Exploring Japan – Photography + Travel Guides

We love exploring and immersing ourselves in different cultures. As travel photographers & addicted travellers, Japan is a fantastic place to visit. This wonderful country has it all – from bustling cities to amazing landscapes and scenery. You can absorb its culture and traditions which spans thousands of years or indulge in the country’s mouthwatering cuisine. 

If you are anything like us, we like to hit the ground running, so prior to departure we spend considerable time planning what we will be doing (a rough guide) each day. This way we spend more time exploring and less time trying to work out what to do once we have arrived. 

So to make it a little easier for you we have put together a series of Exploring Japan Photography + Travel Guides. These guides are great for first-time visitors to Japan as well as those who want to discover new or different places. You can click on the banners below to read more or just scroll down.

What is Travel Photography?

“Travel photography is a genre of photography that may involve the documentation of an area’s landscape, people, cultures, customs and history” – Wikipedia. You can also read this interesting post about Travel Photography titled “Travel Photography – How To Blend Your Passion With Profession“.

Planning & Getting Around

Each guide will have specific information about the places we visited and recommend for photography. We also provide valuable information about how to get around these destinations.

For all our trips to Japan, we used the Pasmo IC Card for getting around on local transport within the cities, there are however a number of different IC transport cards available depending on your starting/end point. Click here to read about the cards available and which is best for you. For longer journeys, we pre-purchased a JR Pass. Check out the Japan Rail Pass Calculator to see if it’s worth buying the JR Pass. We purchased the 14-day pass as we visited several different cities in Japan during the period. If you are basing yourself in one location, it may not be cost-effective to purchase the pass instead better to purchase individual train tickets.

You may want to consider NOT activating your JR Pass at the airport on arrival just to get into Tokyo/Osaka. If you are spending several days in the city as this time will eat into your JR Pass (unless you are just staying in Tokyo, in which case you can activate at the airport and also use it on the JR Lines in Tokyo). We found it easier to catch the bus from Tokyo Airport and use the Pasmo IC card to travel around Tokyo. It wasn’t until we were leaving Tokyo that we activated the JR Pass. 

Accommodation

There are so many options when it comes to choosing your accommodation. We generally book hotels and guesthouses, however, if you prefer AirBnB’s then these are available as well. When choosing our accommodation we look at the location first, then the price. We also tend to book accommodation with a private bathroom where possible, this is just a personal preference. Double (bedding) rooms tend to be small (10-14sqm) in the newer hotels, so try to select twin bedding when booking to get a slightly larger room.

We have stayed in the following hotels on our two trips to Japan and can recommend these based on our personal experience. You can read more about the hotels we stayed at in our individual Location Guides, see links further down.

Osaka

• APA Hotel Higashi-Umeda Minami-morimachi-Ekimae
• Hotel IL Monte

Yokohama

• APA Hotel & Resort Yokohama Bay Tower

Kanazawa

• Hotel Forza Kanazawa

Koyasan

• Koyasan Guest House Tommy

Nagano

• Hotel Sunroute Nagano-Higashiguchi

Camera Gear

With each of our guides, we will share information and recommend camera gear, lenses, and filters to assist with your planning along with some tips and techniques to capture great shots along the way.

Camera Bag

Our everyday bag of choice for this destination is the Peak Design Everyday Sling 10L (we also now use the V2 of this bag). We found this style of bag practical in busy cities like Tokyo, Kyoto & Osaka. When in transit between cities, we used our Vanguard Alta Rise 45 Camera Backpack and Lowepro Transit Backpack 350AW bags and then transferred our gear to Everyday Sling for day-to-day use.

Filters

All our lenses (with the exception of the 12mm fisheye) have *URTH UV filters, which remain on our lenses at all times (except for nighttime shots). We also travel with *URTH CPL polarizer filters, *URTH Variable ND filters and a NiSi 100mm square filter system with ND & ND Grads.

Other Gear

Other gear that we carried with us but didn’t always carry with us on a daily basis were as follows. You may want to take some of these into consideration. If you want to see all our gear then click here –

• Lenskirt – we usually carry this with us at all times as it is great for removing reflections when shooting through glass.
• External Hard Drive – we travel with 2 external hard drives for image backups on a daily basis. One will stay in the hotel safe and one will be carried in our day-to-day camera bag.
• All the usual accessories such as a blower brush, 3 camera batteries each, lens cloth, camera straps (both sling and wrist), wireless remote etc
• Tablet/Laptop – these were generally not carried around with us on a daily basis.
• Rain Cover – for both the Camera Bag and yourself

Location Guides

Our ‘Location Guides’ will help you to plan your visit to Japan by providing you with valuable advice and essential information for some of the best locations to explore and photograph in Japan. Just click on the locations guides below to read. 

Please Note: We may receive commissions when you click links and make purchases. However, this does not impact our reviews or recommendations. We try our best to keep things fair and balanced, in order to help you make the best choice.