I flew to Tokyo on Tuesday and landed on Wednesday. Since then I’ve been out filming every single day – so far in Akihabara and Shinjuku. I’m still learning how to use the Ronin-SC. And which shots that are good in general. But the big hurdle is neither technical nor aesthetic, but the guts it takes to point a camera towards someone – for a much longer time than when you just take a snapshot! It was a relief to realise I came over this hurdle the moment I mounted the camera on the gimbal and got out there, among people. The job feeling takes over – you want the shot, and that’s more important than what people think about you. Even so, pointing the camera to single people rather than a crowd is hard.
I stay at a cheap (3,300 yen ≈ 28 euro per night) hotel in Minami-senju. Toilet in the hallway, public bath on the ground floor. There are only men on my floor and during the bathing times (separate for men and women). No one utters a word, but everyone is very polite. I hear the guy in the next room snore every night, but it doesn’t bother me.
It was wonderful to revisit Akihabara. In general, there are so many foreigners in Tokyo now, compared to my first trip in October 2011, when there was virtually no one in the wake of the quake.
I’ve been to two doujinshi events, a small one in Kamata yesterday and then Good Comic City 26 at Tokyo Big Sight today, with 4,750 creators selling their doujinshi. I estimate at least 95 percent of the creators and visitors were female. They had even changed the male toilet in the halls to “female only”. Lots of BL. It didn’t excite me much actually.
I sent business cards to the printers just before I left Germany. I paid extra for express delivery so that I would get them the day before I went to Japan. But UPS failed anyway. Because … Because they can? The thing is that I knew it wouldn’t work. And it didn’t. The whole thing irritates me because I should of course have printed business cards in good time before I left.
Inflight entertainment: I loved Isn’t it romantic, but Stockholm was so bad. I didn’t really like Tonde Saitama either so I only watched half of it.
Articles
- The Economist: More children around the world are being taught in English, often badly
- BBC: Letter from Africa: ‘I gave up on catching the train in Ethiopia’
Video
- Potato Jet: Cinema Lens on a $600 Mirrorless Camera = EPIC Cinematic Canon M50 ??
- Kaiman Wong: Insta 360 Go – INSANELY SMALL CAMERA with BIG PROBLEMS
- Matt D’Avella: Six Books That Changed My Life
- The School of Life: Why We Should Dare to Be More Selfish
Film & TV
- Stockholm (2019, 92 min)
- Isn’t it romantic (2019, 89 min)
- Tonde Saitama (2019, 107 min)
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