Yokohama is not Tokyo, but Tokyo is close… with Zhi L from Yokohama
A big part why I chose to make an issue of Elska in Yokohama was specifically that I didn’t want to feature Tokyo. I think Tokyo is great but it’s too obvious, and also too big. Trying to squeeze a city like that into 160-ish Elska pages is madness. So in the end I went for Japan’s second biggest city, Yokohama.
The problem is that Yokohama is only an hour away from Tokyo so in a lot of ways people look at it as a suburb. As I discovered, it has a totally different feel to Tokyo and a style of its own, and you can spend a week here without getting bored or needing to go to the capital for anything.
When shooting the issue, although my assistant and I never left Yokohama to shoot, we did go into Tokyo twice for leisure. Once was to attend the Tokyo Pride march, and the other was to tourist out a bit… we went to the Line Friends shop in Harajuku, we hung out at a hedgehog café in Roppongi, and we got purposefully lost under the lights of Shinjuku. Leaving Yokohama was no sign of disrespect though. I totally recommend you to visit Yokohama, but it’s ok if you spend some time in Tokyo as well.
See more of Zhi L and read his story in Elska Magazine issue (09) Yokohama (Japan)