple and you want to take photos at a temple? Um I think it’s as with any religious person persons and place that you go to you never use flash of course you always um show respect in your how much distance that you are taking you as I tell I travel with high schoolers all the time and as I tell the high schoolers gauge the people around you keep the same kind of distance that people are keeping as they are um approaching the situation. And this photo was probably taken with a 35 or a 50 mm. And it’s close because he’s signing my book. And um I often don’t include people’s faces. And so that gives it a little bit of personal but not specific to the person I’m photographing. But I think that you use just common sense in understanding when it’s appropriate and inappropriate to photograph in religious places. Okay. And uh I know uh well Melissa, she’s on the call. Uh she’s going to Japan soon and I’m guessing that this is something that she might want to do is get one of these books and get it signed at the temple. Like how do you get the the the book? Um they had them at every temple in every shrine. Okay. And in Japan, you know, Buddhism, Shintoism, we mix and match. Some people have a separate book for their Buddhist temples. Some have one separately for Shinto. I mix and match mine as most people probably do, but they will have quite a variety of all these kinds of books available to you. And um some of them are larger so they have a little more space to write in them. Some I have one that has a wooden cover, but you pay for your book when you first arrive. And sometimes it has the initial um one already pre-written, but then, for example, I was there last autumn. And so, this was a special um picture one that was only in the autumn time. And so, it has the autumn leaves and things like that. And it’s a double page one that they did not glue in. and they gave me a paper corner to attach it to my book. So, look around, notice what other people are doing, but you it’s easy to find this at every single place. It costs about 300 to 500 yen per one that you have signed. And it’s an it’s a gift that you give to the temple for their time and appreciation. And um yes, but it’s easy to find them. Good. Um, back to very modern moments. Um, remember I travel a lot with teenagers. So, they love going to places like this. This is Team Lab and there are two Team Lab um, exhibition sites in Tokyo. The original one is in Oda where this one was taken and the other one is in Dongi in central Tokyo. But I do all of my photography in Tim Team Lab. I shouldn’t say all, 95% of my photography in there with my phone. This one was with my phone and um in this particular one I turned it into the black and white um the film noir mode on my phone and it’s the silhouette of the person I was with walking past me and I was happy that I took the very fast movement so that I could get m multiple and I gathered this I chose this one because it shows his foot in the air as he’s walking. So can you explain what is what is team lab? Team lab is a um light um lightbased exhibition and it’s projection. Some of you may have seen for example the Van Go or the Monae and all of these that museums are hosting now that show famous pieces of art projected onto the wall. In some ways that’s the most similar thing I can think of for what we have in the United States. But this is not particularly pieces of art so much as art created through light. This particular one doesn’t have design, but I have many that have flowers and um kapa which is like the Japanese um little figures walking through in the background in a parade or they have figurative things as well as abstract as well. There’s one that’s all floral that has the actual floral like a chandelier or curtain coming down from the top, but because it’s on top of mirror, it’s completely visible both top and bottom. The one in Oda, you walk in and you take your shoes off and you walk through water to get into the whole place. So that’s why we’re barefooted in this particular one. It’s a light exhibition. and Jigoku Dani. Um, was it Sharon who said that she went to see the monkeys, too? Um, Sharon will remember that the monkeys come out and um, bathe in the bit hot tubs in especially if you’re there in the middle of winter, more like December, January, February. But, um, the monkeys are there year round. And if we’re lucky, you get to see them in the bats. And otherwise, you see monkeys in various behaviors. I have some that I like because the monkeys are mimicking various things that we can attribute anthropomorphized human um actions to what they’re doing. But yes, they’re lots of fun to watch and photograph. Do you have any tips for photographing the monkeys? This is the only time you might want a long lens. Really long lens. I think for this particular one, I think I probably had a 200 and then cropped. I pro I probably put my camera on crop sensor, the 1.6 within in camera, put on my 7200 and then I cropped even more. I’m known as the queen of cropping. I have to admit, and um to get the composition that I want at the end. Mhm. There are a lot of people there. And so, um, part of it is positioning yourself in ways in which you get, um, more mountain in the background and fewer people and then standing firm in your position and hoping that monkeys come in your way or just embracing the fact that there are a lot of people there doing a lot of the slow shutter work like you did at Toai and incorporating the movements of people walking around. Um, also there’s an onsen town, the the hot spring town that you could stay at. And on our tour, we’re going to stay there and then go early in the morning hopefully before the tour buses arrive and all that. So, kind of like what I was saying before at the bamboo forest, arrive early, get there before everybody else gets there, and hopefully there will, you know, you’ll have more of the place to yourself, right? One of the things I always tell um people because I’ve now led these groups for 22 years is that I try not to travel it in ways that have a checklist to say I will photograph a monkey in the bath. Well, okay, maybe that’s that’s one ideal, but it’s nature and they don’t always cooperate cooperate with you. But I do think that there are ways in which you can photograph in a variety of ways for which you can have great experiences. So if we’re lucky, we’ll see monkeys and we if we’re lucky lucky, we’ll see them in the hot springs. All right, we’ll definitely go to Onsen Town. Now, typically people are elements within my compositions. They are part of my scenes, but rarely do I take portraits of people. But one of the things that I’ve been doing more is engaging in conversations with people. And this was taken in the town of Haggi, a small fishing village. And I went there because Sam Ael made famous this um town in a piece that he did for National Geographic in the 1980s. And it’s a small fishing village. I walked in. It was so hot that I just every time I saw the little town bus coming around, I pulled a hundred yen coin out of my bag, which is less than a dollar, put it in the the little um bus ticket thing, went onto the bus, and just sat and rested and got air conditioned. And then I would go a little farther. And then I get off and walk again in the heat and and photograph some more. But I stumbled upon this place and it promised rice balls which are very very important. It’s like sandwiches to Americans. I think rice balls are to Japanese people are rice the staple food that we eat. And it’s a rice ball restaurant. And so I open the door and poke my head in. And when you’re in a small town, everybody carines around to see who’s coming in the door. And there’s a newcomer, you know. So suddenly they’re all curious. Who are you? Where did you come from? You came from America and you speak Japanese. They couldn’t figure me out. But we engaged in this big conversation and before I knew it, there were everyone in the restaurant was talking to me, to each other, and to the man who owned the place. And at the end, they said, “We’ve actually never talked to each other before.” And it was because I happened to walk in. I was an object of curiosity and we had this lovely moment together. And I asked I asked the man who owned the place if I could take his photo. And I like all the details about everything, including the fact that he’s wearing these um gators across his shirt sleeve. So so that it covers his shirt and keeps the food clean, but typically these are worn by women. So it’s a very floral pattern that he has. I like the way he’s put out the two trays of the special dishes he has from the day. I like the fact that you have foil in the background that shows that he’s trying to keep the splattering of his tempura frying things um from getting onto the wall. I like the corner that you see of the onita advertisement of the little rice ball in the background. So, it just came all together for me. But most of all, it was my moment in that town. And I’ll never forget meeting this man. This photo ended up in an exhibition in Haggi a few months after I took this and it’s now part of the city c city halls collection of people from the town of Haggi. I always tell people that when you want to get good portraits, you should really just kind of sit with them and talk for a little while before you like walk in cameras blazing and and try and get the shot. And I it he seems very relaxed in this photo like at ease. And I think that’s uh due to the fact that you were like talking to him and spent time to get to know him and it shows like everything you’re saying shows in the photo. Did you have did you ask him to to stand in any I asked if I could take his photo that time, but I would you know I’ve been to over 50 countries and I only speak English and Japanese. So most countries I go to, I don’t speak the language, but smiling and holding up your camera immediately communicates. And so people get it when you hold up your camera and you smile at them that you want to take their photo and so yes. Um, how do you how do you say, “Can I take your photo in Japanese?” Or do you say something? One more time. May I take your photo? We’ll have lots more practice time. That was a fail. Okay, I have my own on to the next one. Again, I would not have taken her photo because I don’t take portraits of people, but I was with a friend of mine from Houston and she’s very much of a portrait photographer. But I I said to my friend Carol, I said, “Look at her. She is really um dressed you for for Harajuku streets.” and look at her fingernails and everything. She said, “Take her photo.” And I said, “Take her photo.” And then I thought, “Okay, yes, I should take her photo.” So, I asked her and she looked at me like, “Do you know how hard I work to look like this?” Like, finally, you’re going to you’re going to notice and take time to take my photo. And as you can see, she’s quite pleased that I’ve asked to take her photo and quite happy to show off her nails. So, um, Harajuka is a place I always go because it’s it’s where the young people are dressed up and having fun and taking their um, photo booth photos and um, eating fancy crepes and shopping at the fashion places. And yes, there will also be a lot of tourists there. But um looking through and between and among the tourists, you will also see many of the young Japanese people who claim it as a place that they like to hang out. So Harajuku is a neighborhood in Tokyo and then they hang out in a yoy yogi park, right? Which is the park in Harajuku. And they’re not there every day. You there’s only there certain days like on Sundays or Saturdays or something like no school days. Sundays typically. And then there’s also other groups of people like the the guys who dress up as like a 50s uh you know with the hair slick back greasers or something like that in cosplay like it’s it’s not just this kind of young urban trend. Oh rockabillies AC I just said Harajuku rockabillies. Thank you. Yeah there. So there’s like not just, you know, young kids with purple hair. Like there’s a kind of a mix of everybody. It’s like the place to kind of see and be seen, you know. So cool. Um I, you know, as I’ve said, I’ve traveled to Japan for 22 years, co-leading a trip with this the man who’s in this photo. But um what I appreciate about traveling with him is that he’s the he is a Japanese teacher for the local high school where I live in Evston, Illinois. And we always take our students to temples, gardens, and to places that are quintessentially Japanese and traditional as well as to modern and new flashy lights, team lab kinds of places. and he’s a very contemplative person. And once we arrive there, we typically are very quiet. We don’t talk to each other or to the students. We tell them before we go that once you enter places like that, for us to talk to each other would take away from the ambiance of the place. And if you are to enter a head space and an emotional space in which you can commune with the nature that’s there, then you need to be focused on what you are doing and what you are thinking and feeling. And I was walking by and I noticed him sitting there squarely virtually in the right in the middle of that opening. And I appreciated the way in which his sea stance which is sitting on your knees with your legs folded underneath you is the typical Japanese um when you are meditating um seated pose and he’s facing the garden but you can tell his head is slightly bowed a little bit and it’s the autumn season in Japan. It’s my absolute favorite season in Japan. Autumn is when you can feel the changing of the seasons. And Japan is a country in which seasons are so important that everything from your attire, the views, but also the foods that you eat, the gifts that you buy, the you saw the little um temple piece that was in my book that showed the autumn scene. Seasons drive how we think of the passage of time in Japan. And for me, this sense of autumn came so clear by seeing this where you see everything from the green through the reds and yellows and oranges and now popular in this country too. But the Japanese maples turn these beautiful colors in the autumn time. And to be able to sit and contemplate in those spaces makes me feel a grounding and a connection to that which is my homeland, my culture where all of my family is buried and um to be able to stay connected with my home. So yes, you told me that you took this with your Costco camera several here. Can you tell us a little bit about your your Costco camera? Well, you have many, but I mean uh you use different cameras, but I do. I I’m a three camera system person, four if you include my iPhone. But my very first camera I bought in 2013, my first DSLR, was because I was going to go on a trip to the Galapagos and I thought I should have a a better camera. So I went to Costco and you know how you get a camera with two lenses in a free camera bag all in one time, the whole thing cost about $350. That was my first Costco camera. And it’s a crop sensor, very low pixel um Canon. And I think the reason I continue to hold some of those pictures very dear to me is because it’s about the moment, the composition, and how I was able to capture how I felt to be there rather than it it is about the most contemp the most current of my higherend cameras I now own today versus that which was taken with my Costco camera. Yes, this one was taken with my Costco camera. When you were saying you lead the tour, have you led the tours with a lot of high school students in the past? When you lead them, is there anything that you look forward to introducing them to or showing them or in Japan? You know, for me, it’s both. It’s a two-way thing. I like introducing people in my adopted country, the United States. You know, I’m a citizen by choice of this country and I enjoy it showing them to my homeland and introducing them to my homeland, but I also enjoy having the people of my homeland get to meet people who are from outside and get a sense of who we are from outside of Japan. And so, how we are, how we behave, how we are with people in Japan is an impression we leave behind. And so it’s a two-way street for me. But um I like everything from um the joke of going into 7-Eleven, which is nothing like 7-Elevens in the United States. Going into 7-Elevens and showing them, look, you can ship your suitcase from here all the way to the airport. So you no longer have to carry your suitcase with you the rest of the trip to you can do banking to you can ship a package. You can receive something you bought on eBay. You can pick it up at the se 7-Eleven by your hotel to decent foods. In fact, um I’m leading a I’m co-leading another trip to Japan adjacent to this one and we’ve planned most of our lunches at 7-Eleven come and goes so we can keep photographing. But um yes, I know all the good foods at 7-Eleven as well as I know how to go to the very expensive Kaiiki dinners where you have course after course after course after course of beautiful foods in which every single detail has been thought of and each food they place in front of you is a piece of art. So, I kind of like the two extremes. And I encourage my high schoolers I travel with to think of not Japan as being the zen and anime and the the very sort of limited aspects they might think of Japan, but to look at it for the range of things that a country holds. And I also we encourage all of our students to do photography of some kind. And we tell them first of all, there is no such thing as bad light. that you might be seeing what the light is doing as Pete said earlier but to really capitalize on any kind of light that you have to say okay I’m going to capture what’s in the deep shadows because that’s what we have right now at this time of light or I’m going to think about and to get them to capture Japan not just with that kind of postcard postcard postcard postcard photo but with our teenagers telling them remember that manhole cover that you want to um think about when you go back or think about the way in which the wood joining at the temple is done with no nails. Look deeply, look carefully, look at the puzzle that’s there. So I appreciate with them both the details as well as the unexpected as well as the um the expected and the stereotype where they say, “Oh, so that’s where that stereotype comes from. It does exist as I thought it might.” Um all of that to happen. So, oh, and if you the other thing I I made a couple notes, Pete, as you were talking, your your Fujistan photo is absolutely amazing because I’ve never known anyone who photographed the shadow of Fujisan. That is singular. No one photographs the shadow of Fujisan. However, my best photos of Fujisan that I have ever taken have been from the airplane window. So, when you fly in, choose a window seat, look out the window. If you’re flying into Narita, you will almost assuredly not see it. But if you’re flying into Haneda, whether it’s in the evening or whether you’re flying um out in the morning, I have photograph Fujisan from the window of my airplane. Almost every single time I fly in and out of Haneda. So, and those are my best photos of Fujisan for me is out of the airplane window or out of the um bullet train windows as I’m How do you know? How do you know which side to sit on? The train cur the the plane does curve, but the my three favorite photos I’ve taken, two of them were taken from the left hand side of the plane. So that would be row A window. Both landing and taking off. They’re both from row A from the A window. And the other one that’s my favorite Fujisan was actually taken on my trip from Seoul and that was sitting on the Ro G side on the left on the right. I’m getting my rights and left right or your south the Ro G side of the window coming in from Seoul. And when I um when I’m traveling in a place where I think I might see it, I ask the train people or the flight attendants what time might I start being able to see it? And sometimes they’ll remember and come and tell you. Or I set my clock with my alarm so that I know five minutes before I’m anticipating seeing it so that I can move um to where I can pay attention. That’s a great tip. I’ll have to change my seat. So, uh like I was saying, uh Junko and I are leading a tour to Japan, Colors of Japan. It’s nine days, November 18th to 26. There’s eight uh spots, but there’s only uh three spots left. A couple people actually on this call who are joining the tour. If you’d like to learn more about the tour, you can go to this website below. I’ll also uh put it in the chat in a minute and uh send out a follow-up email with a link to that as well. So, that’s it for now. Thank you everyone for for joining us. I want to open up the the floor to any questions uh that anyone has, whether they’re about the tour or about Japan, traveling in Japan, or just want to share their experience uh when they were in Japan. Um so I see Sharon just unmuted her mic. Yeah, why don’t you go first? This is going to sound really silly, but a friend of mine who lives across the street had been to Japan and she suggested going to the shopping center underneath Tokyo Station, which I thought was a nutso thing to do. It is fabulous. It is. It is just fabulous. You have to shoot with a cell phone. You can’t really with a camera, but it was just so much fun down there. and the kids. And it was I mean you can get lost down there very easily. We did stay in onen town when we went to the monkeys and I was the only one in our group that used the onens which are which I thoroughly enjoyed. There was an outdoor one at our hotel. Timber. Mhm. And uh just be aware if you’re going to the monkeys, it’s a about a 3 kilometer hike uphill, but we went early early morning and it does become a zoo by midday and we planned it to do it that way. Thank you, Sharon. Thanks. Uh Blair, uh Blair, want to say Yeah. Yeah. I I was just uh curious uh s sort of jumping beyond the actual tour that we’ll be on. Um and this needn’t be answered right at this moment, but just something I’m interested in would be uh going I’ve always been interested in seeing Katsura. So going to Kyoto at some point would be something I’m looking at doing. So um any generic suggestions as to how to you know uh uh spend 3 to 4 days additionally in Kyoto and uh mainly looking for architectural and historical things. Obviously that’s not saying much. I realize that NA and Kyoto are all about that but uh I’m interested in in adding that on to what we will be doing in the group. So, and so anyway, it doesn’t need to be answered right right away, but uh just something I’d be curious about hearing some suggestions about later maybe. Uh I think we could answer it now. Go ahead. I have uh we can answer some of that now, but it I think you’re probably looking if it’s going to be with this trip as to more specifics and so we should be in contact with each other directly rather than taking up everyone’s time today with some of the details of that. Fine. Um, Katsura is absolutely wonderful as a place to go to and I think one of the things that you have to look up is post pandemic what’s the rule now for making reservations for getting there. Okay. And because tourism is so heavy right now and um when I went to Katsura oddly enough um Japanese people had to apply by postcard in advance but take a passport and walk in on the day of. and my mother always thought that was so unfair, but I don’t know what the rules are today, so I think we’d have to look that up. Great. Thanks. All right. Um, Randy asks, uh, what lenses do you recommend? Do you want to answer that, Junko? What do you recommend? Um, for for street photography, I tend to use a 35 or a 50 and sometimes a 24. Um, and I try to take the smallest pancake lens or something very small so that um, I’m not carrying a a giant thing around. On the other hand, I was in Tokyo with two very u well-known photographers who were there doing a a big photo trip and they had 7200s 2.8 that they were shooting from from train stations and everything like that. And I’m sure they got spectacular photos and they were guy jeans foreigners and so nobody looked at them twice when they were pulling out their cameras. So depending on what you like to photograph, I think you will know more whether you’re someone who wants to be far away but getting the um the person who’s standing underneath the arch far away or um you want the big scene. Um so street photography in Tokyo I tend to take like I said somewhere between a 24 and a 50. 24, 35 or 50. My hands down favorite lens I take is my 351.4 when I do Tokyo street photography. Um, when you go to the monkeys, Sharon, wouldn’t you say you probably need the the longer the lens, the better? Yeah, I carried a a Zoom 400 and a Zoom 600. Wow. Okay. So, but I could crop out people, but I also took photos of the monkeys with people, which was very interesting, right? So, and it is a zoo. So, um that’s the place that you may really want the longest, but also I know people who really like using long lens photography no matter where they are. And so I think it’s your photographic style that will determine what you want to take. Um I just got back from a trip there in April May and I took the classic. I took the 2470 and then I took a 7200 and I took my wide angle the 1535 but I never used my wide angle in the city. I used it when I was in Hokkaido and I didn’t use my 7200 much in the city, but in the city I used my 2470. I usually travel with two lenses uh 16 to 35 and like a 70 to 300. And so I like the I shoot really wide though. I love wide shots. uh landscapes, cityscapes, like that photo of the underpass that I shared earlier where you’re looking up and you want to get all of these uh bridges going over you. So, I try to travel as light as possible because when you add the camera body, two lenses, an extra battery, and you know, then some snacks, water, jacket, all that other stuff, it’s so much. And by the end of the day, my back hurts. And so I try and just keep everything as light as possible. And uh Junko’s holding up her phone. I use my wide angle. Yeah, I use my phone a lot that has a super wide uh that I think that’s like an iPhone I think is equivalent to like a 14 millimeter or something like that. So, and then with the telephoto, I like the telephoto because in cityscapes or landscapes, uh when you zoom in, you can compress the the scene. So, if you want to layer buildings and make the buildings seem kind of like uh smooshed up together and have them all, you know, uh together, uh that’s really good. Or zoom in on a small aspect of the cityscape. Zoom in on one thing. Uh I’ve been using my telephoto a lot more. So, I usually just take those two. And sometimes if I’m in the city and we’re walking around, I don’t even take the telephoto. Maybe I’ll just walk around with one lens to go even lighter. Uh, by the way, we’re staying in the Shinjuku area, which is right in the heart of the city. It’s this part right here. So, you can basically roll out of bed if you’re jetlagged or something and go shoot at 2 a.m. This is at our doorstep. There’s ton of stuff to shoot. Uh, somebody asked me, “Hey, are you just going to be shooting street scenes and and and neon signs all night or every day?” No, we we’re going to go out of Tokyo. We’re doing some day trips. Um there’s going to be a mix. It’s not just shooting uh cityscapes and streets all day. So whether you like landscapes, cityscapes, people, or even animals, uh there’ll be a bit of everything. Um so yeah. Does anyone else have any questions? Uh Junko, yes. I got a picture of Fuji from the airplane. Oh, you did? Yes. Were you also on the left hand side on the A? Yes, it was planned. I wish we included that in the You sent it to me and I didn’t include it. I wish we we added that. But maybe I’ll You know what? When I send out the followup, I’ll include your Fuji photo, my Fuji. I got lucky because I even saw an aurora and photographed an aurora from the airplane on my way back. So that’s not part of Japan, but you always have to look out the window. Yeah. Well, I’m going Aurora shooting in the fall. Nice. To Alaska. Um All right, Melissa, do you have a question? I had a quick question. Um so my husband and I are planning a trip. We’re not on your trip because we were already planning an anniversary trip and he’s not a photographer, but I want to do a lot of photography when I’m there. Um, so we’re definitely going to Tokyo and Keyoto, but he also we’re going earlier than you guys, so we’re going we just got our tickets. So, uh, like the end of September into early October. So he would like to also have a few days where we’re at sort of a like a beach resort kind of thing or just somewhere we can just relax kind of not be traveling and sightseeing and um so I’ve been looking at a lot of things with chat GBT but I didn’t know if if you had any and Pete recommended some things but I didn’t have any paper and I didn’t write any of that down so I don’t remember anything that you said now but Um, so I don’t know if you wouldn’t mind recommending any places. First of all, beachy and um, Japan is not easy unless you’re going to one of the outer islands. There’s some, but the beaches around Tokyo are really, really, really, really crowded. Okay, you’re also going in September, which is nice. If I were looking for a really easy resort kind of um low-key planning, but everything is available right there for you, you might want to look at the Hosino Resorts. Okay. And they have them all. It’s a chain. It’s all over. Okay. Okay. They have several levels. Hosino, I think, is their upper end, but Kai Kai Resort is another one that’s a um available, but they often have a little bit of an adventure, a little bit of fun. They have um buffets and so that you can choose what you want. Um yeah, so that might be a good one. And Melissa, you’re welcome to um email me separately also. Okay. Thank you. The the Hosino resorts are the onsen the the onsen are the the baths, right? Hosino has the Yeah. Right. Okay. Thank you. Otherwise, fly to Okinawa or Okay. Stephen, right now Japan Airlines is offering you a free domestic flight if you book with them. Oh, you mean if you book from uh North America to Japan, right? Right. Oh, is that a one way or a round trip? So, you can if you fly a round trip from um from the US to Japan Yeah. then you can add on a free domestic ticket. And I did this once when they had the um offer and I flew to Okinawa because that’s where I’m from. But um I’ve flown to Hokkaid though before. You can fly domestically but I have to say I prefer the train almost always. But yes. Yeah. Uh in the comments Stephen says I would go to Inaka. Ah yes in the Rioan in the country very much. Uh Perry says for beaches how about Kamakura or Zushi or Kanazawa only one hour away. We are um going to Kamakura on the tour. That will be one of the stops on the tour. Um I don’t of course Kamakura is it does have its beaches and all that. I’m just thinking in terms of if a couple is going to go on a relaxing beach. It’s not like as much as quite like that’s a different kind of beach, but you can look down and see it. Great destination though and lots and lots to see and do in Kamakura in and of itself. All right, I think that’s pretty much it unless anyone uh Oh, Kanagawa, right? Kanagawa. Um, that’s pretty much it. If anybody has any questions, uh, feel free to shoot me an email. Just reply to the invite, uh, email that I sent out earlier today. If you h want to, uh, hop on, if you have questions about the tour, I’m happy to also hop on a call or a Zoom call with you and answer any questions you have to make sure it’s the right fit for you. And, um, yeah, if you have also any questions about Japan, just let us know. So, thank you all for joining us and um yeah, we hope to see you in Japan.
Join photographers Pete DeMarco and Junko Yokota for an inspiring conversation about what it’s like to photograph Japan—through temples, neon streets, quiet gardens, and once-in-a-lifetime moments. In this live talk, we share some of our favorite images, behind-the-scenes stories, and what makes Japan such a magical place for creatives.
Whether you’re dreaming of visiting Japan or just love travel and photography, you’ll walk away with creative inspiration and a fresh perspective on storytelling through the lens.
📷 Interested in joining us this fall?
Learn more about our upcoming photo tour, Colors of Japan:
👉 https://petedemarcophoto.com/japan-photo-tour/
🎌 Tour Dates: November 18–26, 2025
🧳 Locations: Tokyo, Nagano, and beyond
👥 Small Group. Big inspiration. Lots of photos.
AloJapan.com