On The Streets: Osaka, Japan

This is my visual guide to street photography in Osaka, Japan’s third largest city. From the chaos of Dotonbori to peaceful temples and pretty much everything in between; if you’re looking for Osaka photography inspiration, you’ll find it here.

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In November 2024, our family headed across to Japan for a 15 day trip through the heavily beaten path of Osaka, Kyoto and Tokyo. I’d always longed to visit Japan but, if I’m honest, it had been a dream pushed far to the back of my mind certainly after Covid-19 and starting a family. We had planned to visit in around 2018 after Australia but that never came to fruition.

As part of our trip, we spent just three nights in Osaka which turned out to be an alright length of time for an introduction to the city and an introduction to Japan generally. We only really managed to see the ‘highlights’ so you will no doubt recognise most of the shots below from the mountains of images of Japan across social media these days. However, I tried really hard to implement my own kind of style when capturing Osaka.

Ok, now it’s time for a virtual wander around the streets of Osaka. This is my take on street photography in Osaka with the Fujifilm X-T5.

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STREET PHOTOGRAPHY IN OSAKA

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THE DETAILS

As I explained above, we spent three nights in Osaka staying at the MIMARU Osaka Shinsaibashi East apart hotel, which I found was conveniently located to explore as much of the city as possible in such a short space of time.

I was instantly blown away from the photo opportunities on offer in Japan. I know it’s probably been said a million times before but there’s something about the light, the architecture, the calligraphy, pretty much everything that just seems to make for great photography. I found myself taking photos of post boxes and of vending machines; things that are completely mundane back home suddenly became extraordinary.

From a personal point of view, it felt completely surreal capturing photos of my little one in such a unique destination; I certainly wasn’t travelling to Japan at the age of 2. Evelyn may never remember the trip (though it’s been 4 months or so and she still talks about it, remembering the smallest of details with perfect accuracy) but we will always have these photos to show her and remind ourselves in the future.

A word of warning, I haven’t managed to get anywhere near finishing off my Japan photos so think of this as perhaps a not quite complete collection of photos from our time in Osaka. Also, I was away with the family so the images are really just snapshots of our day to day explorations rather than having time to specifically focus on photography. I’ll add more photos as and when I get chance!

On The Streets: Kyoto
On The Streets: Tokyo

I have found over the last year or so, especially when travelling with a little one in tow, I don’t have the time to keep changing lenses so I try to stick to one zoom lens for the majority of the day unless I specifically go out on a photo walk during which I’ll use my favourite prime, the Fujifilm 35mm f/1.4. The zoom lens I used most during my time in Japan was actually the Fujifilm 18-55mm f/2.8-4 which is a really great piece of kit. Our trip came just before the release of the mark 2 version of the Fujifilm 16-55mm f/2.8 which I probably would have wanted to have with me if I had the opportunity.

You can find a detailed post on everything I took to Japan right here!

All of the colour shots are JPEGs, pretty much straight from the Fujifilm X-T5, with my Classic Negative recipe. I used RAW + JPEG which meant I could convert every single image to my Acros recipe and see Japan in glorious black and white.

THE PHOTOS

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