Images' Ivy Matheson

Ivy Matheson

July 25, 2012

Well, I've been in Tokyo for just over two months now, and the word "Kawaii" has been forever engrained in my mind.

Every model I speak to here says time flies in Tokyo, and I agree. It's like you're living in fast forward. It feels like just yesterday I arrived in my apartment and met my Canadian roommate. But my roommate has been long gone and Tokyo has continued to be constantly busy, busy, busy!

I am starting to reach the point where I am feeling exhausted some days. But I haven't reached the utter point of exhaustion just yet. I still love waking up in the morning and heading to the subway to start my day. I still love Tokyo! My experiences with jobs and clients have continued to be as pleasant as ever. But oh my God, I have done so many wedding jobs! I've lost track in fact, maybe 10 at least? I actually got married to one guy from my agency three separate times... all I can say is we must look damn fine together. Luckily he was a cool Canadian guy so the marriage was fun while it lasted. There are also a lot of department store jobs here too, which I like. Shooting for those is really relaxed- simple and straight forward. It's still hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that some of my jobs have as few as 4 or 5 cuts... Though this isn't extremely common but is has happened a few times. And it's so nice! Compared to the 50-100 cuts that I've experienced in past markets. In fact in China and Korea they didn't tell you how many outfits you would be shooting, but in Tokyo it always says on your job sheet, as well as the rate, who the client is, who the makeup and hair team will be, and if you'll be working with any other models. I really appreciate the little bits of information you're given ahead of time, otherwise you're left wondering what your day could entail as you head to the subway at 7:00 a.m.

Even though I've been working in Asia for a while now, I still have a hard time wrapping my head around how young some of the girls are here. My agency currently has some 14 and 15 year old girls. I can't help but cringe for them, many of these young girls hardly speak a word of English, it's their first trip, and they're scared. All you can do it be friendly and sweet, I think it helps a lot. My very first trip I was 16, and I had the advantage of English being my first language. But I was still scared and had a constant feeling of uneasiness and homesickness. Sometimes all it took was someone being friendly to make me feel a whole lot better, and that maybe things would turn out to be alright.

And on another light note, last week I was working a job and the client pulled out some magazines with pages he had bookmarked for inspiration. He began flipping through some photos. I said "that's me!" It was my pictures from last months Fudge magazine. I had to have a laugh at that... we all did actually. Sometimes Tokyo is so small!

xo Ivy

Ivy Matheson is an Images model, with Cinq Deux Un in Tokyo.