Cosplay (costume roleplay) events in Japan always remind me of Halloween. Although some participants dress as their favorite characters from movies or TV, the most common choice seems to be to imitate idols from the world of manga (comics). While wandering around Kyoto I saw a cosplay event taking place at the new Kyoto International Manga Museum. Everyone was really friendly  (far more so than at Harajuku on a Sunday afternoon), and I spent a couple of hours taking photos. It was a cloudy day and a little darker than I would have liked, but it meant that I had good even lighting for the shots.

On August 16th the Daimonji festival took place in Kyoto. Groups of bonfires are lit at six mountainside locations around the city. When burning the bonfires create giant kanji (chinese symbols) that can be seen from miles around. The most famous is Daimonji, appropriately the symbol means big. To give some understanding of scale, the horizontal stroke is 80 meters long. The day before the event I scouted out the area looking for a good viewpoint. I was amazingly lucky when I managed to get myself invited to a rooftop for the event so I could get a clear view free of wiring or buildings. Thank you so much to the staff at camera shop Korakudo! On the night, I got a clear shot of the Daimonji, and it was great to hang out with everyone on the rooftop. Unfortunately the conditions were not exactly how I would have liked them. What I had hoped for was a crystal clear sky which would have retained a blue/purple tint  while providing a nice silhouette of the …

A few years back I wrote the article The Best of Kyoto.  On my latest trip I wanted to get some more images of city, including Daimonji Festival, Arashiyama Ukai (fishing with cormorants), Nijo Castle and Ryoan-ji Temple. First, however, I’ll show a couple of photos from Tozando a Japanese martial arts equipment supplier based in Kyoto. Particularly photogenic was this suit of samurai armor, (the Akanuri Sugakedou Yoroi Set), on sale at ¥350,000. However, my favorite item in the store was a katana & wakizashi set that had been made in the 18th Century by Sadayuki of the Owari region (¥2,800,000). You can check out the store online at http://www.tozandoshop.com

3 more photographs from the Awa Odori festival in Tokushima City. The first is a dance move which looks similar to the defensive position you see in movies after marines exit their Humvees while under fire. The second is of a girl wearing a variation on the men’s costume.  (Would have preferred a cleaner background, but it is hopefully out of focus enough not to be distracting.) Most of the dances took place after dark. As I wasn’t using flash, I had to “rage against the dying of the light” and look for opportunities to use the last remaining shafts of sunlight. In this shot I prefocused on the shaft of golden light and waited until a dancer entered the frame.

The first stage of my trip was to Tokushima to take photos of Awa Odori (Awa Dance) the biggest dance festival in Japan. It takes place from the 12th to the 15th of August and was a festival I’d heard of but never seen. There are two main types of dance one for the women (wearing crescent shaped hats) and one for the men (danced by both men and women). It was a fantastic event to watch, but quite difficult to photograph as it is both an evening event (dark) and people are moving around (tough to focus). I shot a lot of film, most of which was junk, but there were are few diamonds in the rough.