Before leaving to Japan I googled "largest camera store in Tokyo". Which lead me to here, Yodobashi. This isn't just a camera equipment store, this megastore is amazing, overwhelming and awesome all at the same time. I mean you can tell just by looking at the escalators. So each floor is dedicated to a particular electronic. The first floor was all cellphones, the second was computers, etc. Finally the 5th floor (but not the last floor of the department store) was the camera gear. I don't know why, but I was kind of nervous. Maybe just excited nervous. But I really wanted to see if Japan had anything different than what I could purchase in America. The only real differences I saw was in the accessories, not really the camera gear itself. They had rows and rows full of tripods, rows and rows full of photo apparel, so many photo albums and framing ideas. It was a little nuts but extremely happy I got to see it in real life.
So one of the coolest nights that we spent in Tokyo was when we joined Eyexplore Tokyo for their "Tokyo Vertigo" tour. I'm a big fan of taking photo tours with locals whenever I'm in a new place and this one was one of the best tours I've been on. Not only did we get amazing, unique views of the city by hoping from rooftop to rooftop, but our tour guide, Axel was awesome! He was just so passionate about teaching photography and showing off his city. I really felt like I learned a lot from him. He's also a super cool and friendly guy too. So if you're ever in Japan, I'd definietly recommend looking them up.
Shinjuku Gyoen park is the perfect place to view the cherry blossoms. The first time we tried to go, it was closed. We only had an hour the second time we went. And this was taken on the third attempt. But somehow we'd still get lost whenever we tried to go. I'd put it into our GPS and Shinjuku Gyoen sounded like Shinjuku"jail". I was startled me every time I heard it.
