Tony Llerena Photography – Bangor Maine Wedding and Portrait Photographer

I’ve been back home for a few days and I’ve now had the opportunity to decompress and get over my jet lag. I think now is a good opportunity for me to look back on my adventure while everything is still fresh in my mind and reflect what it meant for me to travel to a country so far and so foreign that it is literally on the other side of the world from everything I’ve ever known. Here’s my list, take it for what it’s worth:

The Three Sisters Annex Hotel was a wonderful authentic place to stay. The most unique thing about it is that there’s a curfew. The gates close at 11:30 pm and if you’re not back in time, you’re out of luck. We  all made it back in time every night but we heard rumors that some others on a previous trip were not so lucky.

Our final visit was to the philosopher’s walk. From Wikipedia:  The Philosopher’s Walk is a pedestrian path that follows a cherry-tree-lined canal in Kyoto, between Ginkaku-ji and Nanzen-ji. The route is so-named because the influential 20th century Japanese philosopher and Kyoto University professor Nishida Kitaro is thought to have used it for daily meditation. It passes a number of temples and shrines such as Hōnen-in, Ōtoyo Shrine, and Eikan-dō Zenrin-ji. It takes about 30 minutes to complete the walk, although many people spend more time visiting the sights along the way.

There were so many flowers every where we went. Joe in our group was notorious for snapping pictures of just about every new type of flower we passed by.

Most of the animals were extremely domesticated and quite friendly. The three little kitty’s were quite content to let me walk right up to them while they were napping so I could take a picture.

After about 22 hours of traveling, back in time mind you, I made it home to my wonderful family waiting for me at the airport. They were a sight for sore eyes. My only wish is that they could have joined me in my journey but my hope is that I was able to “Capture Japan” well enough so they can see what I saw through my lens.

On our final full day in Japan, our group began the day with a trip to a sake brewery. Unfortunately, we made the trip out but were not allowed to actually see the brewing process. However, we were able to visit the museum and sample some fine sake.

One of the things that I find most interesting about Japanese culture, but more specifically advertising, is that everything is laden with cartoon characters. I’ve found that it doesn’t matter the age group of the target audience, there will be some cartoon character or caricature involved.

The big event of the day was the visit to the Imperial Palace. Kyoto was actually the original capital of Japan before the emperor moved it to Tokyo over 100 years ago. The first thing you notice when you enter the palace grounds is that the compound is HUGE. I fell in love with all of the roofs on the temples and palaces. They are extremely intricate and ornate and I can only guess how long it takes to create one of these masterpieces.

Walking through the palace was wonderful. I loved the colors and textures of the buildings. Many temples in Kyoto are painted orange for good luck.

This is one of the gates to get into the palace. You can see how much care was put into every singe structure.

The devil’s in the details.

I got lucky that this crane didn’t fly away before I could get a shot. He wasn’t camera shy since there were at 14 other people trying to get a picture at the same time.

Our day finished with a wonderful dinner in the heart of Kyoto. I can’t believe that one of the things I’m going to miss about Japan is the food. Who knew?

- Tony Llerena Photography

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So I may have mentioned this before but I’m an extremely picky eater. I had quite a bit of anxiety about eating in Japan before the trip. Ultimately I made the choice to move outside of my comfort zone and try some new foods that I would NEVER try otherwise. I kept a log for historical purposes. Here’s the list:

Shrimp sandwich
Quail egg
Ginko nut
Wrapped squid with penlla leaf
Shiitake mushroom shrimp
Egg plant
Cherry tomato
Asparagus
Haddock
Scallops
Crab
Raw yellow tail
Green chili
Blowfish

- Tony Llerena Photography

Did I say we were slowing down in Kyoto? Well never mind. We have all sorts of things to do and places to see. Our first stop today was a traditional Japanese tea ceremony in which we learned proper tea drinking and serving etiquette, the formal way.

Our host giggled at us pretty much the entire time since we were so terrible at it. There is an art to making good tea and we were probably in the crayon stage.

Luckily we were able to sit at the table and not on the floor since it took us a lot longer than it should have.

Here’s Ian whisking the tea, trying to mix the water and tea without creating bubbles.

After you drink the tea, you’re supposed to look at the bowl for a few moments out of respect to the host and reflect on the quality of it’s craftsmanship. This is very common across

And here’s one of the most famous sites in all of Japan, the Golden Palace. The original one was actually burned down but it was rebuilt and in 1987 was recovered in gold leaf. It’s actually extremely impressive in person. I can’t wait to edit the images at home. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this but all of the images so far have been straight out of camera or edited slightly on the iPad 2.

These koi fish were actually pretty funny. They kept on jumping out of the water trying to eat the leaves on the shore.

For lunch we had sushi that is served on a great big carrousel. It was interesting to see how they actually know what food you’re grabbing from the line. Apparently, most everything about the system is automated, including the rice portions.

Here’s a shot of the carousel.

This is the most well known zen garden in Japan.

The best part of the zen garden was this little guy. He had this funny little scowl the entire time I was sitting next to him.

Can you see the turtles?

You’re in for a treat tomorrow. We’re going to visit the original Imperial Palace, former capital of Japan!

- Tony Llerena Photography

Please stop reading. This section is for my family.

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Seven days after arriving in Tokyo, our group moved on to Kyoto for a change of scenery and pace. Where we had a hectic schedule in Tokyo early on with business meetings and obligations, we are free to do as we please for our stay in Kyoto. I can’t begin to express how long I’ve waited to be able to go out on my own with no distractions and just shoot.

We went to Tokyo station to catch the bullet train to Kyoto. It’s not nearly as busy as the subway but we were all carrying our luggage so the escalators were challenging.

The train itself is quite impressive. It can travel speeds of up to 200km per hour and actually looks more like a jet than anything else.

It was interesting to see how fast everything was going by as we sped through the city. I got lucky and captured our reflection in the windows on a passing building.

When we arrived in Kyoto, the weather was not in our favor. Much like back home, it was raining quite a bit. We checked in to our hotel, The Three Sisters Annex, a traditional Japanese inn. The beds are actually mattresses on the floor, which feels a lot more comfortable than it looks.

Although it was raining, I was not going to let an opportunity get away to go photograph a shrine. As I was leaving, Kay, one of the nicest ladies I’ve met in Japan so far and our sort of house mom would not let me leave without a map, directions back and an umbrella. I refused the umbrella and told her I would be alright because it was only sprinkling. BIG MISTAKE. (more on that later)

After about ten minutes of walking, trying to figure out where the shrine is, the rain gets heavier. I turned a corner and saw these huge red pillars jutting out of the the skyline above the trees. By now I’m starting to regret not grabbing the umbrella when I had the chance. No matter, I start shooting to my hearts content..

… that is until it starts raining even harder and I realize that there is very little cover at the shrine. After much deliberation and swallowing of pride, I purchased an umbrella at the gift shop. The shrine is called the Heian Shrine and was built in 1895.

Now that I had an umbrella, I was able to go into the shrine gardens to see if there were any good locations to shoot. I’ll let you be the judge on whether I found one or not.

You can certainly see how much it’s raining in some of these pictures. I was drenched by the time I was done but very pleased with the outcome.

I think there may be some keepers.

Epilogue – As soon as I got back to the room, I plugged the compact flash card from my camera into my iPad to see how the images came out on a larger screen. “Card corrupted, cannot read files.” WHAT?!? I insert the card back into the camera and I get a card read error, please format the card. Oh no!! To make a long story short, Ian was gracious enough to lend me his laptop and after about seven hours of work, I was able to recover most if not all of the files. I guess it pays to be a “computer genius,” as my kids call me, sometimes.

- Tony Llerena Photography

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Today was our first full free day and final day in Tokyo. The group got together and thought it would be fun to go see a baseball game in Japan. Tokyo is home to the Yomiuri Giants, traditionally one of the best teams in the league. I left my camera at the hotel because I didn’t want to risk not being able to enter the game with it. I was able to capture a couple of shots and a video using my iPhone.

The game itself was kind of slow. The first run wasn’t scored until the top of the 7th inning. The best part of the entire game was hearing the crowds chanting and clapping little plastic bats together. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen at a sporting event before. Check it out for yourself in the video below. Other than the game, all we did was laundry and pack in preparation for the bullet train and Kyoto tomorrow. Looking forward to it.

- Tony Llerena Photography

Please stop reading. This section is for my family.

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