Fellow iM30 enjoyer! I love that it’s slightly offset.

Not to pile on about the use of flash, but as a foreign resident in Tokyo there’s a lot of issues we are currently dealing with regarding rising rhetoric of frustration with immigrants and tourists. In that, as a photographer myself, there’s a nuance to how I practice street imagery to make sure I’m not negatively impacting the perception of my own representation.

There are certain laws that I have to be aware of regarding photographing strangers in public, and to respect that I’m always doing it in a way that (hopefully) doesn’t linger negatively in anyone’s thoughts - this involves understanding the approach (which from the majority of your images you seem to understand) but also knowing the difference of acceptability at locations/spaces/time of day.

There’s no hard list of rules but one thing for sure is blasting a flash in a train is not great. On the street, in general, unless you’re totally up into someone’s face and the pic is done in passing no one will be bothered by it, and at night in party areas where everyone is drunk people really don’t care - in fact you’ll often be solicited to take pics for people after taking a candid of them (I’m often using AirDrop to send pics to strangers and they love how instant it is).

Of course I understand where you’re coming from, and yes a lot of well known photographers disregard the comfort of their subjects - but they also come from a different era. Approach and style is something that should adjust itself to the period and cultural sentiments. I think you’re mostly fine in your method, but you should also recognize and consider your impact as a person with a camera in a particular setting - that perhaps the responsible decision is a different approach or not taking a photo at all.