In her own words:

“This shot was taken at Meiji Jingu in Tokyo on Nov 3rd 2008, the final day of the Autumn Festival. While watching a musical performance on a temporary stage at the crossroads, without any signal as far as I was aware, the Japanese people started to turn from the stage and look down the road toward the shrine. It seemed strangely rude behavior for the Japanese since the musicians were still playing and neither I nor the other gaijin (foreigners) noticing the change and peering in the same direction could see anything down the road.

After a minute or so the musicians, too, ceased and the whole crowd in front of the stage shifted their focus away from the stage, many leaving prime positions to line up along the road, and a mood of solemn expectation settled on the crowd. It was a good several minutes before these priests came into view and another few till they reached us and the crowd was completely silent all the while. As they neared the Japanese began to bow causing several gaijin to check themselves and lower their cameras until the Japanese themselves straightened and raised their own cameras.

At this point a group of large gaijin crowded in front of me to take shots and my view was blocked. Before I got my new beauty, this would have annoyed me no end but I just switched my camera to live-view and held it up over the shoulders of two of the rude men and watched through my viewfinder and snapped this shot – hooray for live-view!”

Photo details: Pentax K20D, Tamron 18-250 lens

You can find more of Danielle’s photography on her Flickr page and observations on life as an expat wife and aspiring writer in Japan at her blog Narrative Disorder.

This and other great images of Japan can be found in The Nihon Sun Japan Photo Gallery.