Hey film wasters ! It has been an eternity since I've browsed through this forum, but the last academic year was crazy.
Anyway, it's good to be back. For my master's thesis in Architecture, I'll be working partly on Tokyo. So I have now the perfect excuse to realize a life-long dream and visit Japan. I'm going there during the whole month of August.
Now comes the usual travel film photography questions. As far as gear goes, I settled on what has the highest ratio of portability and output quality.
I will travel with a Ricoh digital point and shoot and my Leica M6 and 35mm lens.
Where I need film wasters' wisdom is "traveling with film". I plan on purchasing film locally, as it is more than available in Tokyo and the price is roughly the same (slightly cheaper) than in Switzerland. This also helps to avoid X-ray during international travel. But then again, I read all sorts of conflicting opinion on the fogging dangers. I order to push the concept further, I was also thinking of having the film processed in Tokyo and only traveling with the developed negatives. So, to make things as economical as possible, I'll use the cheapest fujifilm color negative film available.
Well, that's the plan for the time being. Do any of you guys and gals have any experience with that ?
The point is to backpack lightly and still be able to print the pictures in the darkroom of my university.
Apart from the purely technical aspect of photography in Japan, are there particular things you noted while visiting this country that was worthy of sharing with a first-time Japan visitor ?