I don’t consider myself a street photographer, but I like to photograph people in their environments, especially when I’m traveling. I saw this young woman waiting for a train at Helsinki railway station from the platform I was standing at and thought that the train cars provided interesting frames for the image. I didn’t see what she was doing on the bench, but I thought she was probably checking her mobile phone.
Rhinoceros ratsnake seems to have quite a few names, such as as Vietnamese longnose snake, and it must be the funniest looking snake in the world. Unfortunately I couldn’t go to Vietnam to photograph this one, but had to settle for Helsinki Zoo.
We woke up at 4:15 am and after a couple of cups of coffee and final packing manouvers we left to the airport at 5:30. It was raining and the weather was freezing in Helsinki, so leaving to Japan for three weeks was feeling like a better idea all the time. We were pretty sure that with our luck it would be raining in Japan too, but we thought that at least it would probably be warmer there. The check-in and security control went smoothly and when we were finally waiting to board the plane, it started to sink in that in less than 24 hours I’d be back in Japan.
The first leg of our trip was a flight from from Helsinki to Paris. We chose to fly Air France, because it was the cheapest option and we could use the money we saved to buy 21-day Rail Pass that allowed us to use most trains operated by the Japan Railways Group, including the bullet trains. The breakfast served at the flight to Paris was supposed to be ratatouille and spinach omelette, and it wasn’t too bad. I was so hungry anyway that I would’ve eaten whatever they served. The nice thing about the flight was that they also served red wine, which made the flight and the morning much more enjoyable.
Lack of sleep and the red wine did the trick and I spent the rest of the flight half asleep.
I originally created this site as a travel blog when I visited Japan in 2009. This site has since gone throuh a number of changes and it’s now more of a photography site than a travel blog. I wanted to keep the original travel entries here, however, because personally I like to read this kind of travel descriptions.
During this trip to Japan, my first in seven years, I traveled from Tokyo to Kyūshū and a number of places in between, accompanied with my sister and her boyfriend. This was also when I started taking photography seriously after dabling with it a couple of years.
We left Jyväskylä to Helsinki a day before our flight so that we could stay overnight at my friend’s place and get to the airport early in the morning.
I had been packing frantically the whole night and spent the first leg of the trip in a coma on the backseat. I woke up when it was time to eat our breakfast/lunch, which meant a couple of cups of coffee and a Japan-themed cake made by the others. The main ingredients of the cake were cream candies, chocolate and brandy – plenty of them. It tasted like a kiss from a chocolate-loving rummie, but it did the trick and woke me up.
After arriving at my friend’s place we left our luggage there, had dinner at the local Chinese restaurant, walked around for a while and bought some breakfast. We had to be at the airport at 6:50 in the morning, so we spent the rest of the evening watching TV and went to bed early.