Japan - any ideas

[Adrian]

My wife and I are going to Japan quite soon for a few weeks holiday. We have a fairly extensive itinerary but if anyone who has been (this is our first time expect briefly for my wife on business) has any photography "must sees" I would be interested to hear. Thanks, Adrian

[Manfred M]

Adrian - enjoy!

Every corner is a photo op (we were in Japan a few years ago, and my wife was there last summer; our daughter now lives and works there, so I see another trip coming soon). If you are heading out in the next few weeks, you are getting into the rainy season that lasts through to the latter part of July (depending on where you are going); so very hot and very humid are the order of the day right now. When it rains, it can absolutely pour; even with an umbrella, the rain can hit the ground so hard it bounces back up to soak you!

That being said, there is a photo op at every corner. If you can get to Kyoto for the third week of July; I believe July 23 and 24 are the important days this year; the Gion Matsuri festival is amazing for photography, traditional costumes and beautiful ancient floats; so try to get there for the day of the parade and the day before. That being said; the whole old city is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with lots of photo ops (the Kinka-kuji - "Golden Pavilion" is one of many sites that comes to mind. We did not see any geisha, but this is on my to do list on our next trip.

Tokyo (especially at night) is great (can't remember the names of the places off hand); Takayama (small city in the mountains), Koya San (interesting Shingon temples and an amazing cemetary) are all great photo ops. Don't expect to see Mt Fuji - we went by it twice and never caught a glimpse. I'm not sure if Himeiji Castle (in Himeiji; south of Kyoto / Osaka) has reopened, but it is gorgeous too.

Enjoy your trip!

[Melkus]

Manfred cover it well Must see is Kyoto’s Ancient Sites which was the Japan’s capital from 794 to 1868, Kyoto is bathed in history and a photo shooter dream. Tokyo’s Old East Side is another great place to walk around and take in the slights and sounds. Enjoy your trip

[Val Mansfield]

We were there in March this year in conditions very different from what you will be experiencing.

In Tokyo the Miji Shrine offers some photo opportunities as does the Asakusa Kannon Temple and of course Ginza and Tokyo in general is full of photo opportunities. The Imperial Palace is rather disappointing as you can’t get close enough to see anything.

We were lucky with Mount Fuji and had a window of about 10 minutes when we could get photographs. Then the clouds came in.

Matsumoto Castle is very photogenic, but there is not much inside. There are some spectacular floats in Takayama, but unless you are lucky enough to be there during the festival, you are photographing through glass which makes it difficult.

Shiraklawago gave us some nice opportunities of photographing in the snow, not something I am used to! I think it would also offer good opportunities in other weather.

The Kenrokuen Gardens in Kanazawa are another good spot for photographs and as others have mentioned, Kyoto is full of opportunities, particularly the Kinkakuji Temple and Nijo or Kyoto Castle.

If you do manage an evening with a Geisha, remember to take your camera; I didn’t!

You can see my photos and diary at www.cnxphoto.smugmug.com

Val

[dubaiphil]

Yep - one word:

Kyoto

http://www.japan-talk.com/jt/new/8-b...-photographers

[Adrian]

Thanks for the input so far guys. We are going in October, when the autumn should be spectacular. We will be there for almost a month and my parents are house sitting, which makes it possible. It takes that long to plan this much time out from my business.

Itinerary includes Kyoto, Nagasaki, Tokyo, Mt Fuji and surrounds among other things, including a knife making course. We are just a bit too late to catch the cormorant fishing. We have booked an evening with a Geisha, traditional Japanese bath house and so on, and since I posted this my wife has made contact with a Japanese friend of hers from when she studied in Italy, so we have now acquired a (female) local guide as well as the private tour guides on the various trips.

I am very interested in top end kitchen knife making and Japanese cookery, fishing, samurai history (not necessarily swords) and naval architecture, so I am trying to fit these things in. I also need to visit a couple of Japanese banks for work purposes, but luckily they are in Tokyo, where my wife's friend lives. We are also spending a few days living traditionally (in so far as tourists can) with a rural Japanese family.

My wife has been to Japan before, but only on business, so we are quite excited about our "big trip" this year. We always try to do one, but usually only 2 weeks.

I have booked us on a residential photography course for 3 days in August as well, to sharpen up skills. This is bird photography oriented, but skills are skills.

I am grateful for the tips and my wife and I are checking them out on-line and in our guide books. It is pretty expensive to do these trips so we want to get the most out of it, irrespective of the weather. I would love to experience the rainy season too. Such drama.

Adrian

[dragon76]

Thanks for the input so far guys. We are going in October, when the autumn should be spectacular. We will be there for almost a month and my parents are house sitting, which makes it possible. It takes that long to plan this much time out from my business.

Itinerary includes Kyoto, Nagasaki, Tokyo, Mt Fuji and surrounds among other things, including a knife making course. We are just a bit too late to catch the cormorant fishing. We have booked an evening with a Geisha, traditional Japanese bath house and so on, and since I posted this my wife has made contact with a Japanese friend of hers from when she studied in Italy, so we have now acquired a (female) local guide as well as the private tour guides on the various trips.

I am very interested in top end kitchen knife making and Japanese cookery, fishing, samurai history (not necessarily swords) and naval architecture, so I am trying to fit these things in. I also need to visit a couple of Japanese banks for work purposes, but luckily they are in Tokyo, where my wife's friend lives. We are also spending a few days living traditionally (in so far as tourists can) with a rural Japanese family.

My wife has been to Japan before, but only on business, so we are quite excited about our "big trip" this year. We always try to do one, but usually only 2 weeks.

I have booked us on a residential photography course for 3 days in August as well, to sharpen up skills. This is bird photography oriented, but skills are skills.

I am grateful for the tips and my wife and I are checking them out on-line and in our guide books. It is pretty expensive to do these trips so we want to get the most out of it, irrespective of the weather. I would love to experience the rainy season too. Such drama.

Adrian

In Tokyo, if you want to check out the best knives in the world, you should go to Tokyo Fish Market. You can get there by subway and it's an interesting to photograph too.

About mt Fuji tour, you can organise it cheaper if you do it from the hotel (Tokyo). There are plenty of brochures in the hotel lobby for the day trip to the mountain. Like everyone said, mt Fuji visibility is unpredictable. I was there in October and it was a bright sunny day but when I got there it was covered with clouds. But the foothill and the lake on top of the mountain are great scenes for photograph.

If you are into street photography Harajuku is a very interesting place to take photo.

Akihabara is a place to be if you want to check out electronics or cameras

Cheers

Dean

[TGCorneliussen]

As mentioned by the others:

Tokyo -
Asakusa is nice - at the back left of the main temple theres a beautiful little gaden aswell
anywhere at night especially Shinjuku area with all their neon lights
Harajuku makes for an interesting area if you want to see all the alternative fashions - sundays are usually the best -
Shibuya crossing - beautiful when its raining in my opinion
Kamakura - a little out of Tokyo but a half to full day trip, temples, birds of prey in abundance, sunsets are beautiful and you can see Mt. Fuji from there quite regurally
Ameyoko - beautiful little area with lots of shops and good rstaurants

Kyoto is meant to be beautiful as well - on my next trip as well as Hiroshima.

http://www.japan-talk.com/jt/new/10-...otograph-Japan

Is worth chekcing out with a good guide to different things to see and do in many of the major cities cant wait for all that fantastic food again!

[Adrian]

Brilliant help guys, thank you, I am taking it all in. Adrian

[HenkB]

Kyoto for sure! My wife and I spent several days there too long ago and never wanted for things to do or pictures to take. I think we came back with ~20 rolls of slides.
For autumn, one place that has yet gone unmentioned is the Tosho-gu shrine at Nikko. This is in the mountains, not particularly far from Tokyo. If you have ever wondered about such things, this, unlike many other sites, puts on display how the Japanese do anti-Zen/wretched excess. The answer is, almost tastefully (everything's relative) but the effect can be glorious. It was part of the Shogun Ieyasu's scheme to bankrupt his vassals by encouraging competition in making lavish donations to shrines around the country. As of about 44 years ago we were told that the entire compound was on a 22-year renovation cycle. Presumably every building we saw then has had two spiffing-ups since we were there. My Grandfather's Axe and all that.
Lots of tourists but much of the interesting, gaudy stuff is to be found above head level. And, for photographic purposes, the buildings display interest at every scale.

[rpcrowe]

Tokyo is a maze of photo opportunities... There are so many different areas, each with its own highlights and ambiance. I also loved Kamakura which is far-far smaller and more sedate. The Tokyo train system alone is worthy of several photo essays...

I once lived in Hodogaya which is half way between Yokohama and Yokosuka on the Yokosuka train line. Even in that sleepy neighborhood, there were untold photo opportunities.

Besides being a Shangri-La, with hot and cold running water (which is how Japan was once described to me) Japan has another great advantage to photographers. It is relatively (or at least used to be - I haven't been there in years) free of street crime. In fact, during the 1960's when I first visited that country it seemed like the most honest place on earth.

As an example, I was siting in a small, out of the way, bar; having a beer (BTW: they have pretty darned good suds in that country) and taking a break from an afternoon of photography. I needed to go to the restroom and picked up my camera from the bar and began walking to the restroom. The proprietor grabbed me, shook her head and pointed to the door to the street.

She thought that since I picked up my camera, I was obviously leaving the bar. If I were going to the restroom, I would have, of course, just left my camera on the bar; knowing full-well that it would still be there when I returned...

Internet searches are quite helpful: http://photo.net/japan/

And, I would definitely learn a few phrases in Japanese; the most important being "please" and "thank you"

[ShaneS]

I lived in the Tokyo area of Japan for portions of six years and loved it! As many have said the country is very photogenic and you have been given a lot of good advice.

During my time in Japan I decided to try my hand as a blogger and have amassed a fair bit of information on this website: http://www.nihonsun.com/ and even wrote an article that I titled Capture your own Unique View of Japan covering some things that you might want to keep in mind. That is here: http://www.nihonsun.com/2009/08/03/c...view-of-japan/

Most was from personal experience and during my first forays into documenting things photographically. At one point I tried to gather information on each prefecture (state) and you can find that here:

http://www.nihonsun.com/category/tra...vel-resources/

These resources date back to 2009 so you may find some broken links. I hope that wandering through these resources are helpful in your trip planning. Do drop me a line if you have any specific questions as I still have a good set of links to many different items that I used personally and as resources for my website.

You might also want to learn how to say "where is the bathroom" in addition to please and thank you