12- Focus: My Way Out
When the world shut down in 2020, I lost everything I had just begun to build. Tourism vanished overnight. All my bookings were canceled. My dream of becoming a full-time guide dissolved as the borders closed and silence took over the streets of Tokyo.
But I still had one thing:
A camera.
Before the pandemic, I had bought an entry-level mirrorless camera. I thought that if I wanted to thrive as a guide, being able to take good photos for my guests would be a nice bonus. Nothing more.
Then the emergency declaration hit. Restaurants sat empty. Owners were panicked. But food delivery apps like Uber Eats were booming. And I saw something.
I thought, “If restaurants can’t get people to come in, they’ll need to bring the food to the people—and they’ll need great photos to do it.”
I dove into YouTube tutorials and taught myself how to shoot food. I learned how to set up artificial lighting in my tiny apartment. I discovered the tricks of steam, glisten, and angles. Slowly, my photos started to look like the ones in magazines.
And then, I started getting calls.
From ramen shops, sushi counters, curry houses.
I became the guy who made food look irresistible online.
Over the next three years, I photographed dishes from over 300 restaurants. In the middle of a pandemic that broke the tourism industry, I reinvented myself as a food photographer—surviving not because I had a business plan, but because I noticed a gap and threw myself into it with everything I had.
What started as a backup skill…
became the very thing that saved me.
