This Man Travels The World Only To Put His Head Into Comic Foregrounds

Tomoyuki Shioya is obsessed with comic foregrounds and has traveled all over the country, even outside of Japan to places like Taiwan and the United States, just in order to take pictures with them. His collection of photos nears 3,000.Show more

In the beginning he would take pictures with the comic foregrounds when he happened to be at a tourist spot, but one day he saw one that was getting thrown out and asked the shop owner if he would take a picture of him in it, prompting the shop owner to say: “Well, if people get this much joy out of it, I’ll put it back up.”

Tomoyuki decided he wanted to have more experiences like that and started seeking out “head in the hole” photo boards to take pictures with. He always walks around with a tripod and camera and will take pictures using the timer feature on his camera no matter how crowded the space. Tomoyuki says that he has never felt embarrassed by his hobby. In time, his activities caught the media’s attention, and he has now appeared on television and in events, as well as held exhibits of his pictures and written a book. He says that he wants to continue taking pictures at comic foregrounds until the day he dies. You could see his pride as an aficionado, and he even seemed pretty cool to us.