Tokyo – Japan

The very first step of our trip in Tokyo – Japan. We spent there 2 days and visited temples but also the city and its small streets, markets, shops, restaurant.

To give you a little bit of a story, my husband and I are in Japan for Jennifer & Shinji’s wedding. I am the official photographer for the wedding and my husband will be assisting me. We decided to arrive few days earlier to be sure to be on time but also because of the jet lag.  We didn’t want to miss Tokyo so we stopped 2 days there on our way to Fukuoka (where the wedding will be).

Tokyo is a beautiful city not really different from  a big busy city like New York, Paris or Rome. Very modern, but it keeps its charm and secret. The main different is the language. Obviously it is more difficult to travel in a country where you can’t understand anything neither read the alphabet.  We realized with our first taxi from the train station to the hotel that it would be challenging. The taxi driver didn’t speak any English (or any of the 4 other languages we speak…) and couldn’t even read the address in English. We didn’t have the Japanese version written anywhere! We finally pull up the page in Internet and show him where we wanted to go.

Arriving at the hotel, I was thrilled to realize that next door was the main Nikon shop for Tokyo! I didn’t buy anything but asked them to clean my camera and my lenses.

Thankfully, we had a friend, Yoko, who nicely spent 2 days with us to show us the city and translate for us each time we needed. The first day, we visited the outside of the presidential palace and we walk back to our hotel. We also had our first experience of fine Japanese. It was composed by lots of small dishes, one after the other, all different. We had lots of raw fish, soup, beef cook in water, and much more!

The second day, we visited temples, and walk to discover the small streets with the market, the manga district and finally Ganza (the more touristic high fashion part of the city). Our first temple in Japan was an experience. We learned how to clean our hands, how to use the smoke to heal our body, how to pray, how to show respect to the deities, how to read the future and what to do if it was a bad prevision.

Thank you so so much to Yoko who spent those days with us! Here are few pictures of your first two days in Tokyo Japan.

The temple. The smoke is used to cure the body.If the paper you got is not as good as you wish you can do a knot with it on the wire and it won’t happened.Kymono for dogs! Sadly they didn’t have a big enough for my dogs!Photographs by Severine Photography