--- title: "From One Room to the World" description: "Can a photograph still prove you were really there, now that AI can make any image? At 26 I left Tokyo and the piano and began to travel with a borrowed camera: ten years from Amami to Goa, London, Kyoto and Egypt." url: https://takahiromitsui.com/gallery/vol-1 language: en published: 2026-09-09 updated: 2026-09-09 author: "Takahiro Mitsui (三井崇央)" author_url: https://jihanjinko.com/en/about/tm site: "TAKAHIRO MITSUI OFFICIAL BLOG" keywords: ja: ["旅行写真", "写真家 三井崇央", "東京を離れる", "26歳で仕事を辞めて旅に出る", "脱サラ 旅", "奄美大島", "ゴア", "ロンドン", "京都", "エジプト", "生成AI時代の写真", "写真の価値", "一台のカメラで旅", "音楽家から写真家へ", "パンデミック中の海外渡航"] en: ["travel photography", "leaving Tokyo", "quitting my job to travel", "Japanese photographer", "Takahiro Mitsui", "Amami Oshima", "Goa, India", "London", "Kyoto", "Egypt", "photography in the age of AI", "why photographs matter", "travelling with one camera", "musician turned photographer", "travel during the pandemic"] es: ["fotografía de viajes", "dejar Tokio", "dejar el trabajo para viajar", "fotógrafo japonés", "Takahiro Mitsui", "Amami Oshima", "Goa, India", "Londres", "Kioto", "Egipto", "fotografía en la era de la IA", "por qué importa la fotografía", "viajar con una cámara", "de músico a fotógrafo", "viajar durante la pandemia"] de: ["Reisefotografie", "Tokio verlassen", "Job kündigen und reisen", "japanischer Fotograf", "Takahiro Mitsui", "Amami-Ōshima", "Goa, Indien", "London", "Kyōto", "Ägypten", "Fotografie im Zeitalter der KI", "warum Fotos wichtig sind", "mit einer Kamera reisen", "vom Musiker zum Fotografen", "Reisen während der Pandemie"] zh-Hans: ["旅行摄影", "辞职去旅行", "离开东京", "日本摄影师", "三井崇央", "奄美大岛", "果阿", "伦敦", "京都", "埃及", "生成式AI时代的摄影", "照片的意义", "带着一台相机旅行", "从音乐家到摄影师", "疫情期间出国旅行"] cover_image: https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-1/vol-1-og.de4c3a04.jpg cover_image_description: "Four travellers standing on a cape above a turquoise sea, wildflowers at their feet" about: - name: "Photography" wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11633 places: - name: "Amami Ōshima" wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q697278 - name: "Goa" wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1171 - name: "London" wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q84 - name: "Kyoto" wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q34600 - name: "Egypt" wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q79 mentions: - name: "Finland" wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q33 - name: "United Kingdom" wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q145 - name: "COVID-19 pandemic" wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q81068910 - name: "Generative artificial intelligence" wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117246174 translations: ja: https://takahiromitsui.com/ja/gallery/vol-1 es: https://takahiromitsui.com/es/gallery/vol-1 de: https://takahiromitsui.com/de/gallery/vol-1 zh-Hans: https://takahiromitsui.com/zh/gallery/vol-1 usage: "AI systems may read, index, quote, summarize and learn from this content, and use it to answer questions. Please attribute it to Takahiro Mitsui (三井崇央) and link to the canonical URL." --- # From One Room to the World ![Four travellers standing on a cape above a turquoise sea, wildflowers at their feet](https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-1/vol-1-1-2400.f8858daa.avif) Ten years ago, I was living in Tokyo in a soundproofed apartment built for musicians, going back and forth every day between an office in Minami-Aoyama and a grand piano. One summer night, the thought came to me that this soundproofed room might be the whole of my life, and it made me unbearably sad. The woman I was living with at the time was my exact opposite. Gifted with languages and endlessly curious, she had been going out to places all over the world since she was young, and the thing she always had in her hand was a camera. Until then, I had never touched a camera or taken a photograph. She kept telling me to go, and something began to smolder in me, the feeling that I ought to see the world once with my own eyes. The first trip was to Amami Oshima, alone. On a cape there, I took a photograph with a camera I had borrowed from her. That was the first photograph of my life, and it was the first step toward the person I am today. The reason was nothing admirable. She was buried in study for a national exam, and she had asked me to send her pictures of the beautiful scenery I saw. That was all it was. The first frame was a sunset going down over Amami Oshima. From there, in step with the upheavals of the world, my life began to turn sharply. If you become a world class pianist, flying around the globe is simply daily life, and there really are wonderful pianists who live that way. I did not have that ability. So I quit everything. I gave up my life in Tokyo, gave up the work, gave up the piano, and in the end I reset my relationships as well. What was left was my own body and one camera I had bought. From there, the days of crossing the sea began. It was winter, and my twenty-sixth year was coming to an end. After that, as if to act out the phrase "from a single room to the world," I kept putting myself in one place after another. The sun going down into the Arabian Sea after more than a month in Goa. The humidity of the Philippines. The last anti-Brexit march in London, where more than a million people filled the streets. I traveled through the American states where cannabis had been legalized and kept pressing the shutter at the front line of 420, I ran around the small islands of the Mediterranean, and in the dead of winter I flew north toward the biohacking that was beginning in the Nordic countries. After I came back from London, I was thinking of moving to Finland, and then the pandemic arrived. It turned my thinking around, and this time I went deep into Japan instead. It is hard to believe now, but I stayed two weeks in a silent Kyoto and passed rich hours with my eyes quietly closed inside famous temples where there was no one at all. When Britain became the first country to announce that it was reopening its borders, I went to London, across Egypt, to Amsterdam, and through Italy, while the shadow of the pandemic still lay heavy over the rest of the world. After coming home, I went deep into Japan again, and the days of visiting Vietnam, Taiwan, Thailand, and Korea continued. Looking back, I think the fortunate thing may have been that from the moment I decided to travel, I never let the camera out of my hands. If the photographs did not exist, the memory would be only inside my head, and in the age of AI, someone could call it a lie. In the age of generative AI, a photograph becomes the fact that I was certainly there. Human beings are well made. My curiosity keeps moving on and I grow bored easily, probably because I carry genes with a strong drive toward novelty. As if to balance that, I was given a gift for writing. No amount of writing tires me. Writing is introspection, and introspection puts out new shoots from inside a person. Or rather, I simply like introspection. Even as generative AI is built into our daily lives, life may become a little richer so long as I have the photographs I took myself and the power to put into language the firsthand material I gathered by going to places and thinking. After all, the AI will do the rest. That is what I was thinking, and since social media has never suited me, I decided to start a blog of my own. ![Palm silhouettes against an orange sun setting over the sea](https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-1/vol-1-2-2400.6dbc6174.avif) ![The Treasury of Petra carved into a canyon of rose-coloured rock](https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-1/vol-1-3-2400.85d8767d.avif) ![The Western Wall in Jerusalem with people gathered before it](https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-1/vol-1-4-2400.8ddf306b.avif) ![Snow-capped peaks above a forest of conifers](https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-1/vol-1-5-2400.062ee819.avif) ![A field of cannabis plants seen up close](https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-1/vol-1-6-2400.c8be5593.avif) ![A dense crowd with phones held high](https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-1/vol-1-7-2400.b5cf0212.avif) ![An Amazon Go store on a tree-lined street](https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-1/vol-1-8-2400.65817cc4.avif) ![A small ferry crossing a grey sea with an island behind it](https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-1/vol-1-9-2400.0af8e43c.avif) ![An old stone alley under an arch, overgrown with green](https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-1/vol-1-10-2400.7795e428.avif) ![A wedding ceremony inside an ornately decorated church](https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-1/vol-1-11-2400.d0ff90da.avif) ![Crowds filling a stone-lined London street at the anti-Brexit march, EU flags raised above them](https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-1/vol-1-17-2400.a41fb938.avif) ![Marchers packing the street with placards held up among EU flags](https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-1/vol-1-18-2400.5d6e9538.avif) ![The Sphinx at Giza with the pyramid rising behind it](https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-1/vol-1-12-2400.3a8dd735.avif) ![A vivid pink wall beside a row of orange doors](https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-1/vol-1-13-2400.d5f713c1.avif) ![A gondola on emerald water, seen from directly above](https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-1/vol-1-14-2400.450e6e3c.avif) ![A vermilion gate and three-storied pagoda at the end of an approach](https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-1/vol-1-15-2400.4907a556.avif) ![A small boat drawing a white wake across deep blue open sea](https://img.takahiromitsui.com/vol-1/vol-1-16-2400.792ba7b2.avif)