‘I get lots of lovely pictures ... and reactions’

Deadline: Tokyo commuting is not stress-free

British-born photographer Alfie Goodrich lives in Tokyo with his Japanese wife and young family. As well as working as a photographer for international publications, he runs japanorama.co.uk, providing Japanese imagery.

“The first time I came here I remember describing Tokyo to people as the closest thing to going off-world,” says Goodrich.

“I had experienced childhood holidays in various parts of the world where I had a feeling I was going back in time,” he says, “Japan gave me the first experience of feeling like I had gone forwards in time.”

Born in Canterbury, Kent, he had a brief spell in the British army and then moved to Monmouth, South Wales, before going to art college in Cheshire. During his photography course there he spent five months travelling in the US before returning to study in Plymouth in the UK. He then worked in Wales and London in the music industry before settling in Japan in 2007.

Goodrich’s first trip to Japan was in 2000 to visit his Japanese fiancée, who had returned from London to Tokyo to look after her sick mother. He managed to set up Japanese distribution for the record label he was managing in London and followed her.

“Everything seemed so very different. As I was living in London at the time, I found myself making lots of comparisons between there and Tokyo. In Tokyo the transport was efficient. In London getting to work could be as stressful as working itself. Tokyo commuting was not stress-free as the trains were crowded at peak times, but the 8.01am train was there at exactly 8.01am and everything was so clean.”

Goodrich soon realised that there were advantages to his new home. “I have always thought that if one were to take the best things about the UK and the best things about Japan and combine them, what an excellent country that would make.”

The couple moved to Japan permanently in 2007 after both of Goodrich’s parents passed away. At the time they had two young children and now they have three.

Alfie Goodrich

Says Goodrich, “We wanted them to experience Japan, learn Japanese and get a feeling of the culture and country.”

Dual-nationality is not allowed under Japanese law so when the couple’s children reach 21 they will be expected to choose one or the other. “In reality most mixed-race kids here keep both passports; they just get clever about which they use to exit and enter the country.”

The family live in the same place now as they did when they first arrived: Minami-oi, in the Shinagawa Ward of Tokyo, which is about 30 minutes on foot and by train to Tokyo Station.

Because of the high buildings that line main roads, the acoustics one street back from the main road in Tokyo are very different. Goodrich explains, “We live on the main road to Yokohama. The front of the flat is noisy, with the road and the Keikyu Railway line passing nearby, but on the other side of the flat it’s very quiet.”

Tokyo has no strict laws on noise-pollution and, as well as the trains and the road traffic, says Goodrich, “everyone seems to have a megaphone and be blaring about something or other”.

Tokyo, like many large cities, is the kind of place where you can live next door to people and never see them.

Goodrich sometimes teaches English to a few of the local children “and one of the old fellas downstairs has a bit of English, so he and I talk sometimes as he likes speaking the language”.

Visually, Tokyo is paradise for a photographer. And logistically too, says Goodrich. “I have none of the issues I have with taking photos in public places in the UK. It’s also still fine to take pictures of kids here and I have had some lovely interaction with kids and their parents after taking shots. We talk, we swap contacts, I send them the photos. I would be arrested in the UK for that – and as a suspected terrorist for the rest of the street shots I take here.”

Japan is, to a large extent, the source of much camera and photography technology in use today, and there is still a respect for the camera here, which appeals to Goodrich.

He says, “I get lots of lovely pictures of everyday life and because I try to engage with people – showing them the shot on the screen of my camera when possible – I get lots of lovely reactions too.

“I also wear a badge saying I am a photographer. The Japanese are big on badges and armbands and rules. If they see the badge, they are usually cool with me doing what I am doing.”

It’s not all cherry blossoms and 24-hour cafés though. Says Goodrich, “Japan is fascinating but English people have a little more free thinking and individuality, which I miss sometimes.”

Moreover, straddling both cultures can be tricky, as Goodrich has discovered: “It’s got better over the years, but the better a gaijin [alien] gets at the language, the less the Japanese like it. Suddenly they don’t have such an easy way of keeping their things to themselves any more. There are lots of people who very much like having foreigners in Japan. There is, though, a minority which makes a lot of noise and gets a fair amount of publicity who don’t like it.”

Also, Goodrich describes Japan as “a country where conformity is king, like it or loathe it”. He adds, “Being a foreigner is obviously about as non-conformist as it gets. So sometimes that makes for problems.”

The family don’t think they’ll live in Tokyo for ever, “but Japan – for all its foibles – feels like home now and I love working and living here,” says Goodrich, “I’m not a big one for making generalisations, but I can tell you two things that would be true of almost every English ex-pat in Tokyo: they miss proper cheese and real bacon.”