It only took seven months for Belgian portrait photographer Bleg Bayraktar, 24, to reach 1 million followers on Instagram.
How did he manage such a feat? Bayraktar, who posts his content on the Instagram account @itsbleg, has cultivated a reputation for being soft-spoken, polite and incredibly respectful no matter the country he visits or people he encounters.
Japan has been attracting more tourists than ever in recent years, and many come hoping to snap a memorable picture or two of their time here. A few social media personalities, however, have taken things too far to get “content,” blasting quiet train carriages with obnoxious music, performing pull ups on torii gates as if they were exercise equipment and flying drones in no-drone areas. The incidents have drawn a lot of attention and are often featured in the media, stirring up anti-foreign sentiment not only in Japan, but among global audiences.
