"I left for Tokyo for the first time in Spring 2006. My friend Sara had found a job there and I decided to go with her to discover the city she grew up in—a completely new environment that I knew close to nothing about and where nothing in particular had interested me before.

At first I felt invisible. I walked along the streets without meeting a single person in they eye. In the train that I took almost every morning from Nakano to Shinjuku, hardly a word was spoken. The city and its inhabitants seemed impenetrable, but this dense, concentrated life was still fascinating to me. Desperately looking for a way to break out of this feeling of isolation and loneliness, I began taking my pocket camera to the streets and parks. Instead of photographing gigantic towers or endless crowds, I turned to narrow side streets and scenes in the heart of this city that at once attracted and repelled me. I wanted to meet the locals, to be a part of the metropolis, to make Tokyo mine. The photographs in this series represent what I saw and the people I mixed with during those eighteen months. I believe that the people who I met helped me understand what being a part of Tokyo is now. Some of them became friends, and with others I shared only passing moments.

My work took shape through chance encounters with no other guide than my own curiosity, my mood, and my impressions of the city I was discovering. I worked as instinctively as possible; Taking photos is like improvising a game. It seems to me that the more a photo is spontaneous and unplanned, the more it feels alive, and the more it begins to transition from a demonstration to existence."

Jacob Aue Sobol