Jim Buell

Tokyo’s Harajuku area is famous for its trendy teen fashion scene. Here young people listen to headphones at an outdoor music installment.

A woman wearing traditional Japanese yukata enjoys the atmosphere of the boat cruise on the Tokyo Bay. People were encouraged to wear traditional dress on the two-hour cruise. 

Where do some of the best yo-yoers go to practice? Apparently they go to a park just outside of Tokyo. Here former world yo-yo champion Takumi Nagase practices in a park in Kawaguchi, Japan, using two yo-yos, his specialty.

This worker at Kushida Shrine in Fukuoka, Japan, walks under a series of gates carrying a box of donations made to the shrine. Kushida Shrine is famous for a festival in the summer in which participants carry giant floats, some taller than ten meters and weighing over two tons.

A man inspects the remaining stone base of a castle that once stood in what is now the Imperial Gardens in Tokyo. The castle was completed in 1638, but burned down only 19 years later. This stone base is all that remains.

Dancers and musicians perform at the Awa Odori festival in Koenji in Tokyo. The dance festival is part of the summer Obon celebrations in Japan in which Japanese honor the spirits of their ancestors.

A woman in Tokyo, Japan, rushes through Shinjuku Station, the busiest train station in the world. Blank panels of fluorescent lights normally used to display advertisements glow behind the traveler.

A woman sits near an ancient building in Kathmandu Durbar Square in Nepal.

This sādhu, or holy man, places tikka, a red spot on the forehead, on people in Kathmandu, Nepal. Sādhu live on the edge of society after renouncing material goods. 

Workers at the Boudhanath in Kathmandu chip paint from the aging facade of the holy Buddhist site. The stupa, one of the largest in the world, had accumulated many layers of paint over its existence.

The top of San Francisco's Bay Bridge disappears in the afternoon fog.

Steam surrounds a worker in Hakone, Japan, as he prepares to extract 黒玉子, or black eggs, from the sulfurous water of a mountain hot spring. The eggs boiled in the water take on a black color from the sulfur. According to legend, eating one of these eggs adds five years to your life.

Steam rises from a hot spring on a mountain in Hakone. The high sulphur content of the area gives the landscape an dark orange tint. The picture was taken from a cable car suspended above the mountain.

Women sell flowers in an outdoor market in Zunil, a small town near Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. At the market an announcer advertised items over a loudspeaker as farmers hurried around the square carrying huge bushels of vegetables.

A visitor examines the interior of the empty Bird's Nest stadium used during the 2008 Summer Olympics held in Beijing, China. More than a year after the Olympic games, the stadium's owners are still having difficulty scheduling events in the 80,000 seat arena.

Singer and guitarist Hardy Morris of the band Dead Confederate roars into a microphone during a concert at the Firebird in St. Louis, Missouri. The band's energy was underscored by heavy use of a fog machine and stage-level lights.

Visitors to the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Hobart, Australia, interact with a piece of art. Each section of the piece pulled out like a drawer, and a different voice would repeat “I love you.”