City - Rolf Koizumi

Winter in Hamburg

In recent years, we rarely had snow in Hamburg. This year however, we got a few days of snow and some freezing temperatures, so I went out and took some pictures! Temperatures went down to around -12° C in the morning. At one point I even started to hope that

February 24, 2021 - 2 min read

Favorite crowded places – Fushimi Inari-Taisha

The Fushimi Inari-Taisha is a shrine in Kyoto which attracts masses of tourists with its thousands of Torii-gates, making it one of the popular Instagram spots — a place you want to avoid? I like Kyoto. It's a lively city charming with its many old temples and shrines scattered throughout the

November 10, 2020 - 3 min read

Television tower Hamburg

Moving to an apartment on the sixth floor not only meant daily hikes across thousands of stairs, but also quite a view of Hamburgs television tower – the Fernsehturm Hamburg. I always thought of Hamburg as a city with mostly bad weather. It's usually cloudy, rainy, cold, maybe even foggy, slippery

October 28, 2020 - 3 min read

Same place, different day – Der Spiegel

Earlier this year, I was out in the morning and hoping for some nice light. Going by the building of the German magazine Der Spiegel, I took a picture – and made a mental note to come back another day. Der Spiegel in bad weather.It was a gloomy morning, I

October 20, 2020 - 2 min read

A dramatic sky above the Elbe

The forecast said fog. The whole morning a day earlier was foggy. So when I stood up and looked outside, I was delighted to see fog – with an almost clear sky above that. I was a little bummed because I missed my chance the day before. Or rather, because I

October 15, 2020 - 2 min read

Preventing floods in Tokyo

The Metropolitan Area Outer Underground Discharge Channel (also called Gaikaku in Japanese) is just outside of Tokyo and was built to prevent floods in the area while heavy rain or typhoons. There are five huge underground tanks, connected via tunnel leading into this huge hall, which fills up when the

October 04, 2020 - 3 min read

Creating your own ink in Tokyo

If you like to write or draw using ink, you can create your own ink at inkstand by kakimori in Tokyo, Japan. Last year in Japan, my girlfriend wanted to spend her birthday doing something special – mixing her own ink colors to take home with her. She found this small

October 03, 2020 - 2 min read