Japan

Just returned from a five week trip to the UK, France, China and Japan. Ostensibly it was for recuperation and a respite from taking pics (with the bonus of a UK Christmas).

However, as a freelance, the reality is that far too many pic opportunities regularly rear their heads whilst travelling … and I always found myself lugging at least one camera (Nikon Df, Fuji XE-1, Fuji X100), sometimes more (in addition to the obvious iPhone for the odd Instagram). There is a persistent deep seated optimism that images made on a trip may make the odd dollar/quid somewhere down the track!

Occasionally hefting the kit paid dividends … (although how I failed to leave at least one camera or lens in any of bar, bistro, boulangerie, museum, gallery, palace, temple, hotel, hutong, noodle or teppanyaki restaurant is beyond me … )

Below I’ve posted just a few of my favourite images from the past weeks overseas.

Unfortunately, I left Japan on the day the big January Grand Sumo Tournament commenced at the National Sumo Hall in Ryogoku Tokyo, so I decided to get up very early the previous day and attempt to catch Sumo in last minute training at their ‘Beya’ or Sumo ‘stables’. The stables were very difficult to find … and when found even more difficult to gain access. (I now understand the Japanese ‘sign’ for ‘NO’!)

However, persistence paid off … and I made the top image below through a small glass window of Sumo going through their final training session.

What must be the most bizarre rail journey on the planet was the subject of the second image.
The weirdly named ‘Shanghai Pedestrian Transit Tunnel’ runs from the beautiful Bund under the Huangpu River to the new Pudong skyscraper district of Shanghai China. It isn’t a ‘pedestrian’ tunnel at all … passengers are transported under the river in little carriages and assaulted with a trippy light and sound show during the four minute journey. Money … and not just a few dollars … well spent! (in contrast the ferry across the river costs less than 35 cents!).

The image gives some sense of the insanity of the journey.

In the third image … there is no place better to read a book on a sunny but bloody cold winters day than on the pavement of the Avenue Victoria on the west bank of the Seine in Paris !

Images © Brian Cassey