When I was 22, I decided to move my entire life to Tokyo, Japan. After finishing university I packed my bags, found a roommate, and got a sweet apartment just outside the neighbourhood of Ikebukuro in north Tokyo. 3 months later I was back on a plane to Canada, there was a myriad of reasons I decided to return home, and I realize now that I was more lost in my own sense of purpose than anything to do with the place I was living. It wouldn’t be another year until I quit the desk job I was working to start freelancing as a filmmaker full time. Now I spend a month in Japan every year shooting projects for myself and a variety of companies. The idea of even being a filmmaker or photographer for my full time job was not even a dream, it was just something that couldn’t happen. How wrong I was.

These photos are from that time of uneasiness and uncertainty, they carry a sort of melancholic drama in them to me. At the time, I was trying to understand why I wasn’t happy living in the place I had dreamed of moving to for years.

To be paired with Mount Kimbie’s album ‘Cold Spring Fault Less Youth’