_valerian

Japan Rail has a new ad campaign featuring some beautifully shot “travel photography” (albeit staged) with Japanese men in natty 1930s attire. In each shot somewhere one of the men is taking a photograph with or simply holding, a chrome Nikon rangefinder. The pictures (obviously) are working off of a desire to go places and photograph things- and I find their approach really charming.

These are the first advertisements that I’ve ever wanted to steal off of the train.

If we were riding the train together these pictures would have been visual triggers to start me on an unfortunately (for you) lengthy and meandering speech as to why some aspects of Japan are so much better than their American counterparts.
The condensed version is this:
Japan has places you can go that are unlike most other parts, and they do their best to market these differences/festivals/temples/foods even though they are actually pretty much the same. The worst parts of new Japan is how it is getting to look like all the crummy big-box parts of suburban America. But you can go to the good spots By Train and this is Romantic, even if I ain’t got no one to go with.
Oh, Araki you with your beautiful sentimental journey pictures. you have planted a seed of discontent in me.

I want to go to these places:

Kawagoe

Shizuoka

Somewhere North

Other Places

brought to you by combining in just the right way; a tripod, a 50mm 1.4 lens I had not used for a year, and 4 frames left on a roll of color film I wanted to drop off the next day. Oh and cameras just sitting there near a color copy of a sakura picture.