Japan - 2025 pt1
This is my first official post here. And while probably it should be more about what I’m planning, in the moment, and post. There might also be gear reviews or me rambling about gear in general on here. This one will be a bit of a blog about my planning for Japan in the spring of 2025.
Currently I’m planning on heading to Japan once more in the spring: March of 2025, because we ended up going a bit to late last year and missed the cherry blossoms, at least on the main island. And while we could have and arguably should have taken a train to the Aomori region to see them, alas we did not. Which is currently how I find myself here, planning for yet another trip. In that same vein of planning trips, I currently have two others as well, one again in Japan for the fall, and one to Europe which is still in baby phase.
As stated, this current trip is primarily to see the cherry blossoms, so I’m basing everything on that:
The approximate dates for the actual blooms isn’t really even guessed until late this year, probably more towards Dec. but based off of past blooms I can take an educated guess on an appropriate time frame to go. Because I generally base it off the Kanto region, I feel safe that I can go down south to see them if they haven’t yet bloomed there.
Based on where I stay, which will probably be with my Japanese aunt if she allows it would mean I would be based out of Kyoto. Which is still generally I consider to be near the middle of Japan. Probably erroneously so.
I am pretty sure I will be going by myself, which means if my aunt doesn’t allow me to stay I can go full poor mode if I deem it necessary. Aka, staying at much cheaper places, than I would plan if I was going with other people.
I want a new camera bag, one that potentially could be used as both camera bag and travel bag. Which is actually easier said than done. So that I have one bag and don’t need to worry about lugging another one around. Though if I stay with my aunt I wont need to worry about that and will just bring two bags.
Find good places in the Kanto and Kyoto prefectures to film and take photos of the cherry blossoms, I feel almost sometimes spoiled for choice, which can also make it a pain in its own way.
So now that we have the basics covered. Lets talk shop, I need to figure out a way to take the lenses I want without limiting myself on what I want. Ultimately I know that no matter what lenses I forgo I will ultimately wish I had brought them, either something unique I wish to capture from long range with the 200-600 or something a dedicated macro would work much better on than the Tamron 70-180’s macro mode.
I think that the best approach would be to just use the trifecta: Sigma 14-24 f 2.8, Tamron 24-75 f2.8, Tamron 75-180 f2.8 probably also bringing the Samyang 40 and 135 if possible. So four major lenses and one smaller one. I also plan on bringing the Insta360 x4 for my 360 vid YouTube channel (which at the time of writing this, is not available to the public yet) and the DJI Pocket 3. It seems like a lot but if I as stated earlier stay with my aunt it should be a problem because I’m probably just going to bring my normal camera bag which can and does store all of this anyways.
I know Japan has a ton of festivals and stuff going on in that general timeframe of the cherry blossoms, also a ton of specialty trains running for sakura viewing. Obviously would like to hit up the tourist places, because there generally probably a good reason why they are so popular, but also the flip side for that is tourists themselves.
Anyways I know this was a super short post, especially for the first one. But more will be coming as I progress further into this endeavor.