Each spring, Kyoto is at its busiest. The cherry blossoms bring in multitudes of tourists, and the start of the new academic year means not only thousands of local students returning to the classroom, but also busloads of junior high and high school students from around the country arriving at hotels and taking the obligatory tour of Kyoto's historical and cultural landmarks.
At this time in particular, no visitor can fail to escape the clicking of cameras. Be they the semi-professional photographer, with his Canon EOS ID X, Nest Traveller NT-6294AK tripod and telephoto lens longer than your arm, posed on the banks of the Kamo River waiting for the right mix of light and shadow, or the hordes of tourists prowling the backstreets of Gion with their iPhone cameras, searching for Kyoto "geiko" or, really, anything "Kyotoesque" to quickly snap to prove they were there. Everybody is a shutterbug.
But in recent years, the Kyoto police have warned, another kind of photography has become a public nuisance: "Upskirting."