Japan 2009

By the end of March 2009 I went to Japan for vacation, my first visit ever to Japan. I went this time of year to experience the cherry blossom, which is a big thing in Japan. I travelled around by train, as Japan Railways (JR) offers a rail-pass that entitles you go with almost all their services. The connections are very frequent, and if you go with Shinkansen it's really fast, 285 km/h. My trip went along the Shinkansen line that goes south-west from Tokyo through the most densely populated parts of the country.

Before I left home, I bought a new camera, a Panasonic TZ5, with more zoom and more megapixel than my five year old Minolta, and this lead to a small disaster: I came back with almost 1400 pictures. I set off to delete duplicates and less successful photos, but here are almost 900 of them, which still is far too many. To make it somewhat manageable, I've selected 76 pictures as a summary of the trip, and those are the ones you find below.

The rest is split up on a number of sub-sites. First of all there is my Cherry Blossom Special with almost150 pictures of cherry trees in various degrees of bloom (and quite a few more flowers). Then there are the following sub-sites, approximately in the order that my trip went (and you will find a quite some cherry blossom there as well):

Some of the pictures in the summary reappear in the sub-sites, but in many cases I've selected different pictures when I have had more than one on the same thing.

Svensk version


1. The Imperial Plaza

2. Ginza Crossing

3. Artist in Action

4. Cherry-blossom picnic

5. Torii

6. Cherry Blossom in Kyoto

7. Pontocho

8. Fushimi-Inari Taisha

9. A Beautiful Place

10. Canal

11. Temple Detail

12. The Hills of Kyoto

13. Kyoto Dinner

14. As the Bell Tolls

15. The Crane and the Turtle

16. Bird on a aqueduct

17. Garden view

18. The Philosopher's Path

19. Ginkaku-ji

20. Bloom over Water

21. The 15 Stones of Ryoan-ji

22. My Favourite

23. The Himeji Castle

24. Tapestry in Himeji

25. A Couple in a Garden

26. Korakuen in Okayama

27. Korakuen II

28. Kurashiki

29. The Kibi Bicycle Ride

30. Cherry-blossom Party

31. The A-bomb Dome

32. 8:15

33. Aso

34. Cherry Blossom in Aso

35. The Rice Bowl

36. Naka-dake

37. Volcanic Landscape

38. Now, we are eating

39. ACROS

40. Lady with Umbrella

41. Church?

42. Nakasu by Night

43. Coffee Copies

44. Air-con Instruction

45. Miyajima

46. Miyajima Park

47. Masks

48. Monkeys

49. View from Miyajima

50. Nagoya

51. Cherry blossom in Nagoya

52. TV Tower Nagoya

53. Bento

54. View from Magome

55. Kiso-ji Scenery

56. Tsumago

57. Hakone

58. Fine Bird

59. Excursion Ship

60. Shinjuku Crossing

61. Neon Lights

62. Sky Scrapers

63. Big-city Jungle

64. The Inner Garden

65. Drum bash

66. Prada

67. Contrasts

68. Piss Alley

69. The Bridge in Nikko

70. Three Monkeys

71. Warrior

72. Cherry Blossom in Nikko

73. Yokohama

74. Chinese Temple

75. Spaced Out on Odaiba

76. Venus Fort

Back to "My Pictures"