Don't Look Now

It’s twelve metres of open-mouthed lion and it is, for an inanimate object, genuinely intimidating. People will tell you the mouth swallows evil spirits and draws in good fortune. Standing under it, that isn’t the read. It looks like it intends to swallow whatever happens to be in front of it.

The form is that of a Japanese-style lion as it’s been rendered for centuries. The detail in it is superb and the whole design holds together in a way that photographs of it never quite convey.

We’d come in from Tokyo on the Shinkansen and the shrine was one of our first stops in the city. It was busy when we arrived, shoulder to shoulder in the courtyard at times. Then the rain started and most people left. The wet lifted the colour in the statue and put some weight in the sky, and the umbrellas that stayed behind gave me Snack Time — one person alone in front of the mouth, which does more for the scale of the thing than an empty frame would.

Afterwards we spent the rest of the day in Dotonbori, shooting the streets, eating, working our way through the capsule machines.