NIKON Z 8 (20mm, f/8, 1/250 sec, ISO360)
After our temple visit it was time for lunch.
We walked a really beautiful street with old wooden houses and many restaurants but they were all closed. The only place open for lunch was a pizzeria but we didn’t travel to Japan for pizza. All the restaurants and bars in this area seemed to be focused on nightlife. I guess it is very lively here in the evening but during the day it is eerily quiet.
We were almost alone and I started to think that all the reports regarding over tourism in Japan were over stated. Sure we saw other tourists in the temple we just visited but it was still a fantastic experience. It wasn’t overcrowded at all.
NIKON Z 8 (20mm, f/8, 1/250 sec, ISO320)
NIKON Z 8 (20mm, f/8, 1/250 sec, ISO360)
NIKON Z 8 (20mm, f/8, 1/250 sec, ISO560)
But in this part there were hardly any people on the street at all. The ones we saw were mostly locals or food truck deliveries. It felt strange but in a good way. We really enjoyed that we had the place for ourselves. It would have been perfect if we would have managed to find a ramen or sushi restaurant but we didn’t.
I took a couple of images but the one below is my favourite even though I had the wrong lens attached to my camera. I still love the shot but the main subject is easily to be missed. It’s the cute little dog with the dog cone and the pink tutu peeing in the drainage canal. It doesn’t get any more Japanese than that.
NIKON Z 8 (20mm, f/8, 1/250 sec, ISO400)
NIKON Z 8 (20mm, f/8, 1/500 sec, ISO200)
NIKON Z 8 (20mm, f/8, 1/250 sec, ISO20000)
At the end we turned around and walked back to the main street. Soon we found a small ramen restaurant in a an alley across the main street. They only had a Japanese menu and we were the only tourists – perfect. Google translate is your friend here. Lunch was great and before we continued our walk to the Kyomizu – dera temple we decided to have coffee in the coffee place on main street. (I already set my camera for street shooting before I left the restaurant and that’s why the image above is shot in ISO 20.000. No noise reduction and still pretty useable, we live in great times.)
The coffee break was also an opportunity to charge my phone. I left my Anker power bank in the hotel (because why take it with me) and of course the battery on my iPhone was already rather low at lunch time. Two sim cards plus the Nikon app that constantly downloads small images from my camera means that my phone battery will only last about half a day.
But this is Japan. Even if you forgot to bring your own power bank you can rent one. And that’s what I did. All you need to do is to download the app, then you can take the power bank with you and return it later in one of the many stations. Very convenient for weight saving idiots like me. The coffee was very good too.
NIKON Z 8 (20mm, f/8, 1/250 sec, ISO450)
NIKON Z 8 (20mm, f/2.8, 1/2000 sec, ISO200)
After lunch and coffee the scenery has changed. Much more people of the street, lots of them in beautiful fake kimonos, prepared to visit the temples dressed up as Japanese women. Of course it is mostly tourists from other parts of Asia who dress up but I have no problem with that. The beautiful young women in those rented kimonos really add to the images.
More about that in my next blog posts.
NIKON Z 8 (20mm, f/8, 1/500 sec, ISO200)