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.
Sorry for the long hiatus, the weather is getting colder and colder here, which makes me want to stay lazy. I have just pulled down a small group exhibition of CCA participants at the Maeda community centre in Kitakyushu. I showed a sculpture made out of seeds from fruit, a cast metal sculpture and two watercolour drawings. The work is part of a series I am working on in Japan called ‘portable ends’, dealing with time, preservation, decay and errr pickles. In addition to these works I made Amazake (a fermented rice drink) and served it at the opening night along with tsukemono (japanese pickles) made by Mrs Nomoto-san a very sweet lady I met at the Maeda centre.
Portable Ends (heavy necklace), seeds from fruit, thread and varnish
a detail of Portable Ends (heavy necklace)
Portable Ends (ending), Cast Sterling silver
Last week the Nippon Steel festival was celebrated in Kitakyushu. The festival commemorates a bad blast furnace accident. As the steel mill operation is now greatly reduced in size, the festival had a curiously empty feel, as though there was no heart to the maze of food stalls, Enka singers, dancing contests and more food on sticks stall, reminding me of Australian Agricultural shows, but without the more interesting activities. Seeing a crowd of people in Yahata was a strange experience though, suddenly our sleepy neighbourhood was, well, populated. Youichirou organised for the CCA artists to have a small exhibition in a disused shop - mostly visitors were too intimidated by the Gaijen sitting the show to come in unfortunately.
There were several stalls selling small turtles, or red and black goldfish. 500yen.
The final fireworks were preceeded by a strange Jpop lookalike concert. In orderly Japanese fashion, blue tarps were layed out on the ground, everyone taking their shoes off before sitting down.
The fireworks were overshadowed by green lazers. Maybe we invent fireworks because the stars get boring, just to cover them up with strobing combs of green light. A depressing sight.
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.
I can tell group photos of the CCA artists are going to get pretty boring - there are only 7 of us, which does not really make for endless interesting permutations for the camera. So today other things…
A mikan. Takako gave me one, as you can see it is green on the outside and orange in the inside. It tastes like a slightly tart mandarine. Mikans are grown on Kyushu, they are delicious.
And some Daikon drying in the sun. The project I have started at the CCA is called ‘portable ends, portable beginnings’ or maybe just portable ends. I will be making several sculptures out of rope, string and seeds and skins of fruit, BUT currently the most interesting part of the project is the pickling. I am making several quite complicated Tsukemono- japanese pickles. The first of these is a Daikon pickle which needs to sun dry for 20 days and then be pickled in Rice Bran.
The idea is i guess to suggest portable time.
Fridays seem to have become the CCA artists’ swimming day. This Friday I suggested (and then had to orchestrate) a bit of an ambitious project - a visit to the Sugao Taki(waterfall). To get there we had to take a train to Kokura and then a bus out of the city, and then a taxi to the falls. The closest town is the tiny Dobaru, perhaps 100 houses if that. To get back we hitched to the bus stop. All this envolved me using a LOT of my extremely basic Japanese, but I was so proud of us for getting there and being able to ask so many charming and helpful people. The waterfall is in heavily forested and mountainous valley, the floor of which is covered in tiny rice and vegetable farms. It was extremely beautiful being out in the countryside, the rice harvest is happening now, and sheaves of rice were hung over wooden hurdles to dry, the stubble was smouldering in some areas, woodsmoke over the valley and green plumes of bamboo on the mountain.
There is a very large monastery next to the taki, and literally hundreds of stone buddas and shinto gods line the approach and surround the falls. The figures all wear clothes - either a bib like garment (often actual children’s bibs- hello kitty) or elaborate robes. The bibs were all a bit mouldy and the surrounding buildings were falling into decay, Quite Kwai, spooky.
At first we felt somewhat apprehensive about swimming, but then soon got into the swing of things. The water was freezing, but it is still so hot here the chance to feel cold was lovely.
I have just realised I haven’t been reporting on the most important thing about my travels - well to some people. appologies to Graham who has already read this.
i ate some of my friend’s natto and didnt throw up.
i ate okonomiake cooked by a tiny old woman in her teeny old shop lined with sagging bookshelves of manga. She was a beautiful old woman that has been running her shop for 40 years (but she still cooks a mean pancake).
i ate really reallly good 6 course chicken dinner, with homemade tofu, perfect mackeral sashimi salad, chicken soup, fried and toriyaki chicken (aparently from the neck - which is a kyushu speciality) delicious soba and kyushu style fried rice.
I ate handmade Udon in rich broth from a place that would be a truck stop in Australia.
I ate upscale version of japanese antipasto in a beautiful traditional bar.
I ate at the best soba place in Kitakyushu (so say the CCA staff).
I ate a delicious tea ceremony sweet with foamy Matcha.
I ate many many takoyaki.
i have also been eating a lot of food cooked by the other 6 artists in our big studio kitchen. AND of course much beer, sake and shochu.
