When I arrived in Japan in 2003, I didn’t come looking for a new life. I came for the experience — a year, maybe two — without imagining the country would shift under my feet, or that I would shift with it. Back then, Japan felt firmly anchored in the analogue world. People clung to cash with white-knuckled conviction. Flip phones ruled the world, and were the envy of it. ATMs had operating hours — even shutting down entirely for four days over the New Year holiday. Daily life ran on habits that felt immovable, accepted without question.

Tokyo is an incredible place to photograph — electric, peaceful, modern, ancient. But in recent years, something has shifted. As tourism has surged, so has resident frustration with photographers, influencers, and visitors who sometimes treat Japan more like a stage set than a living city. Some of this frustration is understandable. Pathways get blocked. Moss and flower beds gets trampled on. Private homes become props. And in a city where space is already tight, even small moments of thoughtlessness add up quickly.

When I first arrived in Japan in 2003, I thought I had some idea of what I was stepping into. I’d travelled, I’d read the guidebooks, I’d watched the films. I assumed living abroad was simply “life, but different” — familiar enough, just with new scenery. What I didn’t understand was that Japan doesn’t just offer a different lifestyle. It offers an entirely different logic! And it took me years to realise how much of that logic I misunderstood at the start.

I never planned to live in Japan. In fact, the idea barely crossed my mind beyond the films and books that coloured my teens with distant images of neon streets and quiet temples.

London was home, music was my entire world, and my future felt mapped out in rehearsals, concert halls, and late-night practice rooms. But life has a way of nudging you sideways.