Tōkyō Kitanshū

I have known many countries through books, its authors and real or fictional stories that help you travel, understand and get closer to a culture and once you get to understand it better.

The fantasy sometimes exceeds reality, but other times it approaches and fits perfectly with what we live and experience in the country we visit.    We look for those images described in the books, we nod, seeing scenes that have been read and re-read in the books we browse materialize before our eyes. Japan was this for me. Re-live those pages of books, manga, anime seen and observe those same scenes in reality. It was my first trip to Japan and as soon as I set foot I knew I would like to visit it again, more calmly, in depth.

The first city visited was Tokyo. I was looking for the corners described by Murakami, the surreal and almost mythological atmospheres of the nights in the Japanese capital. Those little playgrounds hidden between the houses, the looks of the cats in the alleys, the small restaurants of Yakitori full of smoke with the smell of Sake that expands in the air and sticks on clothes, the hidden izakaya, the kindness of its people but also collective individualism. «single portion» life and solitude in their silences, the salaryman who return home and fall asleep on touching the seat (when they are lucky), the subway or the train that takes them to their silent houses.

«As always, the large yellow moon and its smaller green companion floated in the winter sky.» 1Q84. Murakami.

Fujifilm XT1 -18mm ,f2.0 & 35mm ,f1.4

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