Tokyo Times

About three and a half years ago, I took this photo of the terribly sad looking cowboy below. An image that at the time seemed much better suited to black and white.

Returning to it last week, however, when choosing photographs for my new portfolio site (leechapman.photos), I wasn’t nearly so certain that monochrome was the right choice. And, after re-editing it and seeing the poor fella’s forlorn face as I originally shot it, I became completely convinced that colour was actually the way to go. Still am in fact. But there again, what seems definitive now may clearly not be the case several more years down the line.

Come on. Hurry up. Grandma’s waiting for a kiss.

Tokyo has a wonderful knack of throwing up surprises. Head out, walk for a good while, and very likely you’ll see something unusual — sometimes even unpleasant. Plus now and again, a quite unwelcome combination of the two.

The scene below, however, was more inexplicable than surprising. A young man wearing a maid outfit playing the piano in a tiny immigration museum. Something, it’s probably fair to say, that one doesn’t see everyday.

Tokyo has plenty of gleaming, glass-fronted modern buildings. And with the Olympics on the horizon, there’ll no doubt be many more by 2020. But for now at least, there are still a good number of little pockets that seem wonderfully frozen in time. Plus on really good days, they are even frequented by people who seem perfectly at home in both the past and the present.