Friends were visiting Japan, and we decided to meet up on Naoshima, a small island in the Seto sea which has been largely transformed by the Benesse corporation into a mini art amusement getaway.
The beautiful Seto sea from the Ferry.
As we were all artists we couldn’t afford to stay in the expensive Benesse House where you can sleep in Tadeo Ando designed luxury with some of the Benesse collection on your walls. We stayed in a little Minshuku, Oyajinoumi, in Honmura. Which had a beautiful garden and nice rooms, but was a little like living in a paper balloon noise wise. One night I heard one of the girls next door get up and eat a rice cracker, every crunch.
Our room (note pheasant)
Honmura is a very beautiful town, small quiet and well kept, with many amazing gardens. The buildings are largely traditional and are often clad in wooden planks burnt black on the outside. The town seems prosperous, probably due to the Benesse Art House project, which has bought up several vacant traditional buildings and given them to artists to make a project inside. We all enjoyed the James Turrell ‘dark side of the moon’ the best, at first you walk into a huge space - totally dark and are guided to a bench, after around 5 minutes you start to see a pale hovering rectangle of bluish light, you can then get up and walk towards this shape, a really strange and difficult spatial experience. Marcin put his hand into the shape but his glow in the dark watch messed things up. A few we didn’t get to see due to closures and no “booking” vacancies.
streets of Honmura with Michelle, Marcin and Kiki.
Honmura also has two of the best hang-out-for-hours relaxed cafes I have been into in Japan. Cafe Maruya and Genmai Shinshoku - a macrobiotic place.
Marcin and Kiki in Macrobiotic cafe.
Kiki was getting a lot of Kawaii attention, too many photos and too much staring for us adults. Japan really is a childs paradise, and people really love kids here.
Benesse House collection was pretty boring with lots of middle to late 20th cent minor works from famous people. But the Chichu musuem was pretty amazing, another Ando building it is tunnelled into the side of a hill looking out over the ocean. Only three artists, Monet (3 waterlilly paintings), James Turrell and Walter De Maria; and of course you have to count Tadeo Ando as the building is so prominant. The Monets and Turrells blew us away but the De Maria was heavy handed and boring, big granite balls and gold sticks that just reminded me of giant grandiose wickets.
The public art sprinkled around the island is pretty good too - even if it is high on the amusement scale.
Michelle and Kiki inside Yayoi Kusuama’s Pumpkin.
Was lovely to spend time with good friends and I realised that I need to do more travelling away from Kitakyushu.
Two of the CCA artists, the glamourous, Tamara and Carl organised a Dice party at number 502. A special table and chandelier were constructed, along with special green baize boxes to roll in and hand made die. The good (and terribly cute) bartender of Bar 107, came to mix some of his sensational cocktails for the impossibly louche crowd. The colour scheme was a minty turquoise and black, the lights low, and the Gin strong.
Tamara and Carl with the cocktail maestro.
Martini
I donned a black crepe frock with grey screenprinted flower, grey fishnets, gold glitter shoes and false eyelashes. Little did I know the truth that a stray flash photograph revealed, Tamachan and I looking like 16 year old dressed up to get into a bar.
yes I turn 29 this year.
Back in Kitakyushu on Christmas day, I met Tamara and Karen at Ikki for a delicious Takoyaki dinner with very light and fluffy sponge ‘christmas cake’.
Weather turned very cold, hailing and snowing. On New Years Eve, Takako, Karen, Tama-chan and I made a delicious nabe dinner. Quiet in the studios with the snow falling outside.
around 12 we braved the cold and walked to two temples and a shrine to bring in the new year. The first temple we were afraid was a strange, gas loving new religion but just turned out to be an old temple built in a very western style - with a lot of gold leaf. We got to strike the gong, one go for each of us. Tak was trying to find a temple where they make longevity soba at 12, and so asked for noodles - a very dismayed but gracious lady gave us a mountainous bag of chips!
Onto the actual noodle temple, further up the hill, a party atmosphere with more gongs, fairy lights and a long line of people serving delious free soba. Here we are in the line.
The shrine was all outdoors and cold, but beautiful with many fortunes and prayers to buy. Tak went into interpreter overdrive to translate all of our fortunes - my year will be like a branch of blossom slowly opening up, by the way. Takachan looked after us so well, and made my Japanese New year beautiful. She even made us special lucky breakfast the next day.
While I was in Tokyo the Emporer had his birthday, one of only two days a year the Imperial Palace is open to visitors. We went along with all the crowds and indulged in a frenzy of flag waving. Strange as I am not the kind of person to go out of my way to wave at monarchs.
You can see the royals behind the glass in the background. The palace is huge but on a horizonal plane, and with lots of windows and beautiful iron chain drainpipes as opposed to the vertical stone castle type of thing. The communist party of Japan were out in force with flags, blue overalls and megaphones protesting the day.
I arrived in Tokyo at 5 am, waited for docking and sleepily got on a train at 6. Tokyo has an excellent train system and so much english signage I found my way around very easily. I got to Asakusa at around 7 and wandered around the Kannon Temple, watching the schoolboys buying lucky prayers, old women feeding the birds and the sellers of new years decorations setting up their stock. Pine seedlings, coloured Kale and many types of straw rope were for sale to make your own decorations or there were premade wreathes and standing bamboo arrangements. Asakusa has a warren of covered shopping streets with fantastic sweets shops away from the touristy central avenue.
After making my way to the Ryokan, I weirdly just bumped into Karen and went with her to have breakfast. The Asakusa district is quiet and calm, and I think having this quiet base is one of the reasons I really enjoyed Tokyo. Later that day I met Takako at Ueno station and we went on a wander to Skai the Bathouse (gallery converted from old cento bath). We walked through Ueno park and the cemetary where Tak’s family have a section. Again so quiet and beautiful.
Then we went downtown towards Shibuya and visited the Watari-Um museum which had a fascinating exhibition of historical material and botanic drawings of Minakata Kumagusu, a very famous Japanese botanist and writer who specialised in the study of fungi, particularly of slime moulds. He also wrote the Minakata Mandala, a quasi spiritual/scientific text about interconnectedness. This show was my favorite exhibition in Tokyo apart from the Pipillotti Rist show at the Hara Museum. Mostly things I saw were too designy and all a bit easy. The Roppongi Crossing show at the Mori was the worst example of this, but I did not even go to see the ‘Space for your future’ show at the Musem of Contemporary Art Tokyo, as Karen had the catalogue and it looked just too annoying for me.
Again wierdly (for such a giant city) bumped into Adam at the Roppongi Crossing show and we had a juice in the Mori tower lounge looking over the city.
which never ends it seems. Such a dense moss of buildings and people, but I didnt feel scared or depressed the whole time I was there. Tokyo is really very clean and so alive. I love how people can keep their bonzai on the street outside their house.
In Tokyo I went into starbucks for the first time, here is a view of Shibuya station from the window of that establishment.
I visited Tokyo for the first time in the week leading upto christmas. Out of some sort of perversity or desire for solitude I took a ferry from Kitakyushu to Tokyo - 36 hours. The ferry was great, like a floating roadside truckstop, with comfy carpeted rooms to sleep in, a basic japanese canteen, many vending machines and the ultimate luxury of a cento bath. the weather was sunny for december and i spent most of my time outside reading Alasdair Grey’s ‘Lanark’, one man eager for english practice asked me if it was a bible.
I had a bath around sunset one night, and had the whole room to myself. The bathroom was tiled in peach and had a large window with rounded corners set over the bath. Sitting in hot water, watching the grey waves and a soft sunset, paradise.
