We’re already well into 2015 and I’m ashamed to notice that I’ve let this blog and my other social media endeavors wither as I’ve become busy with all kinds of work and photography-related things. That is about to change, however. As an unofficial new year’s resolution I’ve decided to post more images this year and also resuscitate my Tumblr and Facebook accounts.
I’ve had big plans for this website and my photography for a long time, but never really got around to implementing any of them. So this might as well be the year to do that. As a first thing, I’ve added links to the sidebar to my images that are available for licensing on Getty Images and Alamy.
If you’re on Instagram, you can go to my account to see some travel photos that don’t end up in this blog. That’s also the place where I’m currently the most active and where I post new photos first, so if you want to see what I’m up to, follow me there. Even you don’t have an Instagram account, you can go to the Instagram page on this website to see the latest images.
The photo above is from the shinkansen (bullet train) platform at Tokyo station. I took this a few years ago when I was traveling around Japan. We were heading to Kyoto but had to wait for the staff to clean the train before we were allowed to board the train.
We landed at Narita airport at 6:50 am. It was raining, just as we thought when we left Finland, but despite the rain the weather was really warm. As we got out of the plane, we were greeted by the warm air that felt pleasent after the long flight. I still remember how strange that warm rush of air felt the first time I landed in Japan, and it has made me feel like home ever since. The nostalgia didn’t last long though, because within 5 minutes I was sweating like a pig, and I was only carrying my hand luggage at the time. We hurried to the passport inspection and got into the queue. While we were waiting for our turn, the lady from the back seat asked someone (maybe herself) the important question: “Are we in Tokyo?”
I had imagined that getting our fingerprints and taking our photos would take a while but it happened really fast. However, the clerk thought it odd that I didn’t know the address of the place where we were supposed to stay in Tokyo and held me at the inspection counter. Luckily he finally let me go when I gave him my friend’s phone number and told him that my friend will be waiting for us at the airport. As expected, the others got through without being asked anything. I should’ve known better, ofcourse, and keep all the necessary addresses and phone numbers at hand.
After we got our luggage and passed the customs, we picked up our rental cell phones from the Softbank counter at the arrival lobby and trodded to the nearest bench to rest. It was so warm and humid that even walking around the airport for a while with our luggage seemed like a huge effort. After setting our gear to the benches, we bought some beverages – water Kirin Ichiban beer C.C. Lemon soda. C.C. lemon must be one of the best sodas ever! If you don’t believe me, watch this commercial:
While we were figuring out what to do next, we gave my friend a call to check if he’s home so we could drop off our luggage. It turned out that there had been a misunderstanding and he wasn’t even expecting us. Instead, he thought we’d head straight to Sendai from the airport and told us he wouldn’t be home until the evening. We thought that the best thing we could do was to go to Tokyo station, leave our luggage to a coin locker and kill time until 2 pm, when we were supposed to meet another friend of mine. We quickly exchanged our pre-purchased vouchers for the Japan Rail Passes at a JR ticket counter and reserved seats on the Narita Express train that would take us to Tokyo. It took an hour to get from Narita to Tokyo. I was excited to look at the scenery and tried to locate familiar places.
We arrived at Tokyo at about 10:15 and located the lockers – which weren’t much use to us because my suitcase was too large to fit in even the biggest one! Now this was an unpleasent turn of events. The idea of dragging the suitcase with me in Tokyo or even around the crowded Tokyo station didn’t seem amusing at all…
We had a two-hour layover at Charles de Gaulle Airport meaning we just had time to move to another terminal, pass the security check and do some souvenir shopping before boarding the flight. One thing that I find really annoying about this airport is that in addition to checking my laptop, they made me unpack all my camera gear on the conveyor belt, including all my lenses. This hasn’t happened to me anywhere else, but it seems to be normal procedure in France. I wonder if there are other airports that are as strict?
We got to board the plane 20 minutes late, because they were cleaning up the cabin, or at least that’s what we were told. As expected, most of the passengers were Japanese, and as they often do when they have spare time, most of them dozed off as soon as they got to their seats. A Japanese woman sitting next to me fastened her seatbelt, opened her French novel and went into coma before the plane even started moving. She actually slept through the take-off. For me the take-off was like the opening scene in Mel Brooks’ High Anxiety and I would’ve rather skipped it. I wouldn’t mind flying if I could skip the take-offs and landings, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon.
All in all the flight was extremely boring – partly because I was so anxious to get to Tokyo, and partly because the entertainment system kept crashing. The system didn’t allow rewinding or fast forwarding the movies so I would have to start watching the movie again from the beginning after every crash. Eventually I gave up watching The Hangover and watched some stuff I’d loaded on my Creative Zen. Our flight attendant was also very entertaining, because he stubbornly spoke to me in French although he knew that I couldn’t understand a word. The most exciting part of the flight was when the Japanese lady next to me tried to get something from the overhead luggage compartment and dropped a pair of crutches on an old man sitting behind me. It turned out that she was very good at apologizing in French.
After the sun set, I slept for about an hour and then just watched some TV until the morning. When we started approaching Japan I got a bit nervous; not because of we were about to land, but because this was my first time to Japan for seven years and I didn’t know if I would still be as thrilled about Japan as I was when I first lived their or if I would find it disappointing after having so much expectations.
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.
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