Day 120: Hey guys! We thought we'd do a quick post to show you some of our people shots from Japan. We were so sad to hear about the earthquake and tsunami in Japan recently, especially now that we've been there and experienced the kindness of the people and the beauty of the country first hand. The photos below were taken at Shibuya crossing- the world's largest intersection. It was a six way crossing that was constantly filled with about 1,000 people every two minutes. It was amazing to watch the massive amount of people coming and going for hours on end as we watched from an overlooking Starbucks...

The people in Tokyo have such awesome style, it was such a fun place to people watch. We had a lot of fun at an area called Harajuku where all the younger people hang out, I can see why Gwen Stefani loves their style so much...


We still have more random Japan photos of temples, statues and such, so we'll be uploading them later on this week. Our hearts go out to all the people in Japan and we feel very fortunate to have been able to travel there and have such a great experience, it truly is an amazing country and we hope it recovers quickly. We hope everyone is doing well back home - we love you lots!!



With love from South Korea,
Shayna & Brandon xo

Day 109: Time for part two of our Japanese adventure. These photos are all from Tsukiji fish market which is the biggest wholesale fish market located in central Tokyo. It handles over 2,000 tons of fish a day and is the center of about $5.5 billion dollars of fish trade each year. We were told to go early in the morning to catch all the action and although we missed the 5 a.m. tuna auction, there was still plenty to see once we arrived. Now, it wasn't quite as easy to get there as the Lonely Planet made it seem, but after dodging some aggressive cart loaders, scooters and fish trucks we made it to entrance of the whole sale market.

Once inside we were amazed with the sheer amount of activity happening all around us, colourful fisherman characters quickly going about their business almost oblivious to our presence.

The photo opportunities were everywhere, the trickiest part though was not getting in peoples way. We had to be vigilant not to get in the way of deliveries, pick ups, customers and local fishermen doing their thing.

As we snapped away we got the vague sense that tourists were not looked on too highly by the grizzled fishermen and that we were somewhat of a nuisance. We tried our friendly foreigner approach to gain their acceptance but the fishermen seemed relatively unmoved by our efforts.

However, once we bought some sashimi from one of the stalls, it seemed to change the fishermen's perception of us from tourists to customers. It was also nearing the end of their work day and it showed on their faces...

This younger fisherman was REALLY happy to get off work...

As we were leaving, one of the Japanese fisherman (pictured below) yelled out "Where are you from?" and when we told him Canada, he proceeded to speak to us in French. We must have looked surprised and he quickly noticed that we had no idea what he was saying. He said this was the first time he was able to teach French to Canadians which gave him a good laugh.

We figured it was a good time to leave when we saw them discarding large fish heads and closing up their stalls for the day.

We still have so many photos we want to share from our time in Japan that we'll be doing another post soon. We hope everyone is doing great back home, and we miss you all very much.

With love from South Korea,

Brandon & Shayna xo