1. Driving through the black night, sitting cramped in the back of the car. Wanting to drown out the Bob Marley on the car stereo I play Bob Dylan from 1975 at loud volume over my headphones.

2. Eating curry rice for breakfast, and enjoying it, and then tasting it all morning as it keeps coming back on me.

3. Three days in a hotel room which has no water to shower or with which to flush the toilet, sharing a room with a 60 year old guy I’ve only just met, and together we are colleagues for these few days. Drinking beers (bought from a vending machine outside the hotel room, beside the elevator) with him late into the night, listening to his stories of working in Vietnam during the war, and of his times in Beirut and Tiananmen Square. He tells me to have a son so that I can drink with him. He worries about his daughter who wants to be a photographer. He smokes by the open hotel room window, letting in a mosquito which I kill. He buys me evening beers to deaden me to the world, and his loud snores. I fall asleep as he continues drinking Kirin beer in the dark room, he gets up early to go for walks as I lay in my bed- who has the more energy?

4. Driving with colleagues in a car round and round a town looking for a restaurant which will fit within their per diems budget, myself and two others only wishing to eat in somewhere nice not caring too much about the expense, happy to pay for the meal ourselves. Sick of sandwhiches and bento boxes.

5. Trying to edit images on my laptop, sitting in a car, bouncing around on rural roads, the screen hitting the seat in front. I’m trying to save time so I can leave as soon as I send the pictures, to make a taxi journey to the nearest shinkansen station, the wish to get home ever more pressing.

6. Photographing a grey nuclear power plant in grey light, the rain beginning, my grey mood only lightening when a coastguard helicopter appears and hovers, the noise adding drama and excitement, it’s appearance makes my picture complete.

7. Trying to avoid stepping in a gully of water on the beach I don’t notice the sea approaching from behind and engulfing my left foot. Either way I get wet.

8. Sitting through a meeting in a hotel room where nothing is getting organised, and yet we have a conference call going via mobile phone speaker with someone in Europe. Me thinking what a complete waste of money it is. Me and my 60yr old room mate colleague looking at each other, both thinking this is time we could be out shooting.

9. Sending 17 images to my client on Thursday, and whilst eating a creamy melon bread on Friday smiling to myself as I drop a second set of 17 into Fetch ftp software window.

10. Managing to get away before the others, I share a 120USD taxi ride with two colleagues. I sit quietly in the front and they swop stories in the back. Stories of an almost seduction by a 29 year old porn star who whilst being interviewed decides to light candles and take a bath, and a hilarious story of a guy taking a viagra for a special night with a young woman, only to find himself red in the face and havng hot flushes and having to give her money to get a taxi home. Meanwhile our taxi journey takes longer than we thought, and then the only shinkansen isn’t a very fast one and stops all the time, then at Ohmiya someone has killed themselves on the train tracks so our homeward journey seems to drag on for ever. I get home about 3 hours later than I’d hoped, and have my first shower for three days.