After months of research, I booked a flight from Gatwick to Tokyo. Gatwick airport has always been my favourite airport due to its location and the wide range of high quality Gatwick Hotels found nearby.
The flight from London Gatwick to Tokyo was long but pleasant. Arriving in Tokyo for the first time was a shock to the system as all the signs were in Japanese and most people could not speak English. Eventually I met a student who showed me the way to my hotel. My plan was to photograph Tokyo and Kyoto over a period of a few weeks to build up my travel stock photography library.
Tokyo is the largest city in the world and extremely crowded with its population of over 12 million people rising to 35 million if you include Greater Tokyo. Over a period of 5 days, I visited most of the major districts including Shibuya, Shinjuku, Roppongi and Akasaka.
Tokyo was heavily bombed in the second world war but has risen from the ashes to become a major international city of business, trade and finance. The city is a mixture of old and new with Shinto shrines or Buddhist temples sitting next to modern office buildings or shops.
Travelling across Tokyo’s vast rail network was an experience not for the faint hearted as crowds of people are squeezed into the trains in the metro system and in the overland Japanese Railways (JR) network. Fortunately the Suica card made travelling easy and was accepted by both the metro and JR networks.
I managed to photograph a wide range of subjects including temples, hotels, shops, Ryokans (Japanese guest houses), entertainment districts, museums, galleries, people and culture. While in Toyko, I also managed to visit other nearby cities including Osaka and Yokohama. I spent a day in each city photographing some of the major sights.
After a great week in Tokyo, I travelled to Kyoto by overnight coach. Unfortunately the Shinkansen bullet train was too expensive. I booked a few nights at a Ryokan in the heart of Kyoto. Unlike Tokyo, Kyoto escaped relatively unscathed from the bombings of world war two.
Kyoto is a modern urban city but it has a vast number of temples and shrines attracting many visitors. Hotels can be full at various times of the year such as in spring when many Japanese people visit the city to see the cherry blossom trees.
Over the following week, I visited and photographed many of the major sights of Kyoto including Nijo Castle, Kinkaku-ji (Golden Temple), various temples, Imperial Palaces and the shopping districts.
One of the major highlights was the district of Gion where Geisha and Maiko can still be seen as they make their way from one tea house to another. I had read ‘Memoirs of a Geisha’ before visiting Gion and recognised many of the buildings and streets named in the book. Gion is a beautiful area with its old traditional Japanese houses and narrow streets which come to life in the evening.
After a memorable but exhausting two weeks, I returned to Toyko to catch my flight back to Gatwick airport. Over the following few weeks, I sifted through the thousands of images I had taken and optimised many of them in Photoshop. Both Tokyo and Kyoto are remarkable cities and I look forward to retuning in the not so distant future.
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