Japan, November 2025.
Japan was wonderful! i have never heard a negative comment about Japan when visiting as a foreigner and i can attest that is very much true! i'm so glad Juan and i decided to celebrate our 10-year anniversary (circa 09.22.2015) in Nihon aka Nippon.
for this excursion, i decided that i was going to photographically document it mainly via instant film. a couple months before we left the States, i pulled out my Polaroid Land Camera 230 and decided right then and there this was going to be my "right-hand-man." i found this gem back in 2005 from a Goodwill in Albuquerque, NM for ~$5. if you're familiar with this camera, this camera is obsolete mainly because the film it uses is no longer in production. FujiFilm discontinued their pack film, FP-100C, production back in 2018. so how was i going to use my 230?
well!
back in 2021, when the kids and i first moved to AZ, i spent the first couple of months getting settled in. in my spare time, i discovered this wonderful human in Boston, Massachusetts - Alin Tolea of Analogue Studio. he is a retired astrophysicist who now spends a portion of his retirement life reconstructing obsolete cameras granting them a 2nd chance at life by modifying them to use the modern instant film of FujiFilm. 4 years ago, Alin created an instant back for my Hasselblad 500CM to use FujiFilm Instax Square. and now, Alin created a back for a Land Camera 350 to use FujiFilm Instax Wide. he is amazing! he fulfilled my order in about a week from my initial inquiry before I left the States.
Juan and i try to have a non-touristy agenda whenever we travel, whether it'd be domestic or international. and our trip to Japan was no different. and honestly, our non-touristy agenda ended up being the highlights of our trip. one of the things Juan suggested we do was find and attend a local music venue, which he found one in Shinjuku called "The Wall." it was a 10-min walk from our 1st lodging, Port House Hatsudai in Shibuya. "The Wall" was located underground and was a one-room-venue - the stage on the left, the floor front center and all the way to the right were the sound engineers, the bar, merch tables and the bathroom. the sets of the 3 remaining bands we were able to catch were great!
"The Wall" in NishiShinjuku.
Get Down On It performing their 20min set.
Juan and i also got flash tattoos in Shinjuku. initially, i was going to book an appointment before we even left the States, but tattoos still very much hold a generalized stigma historically connected to the Yakuza and is a sign of disrespectfulness. so, i left that option open and if we ran into a shop that took walk-ins...great!
and we did!
the shop, Future Rose Tattoo, was also located underground. we picked out our flash tattoo from the many books, binders and framed artwork. i picked an orange colored daruma (a traditional Japanese good luck charm representing perseverance and is a wish-fulfillment tool) and Juan picked a greyscale cat inside a gourd. the BEST part of this specific experience is if anyone were to ask me about my daruma, my answer is:
"i got this piece in Japan from an Argentinian tattoo artist, who has lived in Norway for the past 16 years and was guest spotting at the tattoo shop we were at in Shinjuku."
and then earlier this year, my friend Chris, (whom he and his own family also visited Japan just this year in May), sent me this link:
Event highlights, goods, artistic utility hole covers and other features related to collaborative projects designed to promote Japan’s local
it was a map to find all the Pokemon manhole covers in the country. Japan possessed artistic manhood covers even before Poke Lids came into existence in 2018. fun fact: Japan started creating artistic manhole covers in the 1980s as a PR campaign to accumulate support for costly infrastructure projects such as modernizing their sewage system. now, it is a pop cultural sensation promoting local identity, tourism and culture.
after Juan and i visited the Snoopy Museum in Minami Machida, Tokyo and ate lunch, we went on a scavenger hunt for Poke Lids in Serigaya Park also in Machida. the manhole covers in Machida all feature 1st generation Pokemon: