First Trip to Japan

I just arrived in Taiwan coming from Japan a few days ago. It was probably my first time exploring a bit of Japan (Nagoya and Osaka) that wasn’t for flight transit. Even though I often hear about how Japanese people are very humble and polite, your heart needs to be there to experience this heart warming place. I remember when we first arrived in the Kansai airport, there was a granny(obaa-chan) saw us being confused by the subway system there(it’s much more complicated than Toronto’s, she came to us very friendly and repeatedly explained to us four or five times to make sure when understand how we get to out destination. And later when we met again on the subway, she found seats for us. The rest of the time in Japan my mind and heart were well treated with people’s smiles and honorific greetings, whenever and wherever I went everyone was super polite, friendly and with a genuine smile. Just like my Japanese sensei told us that customers are considered as gods to them, their principal and culture of customer service are really something worth admiring and learning. In any event, I totally didn’t feel like being treated as a foreigner.

As someone like me who has lived in both eastern and western cultures, I would say Japan really feels like a mixed in between but most still remain in their traditional fashion. Their cities, public transportation, streets and shops are kind of similar to Taiwan but cleaner and more spacious.

Hmmm what am I missing here…oh yes photography. I know many of my friends are expecting photos but I didn’t bring my laptop with me, so at the moment it’s rather inconvenient to process the photos without my usual software. Nevertheless, I’ll roughly process and post a few just for teaser. Unfortunately, as usual that my life is a living example of Murphy’s Law, even though I did bring my D7000 with two of my favorite lenses, something just had to happen to it (I guess I wasn’t used the to the moisture there, it seems some moist got into the camera, perhaps I shouldn’t have switched lenses that frequently. It’s still completely functional, but the view finder isn’t as clear, and one button not being sensitive). Hence, 95% of the trip I ended up using my GF1 with 20mm lens. Which to my surprise, it was very sufficient and adequate for most purposes whether it’s for landscape, people, street or daily life.

There is so much I can talk about the time I spent in Japan, probably enough to make two or three blog posts. But I’ll save it to tell you guys later when I go back. Hopefully I will have another chance to come to Japan gain, I have yet to visit other awesome places like Tokyo, Kyoto, Hokkaido and Okinawa etc. In the mean while I might blog the older works since I wouldn’t really have to organize the materials.

PS. All the photos in the post I took them by using GF1+20mm lens.
PPS. Yes, I took “tourist photos”, so what?! hahaha…