A Wet September

2 Oct

Tokyo, September 2026

September in Tokyo is usually a threshold. Summer has not quite released the city, but the light begins to change and the first signs of autumn appear quietly at its edges.

This year, the rain seemed to remain. It has felt wetter than any September I can remember since moving here.

These photographs come from my last two walks through the city. I was not following a route or looking for a particular subject. I was simply paying attention to the way the rain had altered familiar streets.

Pedestrian carrying a transparent umbrella past a red building and vending machine on a rainy Tokyo street.

In the rain, even an ordinary street changes, people move differently. They wait beneath narrow roofs, pass quickly between buildings or pause for a moment before continuing.

Red three-wheeled bicycle parked beneath dense green vines on a wet residential street in Tokyo.

The green does not simply frame the city. Fed by the humidity of September, it gathers around bicycles, reaches across fences and climbs the sides of buildings. It occupies whatever has been left still for long enough.

Man holding a transparent umbrella at the entrance to a narrow, rain-soaked path surrounded by greenery in Tokyo.

Tokyo is often described through speed and density. Expecially on days like these, I notice something else: small passages, softened boundaries. The city seems to withdraw into itself.

Person in a white raincoat standing beneath large trees beside a fence on a rainy day in Tokyo.

No dramatic event happening. Only rain, vegetation and the gestures of people moving through an ordinary day. This is what keeps me walking: the feeling that the city is constantly being rewritten by weather, time and everything that grows unnoticed around it.