Shooting Tokyo at night: five spots and the settings for each

This is not a walking tour with photos attached. It's a shoot with someone coaching you: five locations chosen for the DIRECTION of the light and the hour, and at each one your guide gives you the aperture, the shutter speed and where to plant the camera. A phone works too — most of what makes a night photo good isn't the camera.

You start at 6:20 PM, deliberately just before the light goes. The scramble is shot at blue hour, while the streetlights and the sky are still balanced — twenty minutes later the sky is flat black and the frame loses its depth. Then into the back lanes: stacked signage, reflections off wet asphalt. Nonbei Yokocho is the hardest exercise — narrow, dim, and absolutely no flash, because people are drinking in there. The penultimate stop goes high, for a long exposure on the compact tripod you're lent.

At the end the group reviews together and you pick three frames — those three are edited for you and sent afterwards. Six people maximum, small enough that your guide stands beside you and fixes each shot rather than addressing a group.