For the national holiday, Sports Day, I had a fitting assignment --  a women's bodybuilding competition in Tokyo.

It was my first time to cover bodybuilding, and as soon as I entered the venue I heard  cheers from the 1,500 spectators eyeing 68 athletes from across Japan.

I hurried backstage to catch the competitors’ last preparations before the judging, and followed a trail of plastic, blanketing the floor, walls and furniture to protect the surroundings from the oil and skin toner creams covering the contestants.

Opening a door with a plastic-covered knob, I found the waiting room with over 30 bronzed and muscular women in bathing suits, aged from 27 to 56 and preparing for the stage.

In Japan traditionally a woman's beauty has been in her skin's whiteness, as well as her subtlety and frailty, as illustrated in the common saying, "Beautiful women die young."

But these women here were far from frail. Strong and powerful -- they were beautiful in the sense that they were completely devoted to the sport, which I imagine must be a challenge in today’s Japan, where women are still sometimes encouraged to embody the concept of "kawaii", or cuteness.

The bodybuilders stood proudly while working out with ropes and weights until their moment on stage. They helped each other dab on skin toner, giving advice to newcomers on posing.

Once the competition started, the women stepped on stage, smiling and flexing muscles that showed their long hours of training. They pushed themselves until their muscles quivered, blood vessels puffed up and sweat rolled down their hard bodies.

Looking at it through my camera lenses caused me to unconsciously hold my breath through each pose. My first impression was that their bodies were too extreme to appreciate, but as I continued snapping I imagined the tedious yet painstaking training required to attain their buff physiques.

Still, training doesn't resolve everything. Takako Soma, a 42-year-old competitor in the sport for 13 years, told me: "I have to dab this skin tone cream a lot to hide my light coloured skin, as I can't get a sun tan because my skin is sensitive."

 Photo credits: REUTERS/Yuriko Nakao

Tokyo-based photography Kim Kyung-Hoon gains access to pregnant women being photographed for nude maternity portraits, a trend that’s on the rise in Japan.

Three years ago, a poster of a nude and heavily pregnant Britney Spears sparked concern in Japan before it was displayed in Tokyo’s subways because it was considered “too stimulating” for young commuters.

But today, an increasing number of women who have just one child later in life are flocking to photo studios to have their pregnant bellies photographed to celebrate their bodies during a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

“I was so happy during my pregnancy,” said 40-year-old Kumiko Yoda, who gave birth to a boy on July 19. “This moment will not come back to me again and these pictures are for my own enjoyment.”

Yoda was encouraged by a friend who showed her maternity nude photos that she had had taken of herself and just one month before her baby was born, Yoda discovered maternity photo studio “Ixchel” in Tokyo.

Initially, she posed showing only her belly but as the all-female staff at the studio helped her relax, she posed nude for the camera. The black-and-white pictures are displayed in her home.

“Whenever I see these pictures, I can recall how I looked and how happy I was when I was pregnant,” says Yoda.

The trend of taking pregnant nude photos, which has been growing over the past few years, exploded when J-pop singer ‘hitomi’ published a pregnant nude picture with her new album last June.

The picture was displayed on large billboards over busy streets in Tokyo and the related photo book became a bestseller, selling more than 10,000 copies in its first week of publication, according to local media.

“The special feeling of waiting for motherhood helps alleviate the fear of nudity. And with more women becoming pregnant at a late age, for them this is an experience that will never happen again,” said Yuko Ishizaki, an assistant professor at Japan Women’s University.

Mums-to-be pay around 35,000 yen ($368.2) for a studio photo shoot, which takes less than two hours in “Ixchel.”

“Before this boom, women didn’t know where to go to take these kinds of pictures even though they wanted to. Because of media attention, they easily found our studio,” said Natsuko Takada, the owner of photo studio “Ixchel.”

“When I opened my studio for maternity photos last year we had less than 10 customers a month but last month we had more than 70 customers,” said Takada.

($1 = 95.04 Yen)

On the last day of Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso's campaign for last week's lower house election, I went to cover Aso's speech in Kamakura to get pictures out as early as possible.

A large crowd of people waited for him to speak, but only a handful of cameraman were at the scene, perhaps reflecting the view that the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) was on its way to defeat.

During the election, it was common for politicians to go into crowds of voters to shake hands and as soon as Aso began finishing up his speech, I rushed towards the front row of the crowd with my wide 16mm lens.

Within moments, voters were reaching out their hands and I was practically nose to nose with Aso while angry bodyguards tried to shove me away. I don't give up easily if there is a chance of a good picture, though.

The next thing I knew, Aso himself suddenly grasped my hands and camera and told me: "You shouldn't be shooting here. You've got to obey the rules. Do you understand?"

It was quite a shock to have Japan's Prime Minister talking to me like this in front of a large number of people.

But while I was surprised the Prime Minister would speak directly to me, I tried to shoot more to get a nice picture. The bodyguards saw this, though, and in the next moment covered my lens to prevent me from taking more pictures.

The next evening, when Aso took his seat at a news conference at LDP headquarters to see the ballot results come in, he looked gloomy, totally different from the day before.

What was even more noticeable was the fact that the seats usually occupied by photographers covering the Prime Minister were vacant. I was sure that I wasn't alone in thinking that those photographers were already taking pictures of  soon-to-be Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama.

Photo credits: REUTERS/Yuriko Nakao

When you pack scores of journalists into a room and they're all trying to listen to, photograph, and film one person - like the head of a political party - it’s easy to get blocked by the people and things in front of you.

For a photographer, this is the kiss of death. It means not getting a picture. Next, your phone rings with an angry editor on the other end - a brief conversation is followed by a lengthy period of woe and despair. For this and other reasons, photographers go to great lengths to get a good photo position.

For Sunday’s Democratic Party of Japan election event, the first photographers arrived at 2 a.m. for an event that wasn’t expected to start until almost 8 p.m. - 16 hours later. Well before any big event photographers make a land grab vying for the best possible real-estate.

At popular events, once you’re in position it can be difficult to get out again with all the other photographers around. Waiting is just part of the job. Photographers also usually come armed with rolls of duct tape to mark out territory, stickers to place on chairs and tables, and ladders to see over those pesky tall people.

On the other hand, sometimes a little bit of obstruction can make a very interesting picture. Flags, people, and video cameras can be useful objects to “frame” a picture in order to concentrate the viewer’s eye on the subject.

When choosing a position, it’s a brave photographer indeed who, given the choice, purposely chooses a spot without a clear view. But sometimes the risk is worth it.

Photo credits: REUTERS/Toru Hanai, Yuriko Nakao, Issei Kato

Reuters Boston Photographer Brian Snyder spent a very long and claustrophobic day in the tiny dark hotel suite where a homeless nurse, Tarya Seagraves-Quee, and three of her four children have been living in Massachusetts for nearly two months.

A record number of families are now being put up in motels due to high unemployment and the rising number of homes going into foreclosure, costing taxpayers $2 million per month but providing a lifeline for desperate families.

Seagraves-Quee has found refuge in a motel after losing her job in Georgia more than a year ago and going without health-care for about 10 months. She suffers from multiple sclerosis, Aspergers syndrome, anemia and lupus, and now is scared she may have cancer. Two of her children, aged 16 and 6, are autistic. After losing her job, and facing repeated physical abuse from a boyfriend, she spent $700 - almost all her savings — on airline tickets for her family to stay with relatives in Boston.

Being homeless has actually helped Seagraves-Quee get the healthcare she needs.  Everyday she makes phone calls for and fills out applications for public housing in an effort to get out of the shelter/motel.  Some of the towns in the area she contacted are simply not taking any new applicants; in others, the ”wait list” for housing is 10 or even 40 years.

Brian’s audio slideshow on the life of the Tarya Seagraves-Quee and her family follows. It is narrated by Seagraves-Quee, who is also a gospel singer:

Audio slideshow produced by Toru Hanai and Kim Kyung-hoon. A full story is listed below.

ICHIKAWA, Japan - He is a typical man of age — a few white hairs cover his round head and he wears dentures.

But 75-year-old Shigeo Tokuda sat on a movie set on Monday wearing just a silk kimono and loin cloth about to have sex on film with a woman who is younger than his daughter.

Tokuda is Japan’s oldest pornographic movie star and was shooting his latest film in which he portrayed a master of sex.

The director said the films showed people that their sex lives did not have to end with old age, and in 16 years of making such movies Tokuda has acted up with women ranging from their 20s to as old as himself.

“I debuted at 59, and have played in more than 200 porno movies since then,” he said, using his screen name, not his real one in an interview on the set.

“I wanted to challenge what ordinary people did not, so I decided to be a porno actor.”

In Monday’s film he used vibrators, whips and candle lights to show the master satisfying a 36-year-old actress. The film was not scripted.

Tokuda turned to the pornographic industry late. He lived a typical Japanese office worker’s life as a travel agent after graduating from one of Tokyo’s elite colleges.

The career sideline came about because he was unsatisfied with a lack of story lines in sex movies he’d seen, which led to a discussion with a film producer about whether he could do better.

It took a couple of years of thinking about it but Tokuda eventually took his pants off for the camera.

Since then, he has became a popular figure in porn movies for rent in Japan, with its rapidly ageing population and long life expectancy. One in five Japanese is over 65 years old.

“Other old men think they can do it because he can. The elderly can feel secure and encouragement when they see his films,” said Gaichi Kono, the director of Tokuda’s latest film.

Japan’s elderly are rejecting the idea that growing old means slowing down, said Chineko Araki, a professor of social welfare from Den-en Chofu University.

“More than 50 percent of men over 65 are eager to have a sexual relationship with their partners,” she said in an email interview.

Tokuda’s films will soon be offered to Japanese retirement homes, exports beckon and they may be shown on the Internet.

Tokuda says his wife and daughter pretend not to know and his friends will never guess.

“But my job makes me keep alive,” he says, adding he plans to keep going at least till he hits 80 years old.

SAPPORO, Japan - Retirement can be a death knell for guide dogs, creatures who spend their lives caring for others, but a home in Japan is giving these canines a new lease on life in their twilight years. The Sapporo Retirement Home for Dogs, in the northern island of Hokkaido, has sheltered more than 200 animals since it opened in 1978, giving them the best possible care until they are either adopted by sighted humans or die.

“This is the last gift we can give these dogs who worked for people all their life,” said the home’s director Keiko Tsuji as she caressed the coat of Rick, a dog who is now paralyzed due to old age and can only feed from a tube. “Most of these dogs only live for 2 or 3 years after their retirement, and I want them to live comfortably for the rest of their lives,” she added.

Japan’s guide dogs must retire at the age of 11 or 12, because that is when their abilities, and physical strength, start to fail, according to the home’s staff. These aged dogs are then taken away from their masters because, after years of guiding, they will continue to perform their duties, putting themselves and their owners at risk.

The separation is difficult for both human and animal, and Tsuji, who has cared for dogs for more than 20 years, said that easing the transition from working dog to retiree is what the facility aims to do.

“What they need most is affection. They have lived very closely with people for a long time, so it’s very hard for them to feel isolated suddenly. It is essential for them to keep interacting with people,” she explained.

Only a few dogs live at the center permanently. Some are sent back to the home that raised them as puppies, and others are adopted, usually by workers at the center. Rick, whose emaciated body lies beneath a child’s blanket all day, is set to remain at the center, as is Yell, another guide dog who enjoys the facility’s sun room and all the affection he gets from the 12 caretakers.

The dogs are groomed, bathed, fed and exercised every day. The facility, which was refurbished recently, also has an on-site veterinarian and rehabilitation center for dogs who develop physical disabilities due to age.

While the center hopes to prolong the lives of the dogs and make them more comfortable, it also has a cemetery nearby for the canines who have passed on. A tomb stone commemorates the 250 guide dogs who died in Hokkaido and a memorial service is held in August of each year.

As photographers, we're always looking for quirky and exceptional feature items, so when we got a chance to shoot Japan's oldest porno star on the job, we knew we couldn't miss it.

It took six months to open the door to this underground industry before we got to meet 75-year-old Shigeo Tokuda at work this week.

On our way to the movie set, we were excited about finally getting to cover the story, but what we saw during the filming was far from what we had imagined. This was no sleek movie production with sex gods and goddesses. The movie was filmed in a small, old house just outside Tokyo that was too shabby to be called a movie set. The floor was covered with dust and dead cockroaches.

The director - a former porno actor who contracted a permanent slipped disk after exerting himself in more than 1,000 films - said he had paid 20,000 yen ($200) to rent the place for a day. For him, this is a high risk business, as he bears all the expenses. If his movie doesn't sell, he's out of pocket.

Another weight on his mind was 75-year-old Tokuda-san’s sexual performance. Any stage-fright from the leading man would mean the director's expenses were all for nothing. For that reason, the director said he always carried a small bag of stimulants to help induce sexual drive.

The toughest role of all, though, seemed to be that of the leading lady. In this particular sado-masochisitic flick, the 36-year-old "housewife" was chained up and whipped, had candle wax dripped on her legs, and was 'tortured' with a vibrator before Tokuda-san had sex with her. We heard that she got less than 60,000 yen for all this, while Tokuda-san himself got much less. He also had hardly any breaks between scenes during the half-day of filming.

The crew were thoroughly professional. In front of the camera, the actors took no time at all to act sexually aroused, however fake their ecstasy may have been.

On the way back to the office, we quickly agreed that working in porno movies must be one of the toughest jobs around.

Pictures and writing by REUTERS/Toru Hanai and Kim Kyung-Hoon

“ALWAYS get to the scene as soon as possible”, is a mantra for the Tokyo picture team. It is advice which features prominently in the pocket-sized guide to emergency coverage procedures produced by our boss Michael Caronna - a guide which has also become indispensible in everyday coverage too. 

Japan is one of the world’s most seismically active areas and the Tokyo Pictures team’s emergency earthquake coverage plan is well-developed and paid off recently when we covered a powerful earthquake in Northern Japan. 

The guide suggests a very clear and concise principle: “Have equipment and photographers in place at all times and just go when it happens.”

So we keep long lenses, a Nera sat-phone, a small generator, extra batteries, gasoline container, a portable TV, a radio and survival kits with emergency food, bottled water, wet weather gear and the like, in the Company car. rain gears, etc, in the Pix van and the contents are checked regularly.  We carry laptops and basic camera gear with us day and night. 

Because a strong quake in Tokyo may also tumble our office building, we have a second parking space near where Issei Kato, Toru Hanai and I live, about 10 Km away from Tokyo office. Every night one us takes the van, our mobile office, and parks it near where we live and brings it back to office in the morning. 

From time to time, as an emergency drill, we test filing pictures by sat-phone using the generator from the office or from a local  park.

When the 7.2 magnitude quake struck Iwate, about 500 km north of Tokyo, on that Saturday morning, we followed the guide to the letter.

0930 AM,  about 40 minutes after the earthquake alarm hit local media, Hanai and I were already on the highway to the scene with our mobile office, company car,  because we didn’t have to waste time picking up gear in the office and left before we even knew how many earthquake casualties there were.

While Hanai and I rushed to the scene, Michael was picking-up pictures from local media in the office while Kato looked for alternative transportation to the earthquake site.  All bullet trains had stopped and flights to the nearest airport were fully booked, so he set off in a rental car.

Hanai and I arrived around 2 o’clock and our first pictures hit the wire two or three hours ahead of our competitors, after which everything seemed to go very smoothly.

Kato who has a lot of experience in earthquake coverage found a spot to which evacuated victims were being ferried by helicopter and his picturesquickly followed ours on to the wire.

Hanai and I separated and we all kept shooting and filing pictures of shelters and landslides until midnight.

Around 1 AM, we tried to get some sleep but were back on our feet by 4 AM because our earthquake expert Kato knew rescue workers and civil defense troops start work early. While our competitors still dozed, Hanai and I had moved daylight pictures via mobile and satphone from the scene  of a landslide area, while Kato had negotiated his way on to a civil defence chopper enroute to a spa resort buried under a landslide, the only wire service photographer to do so. 

Hanai located an evacuation centre from which we filed our pictures and as I finished filing we watched our competition arrive at the landslide area, long after the rescue teams had packed-up for the day. It was at that point I realised that we had won this story.

Our efforts were rewarded by two pictures in the IHT including the front page.

In the end the earthquake did relatively little damage and there were few casualties. The scale of the event was far smaller than we feared and anticipated but it did prove that careful contingency planning, following established emergency procedure, close teamwork and an early start are an essential combination when disaster strikes. 

Japan’s sleepy town of Iga offered an opportunity for me to write my first story for the news wire. Iga is known to many Japanese as one of the traditional home towns of the ninja. I was looking forward to seeing tens of thousands ninja clad enthusiasts, the ninja themed-train and a house with secret escape passages - the home of a real ninja.

The hardest part was knowing where to start - that and deciding on what the story’s ’selling point’ would be in text terms rather than pictures. Would I be able to persuade people to give me both tantelising ninja tidbits and interesting quotes?

I first interviewed the self-proclaimed grandson of a real ninja who told me that his grandfather was always out on the lookout for ways to further his skills had even mastered the art of hypnotism. A museum curator  that the web of myth and mystery surrounding the world of the ninja fired people’s imaginations and for this reason the ninja lives on.

These were details that could only be related in words rather than pictures.

Shooting and writing have many things in common. Whether writer or photographer, one must think, “what would keep the viewer’s attention for at least one more second?” “Is it this angle? Should I crop the picture like this?” or, “which quote is more interesting? What headline is catchier?”

Needless to say both disciplines call for ethics and accuracy.

But shooting requires instantaneous reactions and concentration - the time it takes to make or break a picture. We can’t ask the subject to smile again, and goals and penalties on the soccer field cannot be replayed in real life. Writers can draft, rewrite and call sources back to check details again but they also need to have an overall view of an issue, information from all sides and different perspectives to balance their offerings, which is often something photographers cannot provide.

So, which is more difficult?

May I haven’t fully experienced the obstacles and challenges which face one of our text writers, but for me every photographic assignment is a battle because there are no real answers. There is no handbook for creativity.

We photographers need eyes in the back of our heads and although we may generate most of it ourselves we work under enormous pressure to distill the essence of the story and capture it in a moment.