One of the core reasons for visiting Japan was to meet this guy. His name is Keishin, but he is more commonly known as cocoip to the Flickr community. Over the past several years, he has become quite possibly my favorite photographer online. His shots are simple, clean, but always alarmingly gorgeous. His shots are typically of the Japanese night skylines, but even when he’s moved out of this comfort zone, the shots are still amazing.

We met up with him on the man-made island of Odaiba, which is about a 20-minute train ride away from Shibuya. Odaiba is also home to the giant Gundam, which provided some ample photographic scenery. Despite some language difficulties with some of the more complicated questions, it was great to pick his mind and figure out why and how he does what he does, and also get some perspective on Japanese culture and customs from a local.

Keishin’s day job is over at Capcom as a music producer, and he’s largely moving over to large-format film photography for future projects. Interestingly enough, he doesn’t do photography professionally, just as a side hobby for the pure purpose of producing great photos. He is an excessively nice individual and I’m thrilled that I got a chance to hang around him for an evening. Oh yes, and the name. Cocoip = Coco (a love for cocoa) + ip (first account was created for iPhone photography). I didn’t ask him about his user icon though.

When I travel, it’s somewhat rare that I’ll go to the same place twice. For the most part, it’s a weeklong dive into a country where you know virtually nothing, which means forced discovery of culture, sayings, transportation, and what to actually do when you’re there. This last week though, I opted against this and went somewhere I’ve been before, loved, and wanted to go back. So I did. Tokyo.

This trip showed me a few things and helped cement some opinions on the city and the people, and allowed me to go further away from the city center, more comfortable of the transit system. For the most part, the one big realization seems to be that Tokyo is without a doubt the most interesting city which I’ve been to on this planet yet. The technology, the art culture, the way people treat each other and behave, it’s all so wildly different compared to what I’m used to.

It is also so extremely photogenic. Ended up with 1200+ photos easily – and probably could have doubled that if I had the energy to really push myself. I could do a photo from Japan, every day, for the next three years. Both New Japan (neon/fast/colorful/loud) and Old Japan (wood/slow/subtle/simple) work well, and where they meet makes for really interesting photos. It seems like a city which bodes itself well for a 365-day photo project, since there is always so much going on in the center of the city.

I’ve put together my fifty favorite shots from Tokyo/Kyoto here – and I plan on uploading more as I clean them up and find different angles which work. This is the first trip where I’ve used light metering in any sort of serious way, which makes for longer shot setups but ultimately much better shots, and I think it showed through here. Of course, moving to significantly better camera bodies and lenses helps too. The city itself is a monster – and I still feel I’ve only explored about 1/100th of the available areas in Tokyo, but things definitely felt more comfortable this time around. Lots of stories to come soon, I’m sure.