We arrived in Tokyo at 4:30 in the afternoon following a surprisingly smooth and painless 11 hour flight and deliriously watched the sun go down on our hour bus ride into the city. With ipod tunes in our ears we watched Tokyo morph into the sea of lights it is known to be. We decided to splurge a bit for our few nights in Tokyo and stayed at a nice hotel and man was it worth it!! At my friend Doug’s adamant suggestion we struggled to stay awake until 10pm the first night to train our bodies toward the new schedule at which time we dissolved into our lush hotel pillows for some much needed rest (Thanks Doug! Very helpful!).
We took a day and a half to explore and get on track before embarking on the first shoot. Our first close up shot was from Ueno park where we met up with Gayle’s friends Laurie and Peter and I did a shot down a Times Square looking street.
Kevin (who we were connected to through Tri one of my brother’s best friends), joined us on our 2 hour trek on a web of about 5 trains to Mount Takao just outside of the Tokyo limits the next night where we were to find quite a view of the vast spread of the city and it’s burbs. Thanks to another new and fast friend Mari (who my good buddy Lauren Smith used to work with) we had all kinds of clear maps and directions (translated into English) to navigate our way to and from the mountain (Thanks Mari!!).
In Japan there are few problems with being in parks after dark and everywhere is seemingly safe and clean (I will say this was very impressive and comforting as a female carting around expensive equipment in the dark). So around 6pm we took the last tram up the mountain and found a building with a deck that offered the view I needed but it was unfortunately locked. A good thing the gate went up to about my waist, so since all I needed was a place to set up my camera I just scaled it and surveyed the possibilities. Kevin and Gayle handed over my equipment and I set up a 2-hour shot on the deck overlooking the sloping mountain and what can only be described as an ocean of manmade light with layers of hills poking up here and there. In the meantime since we had stopped at a convenience store on the way to the mountain (which in Japan is like heaven! Gayle and I lived in them)
we had many, many snacks including a few unusual Japanese specialties Kevin insisted we try; dried teeny salty whole fish (tastes like fishy salt, yes, an acquired taste), sour and salty dried strawberries, potato sticks (ummhmm) and some soju, a dangerously tasty vodka sort of alcohol made from barley (and sometimes sweet potatoes). After many snacks, learning how to count in Japanese, and finding out that Kevin is randomly one of my oldest friends, Amy’s cousin (tiny world craziness!!!) the shot was complete. I took down the equipment and since the tram was now closed down we found the path extremely helpful Mari had looked up for us, to follow down to the base of the mountain. Luckily it was a paved road and we were equipped with flashlights and warmth from the Soju. It was a fun and steep winding down in the dark past a few shrines and one fellow late nighter (This project makes me realize how much I love being outside at night!). Jet lag started setting in on the 2nd train back to our neighborhood so we sadly bid farewell to Kevin, thanked him and made our way back to our pillows in Shiba (our neighborhood). Shoot one complete!!
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