wejetset - magazine - IN THE MOMENT

IN THE MOMENT

Travel Chronicles is an editorial feature for wejetset’s online magazine. Through an open and casual conversation it highlights how travel has shaped the talents, perspectives and experiences of creative and business professionals worldwide. This edition features Aiko Ishikawa.

Aiko is a japanese translator and talented photographer. On a snowy day in January we caught up with her to discuss work and travel. With all of her demanding assignments, we were interested in hearing about how she stays in the moment and appreciates the places she visits while capturing them by pen and camera. Click Read More for the interview and additional photos.

I came to New York at a really crucial point in my life – at fifteen years old. For me pop culture was blossoming and there was so much going on. When I first came to New York, Japanese culture wasn’t as cool just yet. Maybe if you were into Japanimation you knew about it, you knew all the characters from Dragon BallZ. Then as I got older, and New York caught on, I realized “Oh, I guess I’m cool for being Japanese.” Instant credibility type of thing. Now, if people realize I’m Japanese, they feel immediately curious about what I know. And sometimes I don’t know everything! I feel that even more being bilingual and being bi-cultural.

Because I started as a writer, a journalist, I ended up traveling to different places for press events and there were a lot of British journalists that gave me jobs for UK magazines, writing about Japanese culture. And through that, I met people from labels who were looking for translators, so now I work as a translator. I try to be accurate in translating people’s feelings, more than exactly the words that they use.

I love cities, period. Cities in any place bring people from different backgrounds, different nationalities, different races, different financial backgrounds, what have you… and that dynamic has always been my inspiration.

I also have an appreciation for different types of travel, but I definitely enjoy going to places where I know people. I don’t believe in going to a place for less than seven days, so I try to stay at least a week, and if there’s a time difference, I try to calculate that so I can make sure that I actually spend seven full days, from Sunday to Saturday night. I think that every day has a different face in each place.

I decided that whenever I have to go on an assignment and write about it and also take pictures, I’m only giving myself the first ten minutes of being there to take pictures, and the rest, I just try to experience it. I give myself time limits… things happen during the course of an event but at some point you have to give up and focus on how you feel about it. When you take a picture, you want to make sure it’s good, and that’s a different way of experiencing an environment. I’ve realized I’m more focused in that ten minutes or five minutes because I know that’s all I got, so I have to get at least one image that’s banging in that ten minutes.