As part of my month-long stint at Reuters Video News in Tokyo, I became Lady Gaga’s ‘Paparazzi’ (pic above – mine’s the white mic), as well as nearly getting knocked over in the chaos of Neymar’s arrival a week before.

I helped to shoot footage, learned to edit video and wrote full scripts for a number of stories, including the yearly war memorial day (and politicians’ visits) at Tokyo’s controversial Yasukuni Shrine, standing outside McDonald’s to do vox pops in reaction to a food scandal in China as well as a herd of inevitable (but fun) cute animal stories.