Time for a pre-Tokyo dump of some scattered fragments from Japan! In no particular order, after the jump...
I don't know if I would have stopped at Kanazawa's 21st-Century Museum of Contemporary Art if I hadn't signed up for the passport it shares with the Benese House on Naoshima and the Mori in Tokyo, but I'm glad I went if only for the electrified-goosebumps experience of UJINO's "sound sculpture," Plywood Shinchi. It's hard to describe (and the youtube video of it doesn't do the live experience justice), but it's essentially a moving piece of sculpture built mostly out of the sounds of household appliances and tools, with video projections and lights carrying you through its eight-minute (or so) cycle. Abstract grinding/blasts of sound abruptly coalesce into rhythmic pulses traded back and forth across the space, and while it's not even remotely trying for the awe-inspiring drown-you-in-it experience that was
Manifesto, it's another good reminder that there's something awful special about being in a room where you can explore freely as a sculpted experience unfolds around you.
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| There were a few other great exhibits afoot on this visit, and at least one collection of comics that I wish I could find stateside, but ah the fleeting nature of culture you encounter when you travel! |
Also in Kanazawa: the first and only time I felt scared or unsafe on the entire trip, perhaps because it was the first time that I ended up somewhere with
no humans around. (Kyoto mornings at 4 AM came close, but not quite!) After visiting the museum, I decided to walk back to an izakaya through a sprawling park that had been lovely on the way there... but on the return, I was the only person making the walk through an avenue of huge ancient trees, trudging alongside a hushed brook on a sandy path still damp from the evening's rains. And all around me were
the extremely angry murder-cries of the crows that apparently fill Kanazawa at night. Something about the combination of being the only person in sight for nearly half an hour, and the nearness and obvious lethal intent of the crow calls had me pretty well convinced that I was marked for death. Obviously, I survived, but just as obviously, it was a very close call.
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| IT SURE LOOKED CUTE ON THE WAY TO THE MUSEUM |
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| DO NOT ENTER AFTER DARK, warns the figure of a young girl who once walked the park after nightfall, only to be captured by The Birds and encased in metal as a cruel mockery/warning to her fellow humans. |
A great pleasure of the trip was being less concerned with safety/pickpocketing/general awareness than anywhere else I've been on the planet thus far. Japan is notoriously safe (it's a commonplace that the biggest trouble tourists get into is, knowing they're safe, tourists make a beeline for the world of prostitution/gambling/black market, which is basically the only way to step outside the safety of the culture) but it's not just a case of "nobody will pickpocket me so I can relax." It's a whole cultural orientation that I think can be summed up in umbrellas. The day I left my ryokan in Kinosakionsen, the owner was worried that it looked like it might rain as I walked to the train, so he urged me to take one of the hotel's umbrellas and "just leave it in the umbrella stand at the train station," where somebody would surely bring it back... or they would retrieve it themselves at some future date. Or even more telling: in Kyoto, as I walked the Philosopher's Path on a rainy/sleety/snowy day, somebody had set out a wooden rack with umbrellas and a note asking people to return umbrellas when they were done using them. (Another stand had bottles of water and a box requesting that people pay for whatever they took.) In short: it was nice to be in a place where the culture
started from the assumption that everybody is thinking about everybody else, not trying to get ahead themselves.
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| Would this path be stunning in sakura season? IT SURE WOULD BUT IT WAS NICE EVEN WITHOUT THAT THANKS AGAIN. |
I've enjoyed food tours on some of my travels... it can be hit and miss, but the good ones tend to get you a bit of cultural context, familiarity with local cuisine and produce, and ideally a kind of road map for your own subsequent exploring: how to find a good fromagerie, how to order at a tapas bar, what fish to get from the fishmonger, or the telltale signs of a taco stand's excellence. There's a bit of socializing here that helps, too, as a solo traveller... but ideally it's still part of the process of getting to know a place. The one food tour I took in Japan (in Kyoto) was sort of a bummer in this regard! Nothing wrong with it: it was a tour of mostly-pretty-tasty-if-not-mindblowing spots (ok, the tofu donuts were spectacular) with almost no context or depth. It was a nice gut-check that food's mostly interesting to me inasmuch as it tells a story about the place it's from (or enjoyed), and that while I'll always seek out the tasty option when given a choice (why get Subway when you could try some weird fish bar in a department store basement?) I don't need food to be the animating feature of a trip. (Fortunately, a tiny food tour of Mexico City last month delivered all that good stuff in
spades.)
That's probably enough for now - likely some more rambles to be had, but they're mostly at this point going to be about Tokyo, so let's talk about
that when we come
back here because right
now I have to go out to
dinner and some
on the town adventures because it's the
last night off before tech so please stop shouting at me and let's all stay friends forever??
