Okayama and Naoshima

After Miyajima we went to Okayama. We saw one of the most famous gardens in Japan. Unfortunately, that same day, about 300 schoolkids saw it too. The garden was awesome. The schoolkids were not. Although they weren't too bad, noise and chaos filled the open space of the garden. We also saw a bulding done by the architect who designed the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. It was from about a decade after the Hiroshima building. We also walked along a canal and saw a western style old school japanese house and a really cool pottery place. The pottery was unique to the area using clay dug from the area. Each piece is unique based on the clay used. No glazing is applied to the pottery. Color and texture variations come from the mineral and chemical differences in each piece of clay as well as the position in the kiln when fired.

After Okayama, we went to Naoshima. Naoshima is a small island, where Tadao Ando has multiple works. We stayed at the Benesse House in the Oval, which is designed by Tadao Ando. We also went to the ChuChi Art Museum designed by Tadao Ando with input from James Turrell and another artist whos works make up the museum. There is also a room housing several Monets. The James Turrell installations were amazing. He had an open sky room, a small corner light installation, and a room that you could enter called the open field. The room was insane. It was by far the coolest art installation I have ever experienced. First you wait in a small room with a large granite stairset leading up toward one wall. On the wall, there appears to be a rectangular screen, but you soon realize it isnt a screen. It is an opening. The walls taper to a very thin edge aroung the opening. It is hard to tell that it is even there. The room is bathed in light from a light bar running over the opening and down both sides around it. The light is blue. The whole experience is nuts. It was the best. All the art was pretty cool. It didn't compete with the architecture, which was also really cool. It was probably the best museum I have visited.
After Naoshima, we caught the ferry back to the mainland and a couple trains to Himeji where we will spend our last day before heading to Tokyo tomorrow.

Miyajima

We went to Miyajima after Hiroshima. It is where the famous tori gate out in the water is located. When the tide is out you can walk out under it on the sand. When the tide is in, the gate and the shrine stands on piers in the water. We went out and took some cool night pictures. Later, we got in the Japanese bath. I felt bad because when we went to get in Don was there. Since you have to be naked in the bath, I'm pretty sure Don left because he couldn't be there with students. It sucks our society has become so letigious. The bath was really nice though. It was quite large, and looked out onto a garden. The next morning we got up and had breakfast. Then we headed off to see the shrine and climb the mountain. It was only about 3 km walk to the top, but it was mostly stairs and pretty steep. The view was pretty nice, and we even saw a submarine in the water below. At the top, there were monkeys. (I am fully aware of what it looks like the monkey in the background is doing to the monkey in the foreground)

There weren't very many but they were pretty cool. Before we had to catch the ferry, we went to the hall of 1,000 tatamis. It had no tatamis and wasn't even large enough to hold 1,000. We also went to a small woodworkers shop. I got a really cool tea canister made from a single piece of wood. I of course got the simplest one they had. I wish I could have gotten one out of one of the super exotic woods but those were like 400+. Some of the stuff in the shop was really pretty. I might have to hit the lathe when I get home.

Hiroshima

Sorry I missed a couple days. It was just too lazy the last couple days and with poor internet connection so I decided to do it later.

Hiroshima was sad as expected. It was last time too. Although the sadness passed quickly and was replaced with shame and disbelief at the statements of other young Americans. Some people it seems can't make connections between seeing a memorial in Hiroshima and reading the somewhat biased version of accounts and the context of what actually happened. Obviously, it was a horrible event, but weighed against the alternatives I can't say I would have done otherwise. I don't want to stage a debate on here so I will continue. The park was just like last time and the museum was too. The entry into the exhibits about the bomb victims is still poorly done and in fairly poor taste in my opinion. That served to turn me off to most of the rest. I got a few good pictures. There was a guy in the park right when we left that was sharing his ice cream with his cat. I also went in the same pet shop that we went in two years ago where Carrie saw a french bulldog eat its own poop. And the okonomi yaki we had for dinner was awesome.

Kobe and Osaka

Today we went to Kobe to the Hyogo Prefectural Art Museum designed by Tadao Ando. It was a really nice building. Surprisingly, the detailing was still very nice even though the scale of this project is much larger than many of his other works that we have seen. His use of circulation is always very interesting, and I enjoyed some of it creating a strong conenction with the building.
After that, we went to Osaka to see the church of light. I had been there before but it is a nice little project.
When we got out of the gates at the train station in Osaka, an old man on crutches came up to me and asked how I was. I said genki. He then told me I was a very handsome boy. I didn't know what to say. Thinking he was just excited to see some Americans and not wanting to make a scene as more of the class started to pay attention, I just said thanks. After he blew me a couple kisses I managed to sweep around to the other side of the group. After he got his ticket, he made another pass, first telling sig that she was cute then coming back to me. With a big toothless smile he once again began blowing kisses and then asked me to marry him several times. I won't lie. This was one of the few times when I just had nothing to say. I was shocked. After that, the group continued on to the Church of Light.

Flea Market and Shuhei Endo

This morning, we went to a big flea market. Some of the stuff was just junk but some of it was pretty cool. It was sprinkling a bit on the way back to the hotel from the temple grounds where they hold the flea market. Then, when we were meeting to go to Osaka at 1230, it was pouring. We went to Osaka Castle, to see some small buildings designed by Endo Shuhei. They were restrooms. One was also a small cafe. They were basically roof structures with the programmatic boxes slid underneath. The roof forms were created using gravity. In both cases, the end pieces were erected, then the top was craned into place and allowed to slump into form before being attached at the ends. The one with the roof that looks totally curved was craned in as a flat piece. The one with the cafe in it is two non concentric circles. Instead of thick columns, Shuhei used a set of three very delicate columns that are leaning around one another. This way, they also create lateral stability and do not effect the view as harshly. We also visited Shuhei Endo's office. It was pretty cool, although the whole event happened in Japanese, with Don and Norio acting as translators.

Sake brewery museum ni ikimashita

Today, after class, Zach, Dan, John, and I went to a sake brewery museum not far from our hotel. It is one of the oldest and was pretty cool. Unfortunately, the tour wasn't a tour so much as just admission to see the displays. The text was only partially translated into english, with what seemed to be a lot less information than in japanese. It was cool to see some of the implements used to make sake, and the process. We also got to taste three different sakes at the end. We ended up buying a bottle to share on Friday to celebrate our last night in Kyoto. We also each got a small collectible can of sake with our ticket. On the way back, I fell asleep on the train but so did everyone else, so no pictures this time. You will all just have to wait for later in the week and next week when we are traveling. I'm sure good sleeping pictures will ensue. I also saw a van with a keirin bike sticker on it that I thought was pretty cool.

New Art

I put up some new collages on my deviantart. I did these last week when I had no computer.

http://unseennapper.deviantart.com/

also here they are.

Lake Biwa

Today, about 7 of us went to Lake Biwa. It was about 45 minutes away by JR. If you search lake biwa japan on google maps you will see that the lake is enormous. The water was freezing but it was nice to relax in the sun for a while and dive in once. It was all locals there and some of them were really nice. We tried to find the place a stop or so away from where we got off that there is a tori gate in the water. It ended up being between the stops and too far to walk back to. Oh well. Miajima will have one anyway. We also got to see a guy and his daughter dragging a boogie board with their little dog on it. On the way back, the girl and the dog were on the makeshift sled. haha. Enjoy these beach pictures. Once I get some with me in them from someone else's camera I will add them.

Sanjusangendo and Kiyomizudera

Today, a handful of us went with Don to Sanjusangendo temple. It might give that other temple a run for largest wooden building. It's not very tall but it is 33 bays long. The main deity of the temple is Sahasrabhuja-arya-avalokitesvara, which is the thousand armed Kannon. There are 1,001 of the statues inside. In front of the statues, there are guardian statues, which each represent a different guardian. The space was really long, and they have held archery tournaments there for hundreds of years. Some of the beams that were replaced were kept to show how stray arrows had split the wood until it looked like thatch. One archer once fired over 13,000 times during a competition in which archers would fire for 24 hours straight. Over 8,000 of the arrows struck the target. Imagine drawing and firing a longbow for 24 hours straight.

After that, we went to Kiyomizudera. It was packed with people. There was a special opening of the main image hall and that was cool.Zach and I spotted some sweet drawings in the window of this tiny place and figured it was an architecture office since the name on the door was WORKAHOLIC. The guy was really nice and did all his drawings by hand. We talked for a bit then after exhausting pretty much all of our Japanese we left.

A horse is a horse

of course of course...it's delicious. Tonight, we went out and had some raw horse. They always say you should eat the flesh of the enemy to gain their strength. I figure, the horse wasn't my enemy but he was probably pretty strong. So even if I only get some of his strength, that's pretty good. The horse was very tender and lean. They served it with horseradish of course. They also tossed some green onion on the plate. It was pretty tasty. I give horse sashimi my seal of approval. haha. After that a few of us bought in together and tried our hand at pachinko. I will say, who knows how that works. It is a mystery still. haha.

p.s. If you have a problem with the horse thing, I don't want to hear about it.

Fedex

Today, I went to the fedex station and picked up my computer. It was about a mile walk from the subway station at the end of the Karasuma line. Everything seems to be working well. Now I just have to catch up on about three weeks of travel journals that I lost or haven't been able to do. Once I get a bit of that done, expect more real blog entries.

Sleeping on the bus

So...

I still don't have my computer yet. They tried to deliver it today when I wasn't here so I am going to pick it up from the warehouse tomorrow. It will take a subway and a cab to get there but it's worth it. Once I get my computer I will be updating my blog a bunch. In the meantime, enjoy these photos of me sleeping on the bus on the way home from Shugakuin on Tuesday. Zach and Carisa thought it would be great to shoot some pics so here they are. Also there is a picture by Matt, and a picture of me with a Nara deer.

Scot still doesn't have a computer

Scot still doesn't have a computer. When he does, blog will resume. Until then, choto.

Uji

This morning, we moved to a new hotel. It is called the Good Life Weekly Mansion. It's about ten times better than the other hotel, except that we have one bed and one mat for the floor, and it is a ways from our classes. Fortunately, I have a bike so if it's a nice day and I don't feel like taking the subway I can ride. This morning, after packing all my stuff into my bag, which is more than I had when I left, I struck out on my own. I hopped on my bike and rode from our first hotel to this one. You might ask, doesn't your pack weigh like 60 lbs.? You might also ask, isn't your bike a fixed gear that's too small for you and has shotty breaks? And finally, wasn't it hard to figure out where you were going? The answer to all these questions is yes. It was a very heavy pack. Literally, it weighs about 60 lbs, maybe more. When I weighed the pack at the airport, it was about 45 lbs. This time though, I had all my books and magazines and computer and camera. I had everything strapped to my back. Once I got to where the hotel should be, all I found was a building that had some other random name on it. I asked around and no one had any idea where it was. Well, one place told me exactly where it was, but they said that it was north of the station and gave me a map. When I finally found the rest of the group coming from the station, we ended up at the building right next door to the one that pointed me the opposite direction. In total, I ended up riding about 3.5 miles with my pack on. After we all got settled, we went to Uji, whichis about half an hour ride on the train from Kyoto. We saw a couple small temples, and the Phoenix hall at ByodoIn. The buildings and complex were really pretty, but the real gem was the museum built into the hill behind the phoenix hall in 2001. Unfortunately, they were like hawks on everyone so I couldn't get any pictures of the museum interior, but there are a few pictures online. After that we rode the subway back to Kyoto, where I fell asleep with my head slung over the armrest rail, grabbed some food, and did some homework.