Hello Reader!

I hope you're doing fantastic today. Here it's raining and cold, the complete opposite of what I had in Japan during my trip.

And speaking of the trip, today we will continue exploring inspiring pictures and places that I captured—and I have to tell you about an incredible dream of mine that finally came true :)

I'm so excited!

The impossible quest to realize a dream of mine

As you might know if you ever scrolled through my gallery, I started being serious about illustration over 2 years ago, when I developed my technique and the first version of my style.

And that’s how “Pink Street” came to life in May 2023.

At the time, I simply took a random picture from Pinterest and used it as a reference; if you have the same interest as me, you might have already come across it in the past!

It’s no secret that Japan is a huge artistic inspiration for me, and as I was preparing the itinerary for the trip a question came to my mind:

And so started my quest 2 months ago to locate this exact street, one that could be anywhere in Japan.

I quickly found the picture again, but it was clearly reposted by someone else; I needed to get a lead that would point me to an address.

Surprisingly, my trusty Google reverse‑image search didn’t yield any good results. The oldest images I found were clearly edited or cropped from the original source; I needed to go deeper.

I had to pull out a specialized tool, TinEye, and thankfully this time I got an interesting result. It seemed to come from a Japanese blog from 2016. Excited to learn more, I clicked on the link. And there, horror: the site is no longer online.

Internet Archive? Nope, this specific page wasn’t saved, at least not in a way that would help me get more information.

Thankfully the only thing that was left was the link to the original, somewhat still low resolution image. I had no context around it, but that was already a huge accomplishment!

I’ve heard of some AI tools that are known to be very good at this sort of task; Google’s AI model is one of them, probably thanks to easy access to Google Maps data. I just needed the location after all, this could be an easy win.

But after trying almost every tool I could come across without paying, I was left with only deception and hallucinated addresses. What a surprise!

Fine, I’ll have to do it myself then. I tried to search for the signs in the foreground, but with no luck. I learned later during my trip that a lot of places are not even registered on Google Maps in Japan.

In Nagoya, for example, we visited a fantastic ramen shop, quite crowded, and the staff was wearing a t‑shirt celebrating the 40‑year anniversary of the establishment. Forty years! And it was nowhere to be found on the map; we stumbled upon it by accident.

All of that to say, I didn’t have much luck with those signs—until I noticed a small one at the very back of the picture: Tully’s Coffee. I didn’t know yet at the time, but this is actually a very common coffee franchise in Japan.

Good, but how would I know which one it is? They have around 760 locations in the country; I couldn’t possibly check them all!

Anyway, I scrolled a bit on Google Maps and I found it after three attempts.

I was overjoyed, not only to have found it, but also because it’s right next to the bamboo forest in Kyoto. We were already planning to go there!

Flash forward a few weeks: we are leaving to train at Arashiyama Station. We turn around, and the Tully’s is right here, closer than I expected.

From there I knew exactly where to go. My heart was pounding as we got down the stairs that you see in the illustration.

We walked for a few meters, turned around, and sure enough, here it was!

:)

This was a once‑in‑a‑lifetime opportunity I didn’t even know was possible! Visiting a real place that inspired me years ago felt surreal. And what a journey to get there! I was so excited to share it with you, I’m sure you can tell.

For posterity, here is the exact location where this picture was taken!​

More art and pictures from Japan!

Now, last week I shared some of my camera roll, but there are still plenty of pictures I’d like to share with you! So here are some extras, annotated when appropriate.

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The Japanese countryside, or at least what we saw of it, was very pleasant and inspiring—especially with all the temples and decorations spread across it, even in the most mundane places.

Definitely a well of inspiration for my future illustrations!

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Another thing we managed to see, and that’s very silly, is the iconic stairs that were used in the anime Your Name! Another dream of mine I didn’t even know I would realize one day :)

And as you can imagine, a lot of other people were there to take pictures of it. It actually leads to a neighborhood and a very cute shrine, so it was worth making a detour for it.

And to finish off, last week I completely forgot to share some sketches I did while I was there!

I really wanted to do a lot of plein‑air and observation drawing while I was there. But it turns out that between all the sightseeing and jumping between cities, there is not a lot of time to do so.

My trip sketchbook is filled with more stamps than drawings, but at least I’m back with a lot of references and inspirations for the foreseeable future.

And here we are for this week’s issue of my art newsletter! Sorry again for the delivery hiccup last week; I hope this one will be treated better by the spam filter.

In the meantime, I wish you a wonderful day, and I’m excited to come back to you next week with more art and cool things to share!

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Take care,
- Nighten

This email is part of my art Newsletter. Invite a friend to join the club: https://club.nighten.fr​

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