kyoto

The last few days have been busy:

• Tsukiji Outer Fish Market is a very difficult place to do street photography. Nobody wants their picture taken, nobody wants to deal with pasty tourists. This is street on hard mode. Super crowded + humid 80°F = not many photographs taken that I'm proud of
• Visited Asakusa and the Senso-ji Temple
• Sumo wrestling practice! Amazing that the public is allowed to attend this, it felt very intimate. The men would exercise and practice to exhaustion. They were completely committed to the bit, none of them paid any attention to the crowd of photographers which suited us just fine. It was an honor to observe these guys
• Our group visited Team Lab Planet which is an, uh, unique art exhibition. I recommend it but... if I say any more I'll ruin the series of surprises. Our instructor, Harvey, had to be rescued from one of the exhibits 😆
• Arrived in Kyoto by bullet train this morning. I'm still taking everything in, Kyoto manages to be two things at once: lovely; a tourist trap. Much easier to approach strangers here, they are already taking selfies and wearing masks and sporting rented kimonos
• Discovered an interesting way to interact with people: Ask "Instagram?" and boom, you're following each other
• Lunch at the Wabiya Korekido restaurant which was rice, chicken and 3 eggs mixed in, cooked at the table in an extremely hot bowl
• Climbed many, many stairs to visit the Kodai-ji and Kiyomizudera temples

One such temple:

Some street portraits from Kyoto:

Video from the sumo wrestling practice:

Wrestler cooling down after a series of intense matches, seemed very much like he was in pain and distress:

Buddhist temple down the street from the fish market:

The first critique went well, the group liked these images from yesterday:

Some monochrome images from the Tsukiji Outer Fish Market:

Margarita Mavromichalis having some fun:

Some signs I encountered:

This image I liked but it wasn't strong enough for class:

Stickers:

The view from my hotel window in Kyoto, heavy HDR courtesy of my stupid phone:

All right, fine:

Next post: osaka