Little Anime Girl on Takeshita Street

This little anime girl on Takeshita Street in Tokyo was hysterical. If you get a chance to get to Tokyo, definitely go by Takeshita street. It’s an amazing walking street with lots of opportunity street photography, especially on afternoon and evening. There’s a lot of little shops along the street but the interesting part is all the teens and young adults who show up and walk about in costume. This girl was an example of that.

I noticed her at the restaurant that I was having breakfast at as she was freshening up her makeup. The reason I noticed was because she reached directly through her glasses to freshen her eye liner at which point I realized that the glasses didn’t have glass in them. I took a few shots from afar but couldn’t get a good one so decided to approach her directly. She didn’t speak any English but I was with a friend named Drew who speaks decent Japanese. He told her that I was a journalist and would like to take some photos for an article.

She loved that idea and retouched her makeup and then posed. This was a fun pose and I took a few shots.

Then I looked out from behind the camera and smiled at her. She giggled and I caught this photo. I loved this photo because it pulled her out of her character a little and showed her fun spirit.

But when I showed her the photo, she shook her head and reset with a new pose with her hands tucked into her sleeves. It was adorable.

I still love the one of her smiling the best. I think it captures the real her.

There are a handful of lessons here.

• Let your models do the poses that they want to do but also to try and catch them with their guard down and take some candid photos as well.
• Don’t be afraid of approaching interesting people.
• Take a lot of shots because you’ll likely miss the best photos if you only take one.