People
The first photo below is of a beautiful, utterly unpretentious young woman I ran into in Hibiya Park, which lies in Central Tokyo in the Chiyoda Ward (not far from Ginza on one side, and the Kasumigaseki area — with the Diet and other gov’t Buildings on the other). If you like this gallery, then I invite you to visit the other galleries here on LetsJapan.Wordpress, perhaps beginning with this one.
The photo just below is also featured in the gallery, “元気!” (genki).
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LetsJapan 
The first one here as well…one of my favs.
That girl was so cool. She *loved* the camera, zero pretension.
it is very nice when people are not camera shy. I also love taking pictures of people when i’m traveling. It really shows the soul of a place.
Jane,
Thanks for your comment. And how right you are. Two things help me when photographing people in Japan. First, my Japanese is pretty good (well, fair to middling as far as getting around and so forth). So I can just engage people in conversation and then say, all nonchalantly, “Oh, say, can I take your picture?” and chat while I’m shooting (“Oh, just one more, o.k.?”). The second thing is that for these shots I use a “point and click” digital camera that’s very “non threatening”, as opposed to a Big Camera Rig. Again, it gives the whole thing a casual informality that relaxes (pretty much) whomever I’m shooting . . . and relaxes me. Some photographers are a certainly a “breed apart” from me and *can* use that Big Camera Rig and get right into the faces of people and get the shot. I’m much too shy and self-conscious to do that.
This place looks and sounds gorgeous! I think my decision has just been finalized on the spring trip.
Wonderful!
Shoot me an email when you get a moment and, as we Professionals say, “we’ll move forward” ;o).
R