Sunday, January 14
Wow, already it has become difficult to keep up my journal!!! There is so much to see and do and at the end, I am so bushed I can't even stay up long enough to enter any new information in this journal!!!
On Friday Karen and I went to the Ginza and boy that was a ton of fun. We are getting used to the fact that we can't afford anything and that we can still look and not feel depressed anymore. We went into every major department store up and down the block, both directions from the subway and went into the food areas - every one of them! Karen found some nice things to take back home and I bought some sushi and other goodies to eat later in the day, even fishcakes, which I normally don't even eat at home, but these were good ones. My favorite places are the stationery stores. There is always a great selection of stationery paper and envelopes and also giftwrap paper for the omiyage. Karen also bought a few cute little things to give to her Groundling friends, so that took her mind off the baseball shirt thing for a while.
When we got back to our room, I had gotten several messages from Sha Sha and Yoshiko Wada, who just arrived here from Berkeley, and I went to meet them at a gallery at 5 PM - I was tired but decided to go out again to meet them, besides which I am fond of Yoshiko, who was extremely helpful to me in preparing for this trip. She is also on the board for the Capp Street Project in San Francisco and wanted to meet the artist, Yoshiaki Watanabe, who is being considered for installation work at Capp Street. He does some interesting work with fire and light, mostly in the form of candles and in the gallery he had one piece, a large round white wax candle, which was probably about 4 ft in diameter. It was really quite beautiful and I am sure that when it burns closer to the center, the globe of wax will have a luminescent quality to it.
In talking to Yoshiko at the gallery, she has convinced me to try taking the Urushi class, or the lacquer class that Sha Sha is taking. I'm a little nervous about it because I know that the process of working with lacquer causes people to react and break out in a rash initially until they build up resistance to it and ever since that major case of the hives I had this fall, I am not interested in getting in that condition again. But I will look into it.
Saturday morning I met Yoshiko at the Axis building in Roppongi at Nuno, a showroom of fabric and objects made of fabrics designed by Reiko Sudo. Ms. Sudo was not there that day but we were able to see all kinds of wonderful clothing. Karen almost bought this strange shirt that was made of metal, more or less. It's a new process where the fabric has been coated with metal, and is very lightweight and strong. It was sheer but it was almost as if what she was wearing was made of aluminum foil. I had seen some of these fabrics before and had actually used some of Reikos fabrics on some chairs. I also saw an exhibition of textiles at the British Craft Museum in London last fall and remember her work as being one of my favorites.
Then at 12:30 I met Eugenie Keefer Bell and her husband Robert at a train station in Ebisu where we walked to the Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum. This used to be an Imperial residence, lived in by a Prince Akasa. It was designed in the Art Deco style of the times, in 1933 and is one of few buildings that survived the war. Eventually it became an art museum in 1983. It's a very beautiful structure and is authentically art deco, with a touch of the Japanese style. It is surrounded by very beautiful grounds, japanese style.
We then took the subway to Shibuya - what a contrast!! Now this is what I had envisioned about Tokyo; a sea of people, lots of lights and huge huge video screens towering overhead. It was easy to lose Karen in this crowd especially since everyone has black (or dark) hair. But fortunately Robert is very tall so he towered above everyone else so he was sort of like a buoy in a black-haired sea. They have a Tower Records thats 7 stories high, and we went to a store called Tokyo Hands, and its sort of like a hardware store, a department store all in one. There were some really cool tools and gemstones. I bought some stuff there but I definitely need to go back when there are fewer people; apparently Saturday and Sundays are the worst times to shop - the crowds are incredible.
We then walked over to Eugenie and Bob's apartment, where we got to relax and talk. They also had us over for dinner, which was so nice. They have a really nice little apartment in a quaint part of Tokyo (although on the way there are vending machines where you can buy dirty magazines, condoms and sex toys - a big pink dildo was ¥5000. very strange) Eugenie was great, she told me of all the places to get information in Tokyo and told me about their trip. She received a grant from the Australian Council and has been here since October. They also set up an exhibition of ceramics in Osaka which was sponsored by the Australian arts council, and the show featured work by Australian artists.
Today I met Bruce Chao, who is another NEA fellow from the states - poor guy had to fly from Providence and was supposed to be here the same day as Karen and I; he got in just last nite. Because of bad snowstorms his flight was cancelled for several days and when he finally did make it out of Providence, he got stuck in Chicago for a couple of days. After Chicago he flew to San Francisco and then finally made it to Tokyo. He's a gregarious fun sort of guy and we all went to the Tokyo Dome (the big egg) to get Karen's baseball stuff. It felt like we were all cousins or something. (Bruce is chinese-american, and very much like the third-generation type)
Bruce and I discussed David Mura's book and we both agreed that David comes off as being a self-absorbed whiny jerk. We both stopped reading it half-way through.
Anyway going to the Tokyo dome took us to yet another part of Tokyo, its sort of way out there, but it's a very carnival-like area. The Dome, of course, was closed being that baseball season hasn't started yet but it looks very high tech. There were tons of people milling about. Karen was in high heaven now that she has been able to fulfill one of her missions; to find baseball t-shirts and hats. After that we went back to the Ginza to show Bruce all the food departments in all the stores; mind you, its one of my favorite places too, and then we went back to Itoya, the best stationery place in the whole wide world. I finally got a rubber stamp with my last name in kanji; turns out you need this thing to sign your name on important forms here. There must be at least a million different kinds of everything here; paper clips, organizers, pens, pencils, etc. etc. Bruce was also going nuts in there and he ended up going back and buying more stuff. Karen was going sort of nuts with all the people; she can't handle crowds very well and her patience level is very short. So we went back home.
Karen was having back problems so she had the front desk call a Shiatsu place; it turns out that they make house calls so the guy came out to the hotel and gave her a 90 minute workover; it cost about a buck a minute but she claims it was worth it. I am sure it was, and he really worked her neck and upper back, a typical bad spot for us asian women it seems.
That night we hooked up with Bruce again to get dinner; Karen was tired and stiff from her massage but went anyway and we decided to look for a place to eat. I wasn't too fussy about where to go, but it took a while to find a place to eat; at one point Karen's patience snapped and she ended up going home. She doesn't have a whole lot of interest in looking and browsing around and stopping in the pachinko places or poking our noses in different shops, which Bruce and I enjoyed doing. I wish she could just relax and enjoy the place. It's the only way - otherwise it wouldn't be fun. Anyway she missed out cuz we found a great little yakitori bar; we were probably the oldest customers in there and the food was great, the ambience was great and the beer really hit the spot. Sort of a drag trying to order from a english menu because there were things that people around us were eating that wasn't on our menu. Eventually we just pointed at what people were eating. I got to know a bit about Bruce; he has a bit of that glass-blower arrogance but in a charming way. He talked mostly about his family, (he has a wife and two kids, who I hope to meet later) and his dysfunctional siblings. Sheesh he makes our family seem totally normal; I guess he has a blind brother who is a bit bizaare - goes out with 280 lb women that are 50 and older, went to a prostitute (AND told his mother), and teaches sailing but bailed when a woman student started freaking out. It was amusing anyway.
On Friday Karen and I went to the Ginza and boy that was a ton of fun. We are getting used to the fact that we can't afford anything and that we can still look and not feel depressed anymore. We went into every major department store up and down the block, both directions from the subway and went into the food areas - every one of them! Karen found some nice things to take back home and I bought some sushi and other goodies to eat later in the day, even fishcakes, which I normally don't even eat at home, but these were good ones. My favorite places are the stationery stores. There is always a great selection of stationery paper and envelopes and also giftwrap paper for the omiyage. Karen also bought a few cute little things to give to her Groundling friends, so that took her mind off the baseball shirt thing for a while.
When we got back to our room, I had gotten several messages from Sha Sha and Yoshiko Wada, who just arrived here from Berkeley, and I went to meet them at a gallery at 5 PM - I was tired but decided to go out again to meet them, besides which I am fond of Yoshiko, who was extremely helpful to me in preparing for this trip. She is also on the board for the Capp Street Project in San Francisco and wanted to meet the artist, Yoshiaki Watanabe, who is being considered for installation work at Capp Street. He does some interesting work with fire and light, mostly in the form of candles and in the gallery he had one piece, a large round white wax candle, which was probably about 4 ft in diameter. It was really quite beautiful and I am sure that when it burns closer to the center, the globe of wax will have a luminescent quality to it.
In talking to Yoshiko at the gallery, she has convinced me to try taking the Urushi class, or the lacquer class that Sha Sha is taking. I'm a little nervous about it because I know that the process of working with lacquer causes people to react and break out in a rash initially until they build up resistance to it and ever since that major case of the hives I had this fall, I am not interested in getting in that condition again. But I will look into it.
Saturday morning I met Yoshiko at the Axis building in Roppongi at Nuno, a showroom of fabric and objects made of fabrics designed by Reiko Sudo. Ms. Sudo was not there that day but we were able to see all kinds of wonderful clothing. Karen almost bought this strange shirt that was made of metal, more or less. It's a new process where the fabric has been coated with metal, and is very lightweight and strong. It was sheer but it was almost as if what she was wearing was made of aluminum foil. I had seen some of these fabrics before and had actually used some of Reikos fabrics on some chairs. I also saw an exhibition of textiles at the British Craft Museum in London last fall and remember her work as being one of my favorites.
Then at 12:30 I met Eugenie Keefer Bell and her husband Robert at a train station in Ebisu where we walked to the Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum. This used to be an Imperial residence, lived in by a Prince Akasa. It was designed in the Art Deco style of the times, in 1933 and is one of few buildings that survived the war. Eventually it became an art museum in 1983. It's a very beautiful structure and is authentically art deco, with a touch of the Japanese style. It is surrounded by very beautiful grounds, japanese style.
We then took the subway to Shibuya - what a contrast!! Now this is what I had envisioned about Tokyo; a sea of people, lots of lights and huge huge video screens towering overhead. It was easy to lose Karen in this crowd especially since everyone has black (or dark) hair. But fortunately Robert is very tall so he towered above everyone else so he was sort of like a buoy in a black-haired sea. They have a Tower Records thats 7 stories high, and we went to a store called Tokyo Hands, and its sort of like a hardware store, a department store all in one. There were some really cool tools and gemstones. I bought some stuff there but I definitely need to go back when there are fewer people; apparently Saturday and Sundays are the worst times to shop - the crowds are incredible.
We then walked over to Eugenie and Bob's apartment, where we got to relax and talk. They also had us over for dinner, which was so nice. They have a really nice little apartment in a quaint part of Tokyo (although on the way there are vending machines where you can buy dirty magazines, condoms and sex toys - a big pink dildo was ¥5000. very strange) Eugenie was great, she told me of all the places to get information in Tokyo and told me about their trip. She received a grant from the Australian Council and has been here since October. They also set up an exhibition of ceramics in Osaka which was sponsored by the Australian arts council, and the show featured work by Australian artists.
Today I met Bruce Chao, who is another NEA fellow from the states - poor guy had to fly from Providence and was supposed to be here the same day as Karen and I; he got in just last nite. Because of bad snowstorms his flight was cancelled for several days and when he finally did make it out of Providence, he got stuck in Chicago for a couple of days. After Chicago he flew to San Francisco and then finally made it to Tokyo. He's a gregarious fun sort of guy and we all went to the Tokyo Dome (the big egg) to get Karen's baseball stuff. It felt like we were all cousins or something. (Bruce is chinese-american, and very much like the third-generation type)
Bruce and I discussed David Mura's book and we both agreed that David comes off as being a self-absorbed whiny jerk. We both stopped reading it half-way through.
Anyway going to the Tokyo dome took us to yet another part of Tokyo, its sort of way out there, but it's a very carnival-like area. The Dome, of course, was closed being that baseball season hasn't started yet but it looks very high tech. There were tons of people milling about. Karen was in high heaven now that she has been able to fulfill one of her missions; to find baseball t-shirts and hats. After that we went back to the Ginza to show Bruce all the food departments in all the stores; mind you, its one of my favorite places too, and then we went back to Itoya, the best stationery place in the whole wide world. I finally got a rubber stamp with my last name in kanji; turns out you need this thing to sign your name on important forms here. There must be at least a million different kinds of everything here; paper clips, organizers, pens, pencils, etc. etc. Bruce was also going nuts in there and he ended up going back and buying more stuff. Karen was going sort of nuts with all the people; she can't handle crowds very well and her patience level is very short. So we went back home.
Karen was having back problems so she had the front desk call a Shiatsu place; it turns out that they make house calls so the guy came out to the hotel and gave her a 90 minute workover; it cost about a buck a minute but she claims it was worth it. I am sure it was, and he really worked her neck and upper back, a typical bad spot for us asian women it seems.
That night we hooked up with Bruce again to get dinner; Karen was tired and stiff from her massage but went anyway and we decided to look for a place to eat. I wasn't too fussy about where to go, but it took a while to find a place to eat; at one point Karen's patience snapped and she ended up going home. She doesn't have a whole lot of interest in looking and browsing around and stopping in the pachinko places or poking our noses in different shops, which Bruce and I enjoyed doing. I wish she could just relax and enjoy the place. It's the only way - otherwise it wouldn't be fun. Anyway she missed out cuz we found a great little yakitori bar; we were probably the oldest customers in there and the food was great, the ambience was great and the beer really hit the spot. Sort of a drag trying to order from a english menu because there were things that people around us were eating that wasn't on our menu. Eventually we just pointed at what people were eating. I got to know a bit about Bruce; he has a bit of that glass-blower arrogance but in a charming way. He talked mostly about his family, (he has a wife and two kids, who I hope to meet later) and his dysfunctional siblings. Sheesh he makes our family seem totally normal; I guess he has a blind brother who is a bit bizaare - goes out with 280 lb women that are 50 and older, went to a prostitute (AND told his mother), and teaches sailing but bailed when a woman student started freaking out. It was amusing anyway.
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