The things I saw (Tokyo) #1

It seems ages ago since I was in Japan, but in fact I only got back two weeks ago – a day at home to unpack, get my gear together, and then straight back out for a 12 day, 5000 mile road-trip around Scandinavia seems to have distorted the arrow of time somewhat – not such a bad thing.

Anyone who’s been following my blog for the last year or so will know that wherever I go, for whatever type of trip, I take my Olympus MjuII 35mm compact camera with me to use as a kind of photographic notebook. ‘The things I saw’ series has always been just random snapshots, visual meanderings – if I see something that interests me, I photograph it. These photographs act as my personal postcards and sketches, and sometimes as ideas for other shots. I wrote a lot about Tokyo while I was there, some of which I’ll also share. For now, all I’ll say is this – they do things very differently in Japan. We have a lot to learn…

All the images in this series, which I’ll gradually share over the next few days, were made using the MjuII. I did take my Nikon 35mm SLR and a couple of lenses, but these rarely saw the light of Tokyo and I returned having only shot about 20 frames on it. I used mainly Fuji Superia 400 film which was developed and scanned at the ever excellent UK Film Lab.