# Places

This page as HTML: https://www.komorebis.cc/destinations

- [Tokyo](https://www.komorebis.cc/destinations/tokyo.md) — Tokyo is shot in short, specific windows: the hour before the shops open, the twenty minutes after sunset when the towers light up, and the ten days a year the cherries are out.
  - [Shibuya](https://www.komorebis.cc/destinations/shibuya.md) — Shibuya is the Tokyo of motion — the scramble crossing empties and refills every couple of minutes, and the photograph is timed to the lights rather than to the sun.
  - [Shinjuku](https://www.komorebis.cc/destinations/shinjuku.md) — Shinjuku gives two shoots in one ward: the smoky lantern alleys east of the tracks after dark, and one of the city’s great gardens a ten-minute walk south by day.
  - [Asakusa](https://www.komorebis.cc/destinations/asakusa.md) — Asakusa is where Tokyo wears kimono: dozens of rental shops sit within a few minutes of Kaminarimon, and Senso-ji’s grounds are open before the first shop lifts its shutter.
  - [Ginza](https://www.komorebis.cc/destinations/ginza.md) — Ginza is Tokyo dressed up: wide pavements, flagship architecture and, on weekend afternoons, a main street closed to traffic so you can stand in the middle of it.
- [Kyoto](https://www.komorebis.cc/destinations/kyoto.md) — Kyoto rewards the early start more than anywhere in Japan: the temples that open at six are empty for an hour, and by nine the same lanes are a queue.
  - [Gion](https://www.komorebis.cc/destinations/gion.md) — Gion is shot at dawn and on public streets only: since 2024 its private lanes carry a ¥10,000 photography-fine sign, and the stone slopes up to the Yasaka Pagoda are only empty before seven.
  - [Arashiyama](https://www.komorebis.cc/destinations/arashiyama.md) — Arashiyama’s bamboo grove is a 400-metre path that holds a few dozen people before it looks full — so the shoot is timed to the first train, not the sunrise.
  - [Fushimi Inari](https://www.komorebis.cc/destinations/fushimi-inari.md) — Fushimi Inari never closes and charges nothing, so the empty torii tunnel belongs to whoever is on the mountain first — usually before eight.
- [Osaka](https://www.komorebis.cc/destinations/osaka.md) — Osaka is the Kansai city that photographs best after dark: the Glico runner on Dotonbori switches on at dusk, and the canal doubles every sign in the water until midnight.
- [Nara](https://www.komorebis.cc/destinations/nara.md) — Nara’s deer are wild, roam the park freely and bow for crackers — and by ten in the morning they are full, bored and far more interested in your paper map than your camera.
- [Hakone](https://www.komorebis.cc/destinations/hakone.md) — Hakone’s best-known photograph — the red torii standing in Lake Ashi — comes with a queue that runs 30 to 90 minutes at weekends, so the shoot is planned around the line, not the light.
- [Mt Fuji & Kawaguchiko](https://www.komorebis.cc/destinations/mount-fuji.md) — Mt Fuji is most often clear in the first two hours after sunrise from October to February, which is why a Fuji session starts in the dark and is usually finished before the cafés open.
- [Nikko](https://www.komorebis.cc/destinations/nikko.md) — Nikko’s autumn leaves turn in two stages about 700 metres apart in altitude: Lake Chuzenji and the Irohazaka road peak in mid to late October, and the shrine town below follows in early November.
- [Hiroshima](https://www.komorebis.cc/destinations/hiroshima.md) — Hiroshima is a city of rivers and trams where the most photographed building is a ruin kept as a memorial, so a shoot here starts by deciding where not to point the camera.
- [Miyajima](https://www.komorebis.cc/destinations/miyajima.md) — Miyajima’s great torii stands in the sea at high tide and on wet sand at low tide, and the same spot gives two completely different shoots about six hours apart.
- [Kanazawa](https://www.komorebis.cc/destinations/kanazawa.md) — Kanazawa has teahouse streets as intact as Kyoto’s and a fraction of the crowds, and Higashi Chaya before 09:00 is often empty enough to shoot a kimono portrait down the middle of the lane.
- [Hokkaido](https://www.komorebis.cc/destinations/hokkaido.md) — Hokkaido is the one place in Japan where snow is reliable enough to book months ahead: from December to March the Biei hills, Otaru’s canal and the slopes below Mt Yotei are white almost every day.
- [Okinawa](https://www.komorebis.cc/destinations/okinawa.md) — Okinawa’s water is at its clearest from April to June, before the typhoons and the jellyfish season, and its cherry blossom comes in late January — two months before Tokyo’s.

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Komorebi · https://www.komorebis.cc