Hi, everyone! I’m Yuichi Mori, a documentary photographer.
Now here August. The extremely hot days continue this summer as well—how are you doing?
Soon after finishing the Tokyo Documentary Photo 2026 in early July, I immediately started to prepare exhibitions and events scheduled to take place across the country from August through October—and with business trips piling on top of that, I’ve entered a very busy period.
Amid all this, staff members from the local NGO MARADECA, based on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao, visited Japan, and I spent a few days showing them around Tokyo.
This NGO is based in the Muslim city of Marawi in western Mindanao, and helped me a lot during my coverage to Mindanao in 2017, 2018, and this past June.
When I reunited with them during my coverage June —our first meeting in about eight years— I got to know that they were planning a trip to Japan in July. That’s how I ended up showing them around Tokyo this time.
At first, I thought only about four or five people would be coming to Japan, but it turned out to be a large group of 13! I took them around by train, and needless to say, it was chaos lol.
Considering Tokyo’s extremely complex and crowded train network, I learned that for groups of five or six or more, it’s safer and more cost-effective to charter a van.
In Tokyo, we visited tourist spots like Asakusa and Shibuya. Since everyone was Muslim, I also took them to the Otsuka Masjid and the Tokyo Camii to intaract with Muslims in Japan. For meals, I took them to halal restaurants.
On other days, they spent the whole day at Disneyland (I didn’t join them), and we chartered a van to tour the area around Lake Kawaguchiko, where you can see Mount Fuji. It was a shame that Mount Fuji was almost completely hidden by clouds.
By the way, the current exchange rate is about 2.5 yen to 1 Philippine peso. Since the prices in Japan is very high for Filipinos, they went on a shopping for souvenirs at relatively affordable places like Don Quijote.
In the Philippines, the culture of “pasalobon” (Tagalog for “souvenir”) is deeply rooted, so bringing back souvenirs for family, relatives, and friends seems to be a must when traveling. So next time I go to the Philippines, I’m thinking to bring some souvenirs with me.
And so, a whirlwind trip in Japan for a few days came to an end, and they returned home safely. They were completely exhausted from walking every day, and confused and getting lost in the train network some times. But in the end, they seemed to fully enjoy their time in Japan.
Personally, when I’m covering around the world, I usually rely on the help of local people to carry out my activities, but this time, I was on the other side, and had a great opportunity to interact with them and deepen my relationships with them.
Moving forward, I hope to continue covering on the reconstruction and peace process in the Islamic regions of Mindanao while keeping my connections with the people of Marawi.
And I’m thinking to plan to hold an event related to my June coverage to Mindanao in October or later, after various exhibitions have concluded. I’ll let you know the details as soon as they’re finalized, so stay tuned!
“SHASHINKA-GYO” — Behind the scenes with documentary photographer Yuichi Mori. New episodes on Sunday at 18:00 JST.
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