Lets not forget the people...

Yay! Santa gave me a brand new Digital SLR for Christmas and oooh how fun it is. I can't wait to snap away on our travels. But in the mean time I need to learn how to use it. This past week I have been playing with my new toy, and the zoom lens I bought with it which is lovely and simple, so I've been doing what any voyeur would do - zooming mega close to people's faces, or more likely, the backs of their heads...

here are some results...

eye eye...

On completely changing ones' life

Ours is an ordered, simple existence. Japan resembles a colossal theme park. That sense of there being a huge, invisible object of authority, affecting the actions of our neighbours has been taken for granted, and stepping outside, into the dark, chaotic realms of gaikoku probably means that people won't be on their best behaviour to keep face within the group, and our chances of getting robbed by a desperately hungry person are doubled because of a) the size and b) the standard of living held by our next host nation.

But surely, such national stereotyping is one of the things I find myself loathing about Japan? Could it be that I've found myself adapting in areas I've never even tried to alter? In which case, what is even more terrifying isn't the two months we spend rootless, crossing the biggest continet in the world, rather it is what we come back to, the lifestyle and attitudes we may have forgotten.

In many ways, returning to the UK is even more uncertain than going out to Japan was.

I love travelling on the trains to work. After the rampacked journey from Kawasaki to Shinagawa (Tokyo) every morning, I now have the luxurious journey on the oh so quiet Keikyu Line, from a local station called Hatchonowate, to another out of the way, local station called Kaminagaya, past Yokohama.

Below are three of several videos I have taken out of the window of the train, on my journey home...

From Yokohama Station