Tokyo Kills Me

Tokyo Kills Me, circa 2010

Tokyo is the greatest megacity in the world.

This frenetic, superlative Ur-City is the place I have made my home for the last 16 years – a three-year overseas adventure which has become a way of life (sorry, Ma!).

As a writer and especially as a photographer, I find the constant (over-) stimulation a daily source of inspiration. Even after all these years, I start my commute each morning with the thrilling sense of a new adventure about to begin.

Whenever I get a little burned out on daily life here in this overcrowded, hyperactive, workaholic city,  all I need do is turn some random corner, preferably with camera in hand, to discover some fresh new angle or view, or to uncover another ugly or delicious *omoshiroi mono* “interesting object” among the everyday, the overlooked, the quotidian.

Interested? You can check out ongoing photographs of daily life and adventures at [Tokyo Kills Me](https://medium.com/tokyo-kills-me)

Tokyo Kills Me 2.0: Photos

Tokyo Photographic Art Museum

I have always felt that the world is an erotic place… For me cities are enormous bodies of people’s desires. And as I search for my own desires within them, I slice into time, seeing the moment. That’s the kind of camera work I like. — Daido Moriyama

See more photos from Tokyo Kills Me 2.0, circa 2009-2010

 

 

 

Tokyo Kills Me: Photos

Ongoing Updates (5.20.18). Snapshots from daily life in and around Tokyo, a.k.a. “The Big Sushi,” at the end of the second millennium and the start of the third.

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See more snaps at Tokyo Kills Me: Photos 

Shinjuku North Side Drift: Red Lights to Skyscrapers

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Shinjuku North Side: Kabukicho; Golden Gai; Hanazono Shrine; Skyscraper District

Almost two decades ago, I landed in Japan on what was to be a three-year overseas adventure from my home in Canada. I’m still here, but that’s another story…. Those first days in-country, while my then-partner — I’ll call her Achan — attended orientation training at the Keio Park Plaza hotel before being posted to rural Hokkaido to help “internationalize” the countryside (but that’s still another story…) I spun out a jet-lagged fugue through the neon canyonlands and narrow sidestreets of Tokyo’s Shinjuku neighbourhood. You know: the setting for Sophia Coppola’s Lost in Translation. Bill Murray? That was me. Minus the hair. And Scarlett Johansson.

After three years Achan returned to her family in suburban Calgary. After another year, in central Hokkaido this time, I relocated to Tokyo for some big-city adventure.

Now, thirteen years later, I live in a comfortable if un-cinematic neighbourhood in west Tokyo. Every day, on the commute, I pass through labyrinthian Shinjuku Station.

“There are eight million stories in the naked city,” to paraphrase The Naked City. And more than three million of them pass through Shinjuku each day. The Guinness Book of World Records recognizes Shinjuku Station as the“world’s busiest station”. Channel5’s recent documentary “World’s Busiest: Station” gets it right: “a perfect storm of busy-ness.”

Continue reading “Shinjuku North Side Drift: Red Lights to Skyscrapers”

Tokyo Photo Gallery: Shinjuku’s Skyscraper District

Shinjuku Skyscraper DistrictNorthwest of Shinjuku Station towers “Tokyo the International City.”

Here, starting in the 1970s and growing along with the infamous Bubble Economy of the 1980s, a former working class neighbourhood and student ghetto were razed to make way for a new generation of skyscrapers and international hotels.

Not everyone likes what’s happened to the old neighbourhood. Keizo Hino describes the area in his story, “Jacob’s Tokyo Ladder:” Continue reading “Tokyo Photo Gallery: Shinjuku’s Skyscraper District”

Tokyo Photo Walk: Golden Gai

Friday Night, Golden Gai

Friday night photo walk, Golden Gai

Another Friday, another trip to Golden Gai. Not that I’m complaining. It’s actually great to have such an interesting part of Tokyo on my commute line. No doubt the area is changing, and not wholly for the good: last night, for the first time, a tout hit me up within Golden Gai itself – albeit near one of the entrances:

“Good evening sir! We have a new international bar. ‘Happy Endings.'”

Hopefully this won’t become the new norm, as it has in Kabukicho and Roppongi. Continue reading “Tokyo Photo Walk: Golden Gai”

Shinjuku Photo Drift: Hanazono Shrine

A peaceful Shinto shrine in the nightlife heart of Shinjuku

Hanazono Shrine
Hanazono Shrine

Not the most likely location, maybe, but one of Tokyo’s major Shinto shrines lies at the end of either of two nondescript paths. The name Hanazono means “flower garden”, so you can think of this jinja, “shrine”, as a secret garden just outside the Golden Gai and Kabukicho nightlife neighbourhoods of northeast Shinjuku.

Apparently the shrine comes alive several times a year, including the Grand Festival in late May, and Sundays for flea markets.

The rest of the time, during the day at least, the shrine’s grounds make for a quiet retreat from Shinjuku’s bustle. Leastways, it felt that way when I visited the other day, during a welcome break from Tokyo’s August heat wave.

I took the pictures posted here with my (new!) Olympus e-p5 digital camera and M.Zuiko 18mm f/1.8 lens – a pretty sweet combination, I must say! The new electronic viewfinder really makes a big difference, especially for someone such as I who really has a hard time seeing screens in bright sunlight. I shot the stills in RAW and, after applying lens corrections in Lightroom 5, also added my usual tweaks including vignettes, exposure adjustments, and one or two other light treatments – my usual secret ingredients!

Shinjuku Drift: Shinjuku Station “A perfect storm of busy-ness”

Shinjuku Station-5713If Tokyo is a collection of Edo-era villages held together by a web of rail lines — which it is — then train stations are the village centers, the common, the place everyone goes sooner or later and around which daily live revolves.

And of all the stations in the city, Shinjuku Station is the one by which all others in Tokyo, in Japan, in the world, compare themselves – and come up wanting. Continue reading “Shinjuku Drift: Shinjuku Station “A perfect storm of busy-ness””

Shinjuku Drift: Trailer

 Here you go, in anticipation of the next instalment of Shinjuku Drift, I offer you Stainless – Shinjuku, a video by Adam Magyar recently uploaded to vimeo.

I’ve watched parts of this a few times now, and still haven’t figured out how he put it together. Stills superimposed over video footage? Is that even a thing?

Shinjuku Drift: Skyscrapers in the Day

During the daytime, dark-suited, coiffed and groomed office workers move between the buildings reflected in buildings reflected in other buildings, or cluster at communal public ashtrays in out-of-the-way corners at the buildings’ bases.

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