Tokyo Wrapped in Silence: Asakusa Under Snow (Featured in Tokyo Camera CLub 2013)

Captured with a Sony NEX-3 | 3-second long exposure

A quietness you don’t often see in Asakusa. I tried the composition to pull the eye cleanly upward from the snow foreground to the five storied pagoda 五重塔, with that glowing amber against the cold blue-white ground. It doesn’t happen often — Snow, 雪 in Tokyo is a brief visitor, gone before most of us find our gloves. But that night in 2013, Asakusa slowed down. The pagoda 五重塔 glowed like an ember against the pale hush of snow, its golden tiers rising through the cold air.

I remember the quiet most — no crowds, no chatter, just the soft rhythm of snow underfoot and the faint hum of temple lights. Even the clock near the pagoda seemed to tick more slowly, as if time itself bowed for a moment. When the snow touches Tokyo, it changes the city’s texture. The familiar becomes sacred. Neon softens, edges blur, and the noise dissolves into something almost meditative. Asakusa that night wasn’t just a photo. It was a pause — a still frame in a city that rarely stands still. 儚いけど、美しいね (hakanai kedo utsukushii meaning “fleeting, yet beautiful)

This was my first viral creations which caught some 1900 likes on Tokyo Camera Club(東京カメラ部) Facebook page.