There’s no point pretending otherwise: we’ve all noticed it. Not in headlines or government briefings, but on foot, on trains, and in the small frictions of daily life that only register when you’ve been here long enough to remember something different. For years, my wife and I had a ritual. Once a year, usually sometime in the first quarter, we’d escape to Kyoto for a week. … Kyoto back then felt expansive and unhurried. Even the famous places allowed space. It was calm in a way that felt almost deliberate. We could relax and disconnect. It was bliss.

B&C arrived in Japan for the trip of a lifetime. They set aside three weeks to live in and explore the country properly — to walk, to wander, to get lost, and to let the days unfold at an unhurried pace, before getting married in a secret mountain garden in Kyoto at the end of their trip. Three or four weeks in Japan changes the way you experience it. It gives you time to stop chasing highlights, start noticing the smaller things, and soak up the atmosphere of day-to-day living. It’s certainly how I like to travel!

And B&C wanted their photographs to reflect that pace.

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.