Travels in Japan

I’m starting this year slowly, considering things a bit more. It’s a nice place to be in life, being able to pause like this. Next month things will get hectic again, but for now there’s a kind of calm. And I’ve learned to embrace that when it comes along. To that end, I bridged 2017/2018 with a trip to Japan and limited myself to shooting one roll of film per day. Twelve frames out of my old Rolleiflex camera. It was meant to slow me down and make me look at what I was photographing a bit more.

We spent Christmas day in Kyoto after a few nights in Osaka, walking through crowded streets and markets and temples and bamboo groves in the early mornings before the crowds descended. Then a few days in Kurashiki where we saw a young baseball team practicing drills and exercises at a temple in the town center. Onto the strange suburban sprawl of Nagahama and finally into Tokyo for New Year’s Eve in a small bar with an amiable bartender singing songs and pouring whiskies. There were other places and moments as there always are, but I’m going to keep this nice and simple and leave off with some selects from those film rolls. I missed more frames than I caught, but I guess that’s always the way. Alas.