Japanese Emperor's Greeting 2008 2008-01-04

On January 2nd I happened to be at Tokyo Station with my camera. I don't know the area well, so I decided to "follow the crowd." It turned out that there WAS a crowd all headed in the same direction, so I joined them. We walked several blocks and arrived at the emperor's palace. Once or twice a year the public is allowed to enter the grounds, and this was one of those days. After passing through multiple levels of security, and I stood with several thousand people waiting for the emperor to appear and give a New Year's greeting. The light was tricky (very bright on the crowd but the emperor and his party were in shadow), and I only had a 50mm lens, so this was the best shot I could manage. I'll post a couple more photos tomorrow.

This blog is open again!

I'll be posting what I consider my best shots (plus shots taken outside of Japan) over at photosensibility.com/photoblog, but I'll start posting photos here that focus on Japanese people, life, and culture -- and generally fit the theme I started with long ago of "trying to figure out what's going on here."