On wednesday I went on a road trip to Beppu, driven by the lovely Youichirou and accompanied by the lovely Carl and Tamara. Beppu is famous for its Onsen, for bathing and “Hells”, that are volcanic water and mud features for looking at. Our practical excuse for going was to help Youchan collect spring water for his bar, however we had a great day exploring waterfalls, gorges, going to farmer’s shops, eating on bamboo covered mountainsides, marvelling at sulphurous steam craters and of course soaking in a hot mineral spring.
stowing the spring water.
One of the springs we collected from, this one is in a temple.
ummm volcanos.
Youfuin Gorge, a river gorge carved out of volcanic cliffs.
Tamara and Carl climbing up near a gigantic waterfall.
in Beppu town.
Volcanic mud crater. This being Japan, there was a woman wearing insanely high stilletoes and an evening dress right next to this boiling and sulphurous pool.
smelly!
ahh our own onsen. The water tasted coppery, i think we still smell like money.
On friday the lovely staff at the CCA and the artists had a japanese style BBQ. It was fun and delicious. Us westerners are not all that adapted to Konjak yet though, and barbecued slabs of it is kind of difficult to eat, but also to refuse. Then we all got a little roudy and insisted the music be at least the same volume as people talking, which worried the staff, as they have much experience of noise complaints. Sometimes it is hard to remember that the Japanese have such an obedient and considerate culture, around public/private space.
Sorry that these posts seem to be getting fluffier and fluffier - but when you are in a nice country like Japan it is hard not to just blog the fun stuff. I will make a concerted effort to get more art stuff up on here soon.
On Saturday I went to Fukuoka (about an hours train trip) to meet Michael Yuen. Michael had been doing a residency in Seoul, and had come across to Japan for a holdiay. We had a ball, eating, shopping, eating and chatting about the general strangeness of artists residencies. I now have wonderful new silver and red Onitsuka Tiger sneakers due to Michaels encouragement - and he has new Tiger bowling boots and jacket due to mine - ah a beautiful friendship. We shopped at the massive Canal City shopping centre, which was decked out in extremely early halloween decorations.
Here we are post shop, drinking Calpis next to the river. Yes i was really tired.
We had dinner at a great sushi place called ‘tok tok’ near the port and fish market area. Delicious sashimi!
and then to fill up the corners some grilled enoki and bacon skewers at a street stall. We think the guy ripped us off a little though - hmmm. Still a beautiful sight, hundreds of people milling around, tent like stalls selling food and beer.
Fukuoka is a big city (6 million) and it was so nice to get lost in a crowd, there were also many Gaijin everywhere - inlcuding a hugely tall completely bald white guy in a basketball uniform who was about twice the height of the Japanese passing him by. I kept starting at the other Gaijin - it has been a while since I have seen other foreigners! (apart from CCA artists) I nearly missed the train and got back to sleepy Yahata about 1am.
Tonight I went out to dinner with Takako. We were both tired from going to see KTL, a noise band, with Peter Rehburg and Stephen O’Malley from Sunn O))). We were out til 6am last night and I had three hours sleep before going into the studio. I took the cable car up Mt Sarakura and sat watching the beautiful panoramic view for a few hours.
anyway… back to dinner, we went to a small restaurant, one woman (the owner) doing all the cooking. It was really traditional Mama style japanese food. We ate rice, miso shiru with two types of tofu, tsukemono, pickled herring with onion (which reminded me of thai barramundi with green mango), a beef tendon stew, grilled sama (an oily deep sea fish), grilled sewers of pork, leek and a type of acorn, and a green salad. Oishi desu ne?!
The total bill came to ni-sen-en (2000 yen) or around 21 aust$, so really 10 bucks each. plus the woman was so nice and chatted to us from behind the bar.
On the way home we stumbled into an old grocery store and met Ryoko San, a lovely woman who let us explore behind her shop, into a forgotten world of a deserted food market - gone for 50 years. The stalls borded up and decaying, a wobbly cobwebbed christmas tree lurking next to a shinto shrine at the back. Ryoko san gave us three pottery statues of the “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” Monkeys, a bamboo pail and an old hand dyed apron (which Takako collects). We washed the dusty monkeys and now they watch over the studio fridge.