Seto Inland Sea islands - Naoshima

After having several trips abroad, this summer I decided to do a bit of domestic travel for a change, and opted to explore some of the islands in the Seto Inland Sea, nestled between the main island of Honshu and the eastern island Shikoku. What interested me most was the island of Naoshima, an island uniquely dedicated to art museums designed by Japanese architect Tadao Ando and dotted with various outdoor instillation and other art projects, all blended beautifully and tastefully into the stunning natural setting of the island itself.

A giant pumkin by Kusama Yayoi. During a typhoon this was swept away by the waves and found bobbing in the sea the next day.

I reached Naoshima by taking the Shinkansen (bullet train) from Tokyo to Okayama, a journey of around three hours, and then took a local train for about 45 minutes to the port town of Uno, from where Naoshima is a short 20 minute ferry ride.

iPad equals more blog updates

Having recently purchased a brand new shiny black iPad mini, the option now arises of blogging on the go. This may inspire a few more updates from me on particularly quiet days at work, or when I'm traveling. Time will tell.

Jackson Pollock comes to Tokyo

It's not often that you get to see retrospective exhibitions of major Western artists in Japan, which I would guess is mainly due to the expense and the logistics of transporting the art work over long distances. So I was very pleased to get the chance to see the Jackson Pollock retrospective currently at the National Museum of Modern Art and running till May 6th. Pollock, for those who don't know, was a major American artist of the 20th century and part of the Abstract Impressionist movement. His most famous paintings are easily idetifiable by his unique drip painting technique. He would often use household enamel paint and drip or pour paint onto a flat canvas, gradually building up web-like layers of colour.

I've seen Pollock's largest paintings on show in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. None of these paintings are in the Tokyo exhibition, but they have nevertheless gathered an impressive selection of his work from all over the world, including a beautiful large painting lent, surprisingly, by a museum in Tehran.

The show is very nicely laid out and there's a good selection of paintings from all stages of his career, as well as drawings, prints and film footage of the artist in action. Immediately as you leave the exhibition there is a reconstruction of his studio with it's paint-splattered wooden floor, which you can walk around on. Also on display here are some artifacts such as a human skull, which I assume were his own possessions.

There is also the inevitable gift shop selling Jackson Pollock chocolate Macadamia nuts and Jackson Pollock bottles of wine (maybe an irony for an artist who was a life-long alcoholic and died in a booze-fueled car accident.)

Buildings of Tokyo - Nakagin Capsule Tower

Constructed in 1972 and designed by architect Kisho Kurakawa, this space-age looking building was made of inter-connected capsules, each of which was a very small fitted apartment. It's currently unoccupied and has so far survived plans for its demolition after protests by several architects. Whether it will survive long into the future is anyone's guess. This building is a short walk from Shinbashi station (8-16-10 Ginza) It was an interesting vision of the future at the time, and although it's starting to look a bit tatty now, it lead to the common capsule hotels which are seen in all Japanese cities today. The same architect, Kurokawa, later designed the first capsule hotel in Japan, which opened in Osaka in 1979.

Buildings of Tokyo - St. Mary's Cathedral

Tokyo is a city full of very modern buildings, with very little evidence of structures more than a few decades old. This is largely due to the devastating destruction the city endured twice in the 20th century; firstly in the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 and again in the heavy bombing experienced in World War II. The result today is not what you can really call a beautiful city, with ugly, bland, concrete buildings and housing stetched over vast areas of the city. There is, however, some interesting and bold architecture, and the fact that that there isn't any beautiful heritage to protect as in, say for example, Venice, Paris or Rome, seems to enable buildings to spring up that wouldn't be built anywhere else. I plan to visit some well-known (and lesser-known) buildings around Tokyo for this blog, starting with St. Mary's Cathedral.

This cathedral was constructed in 1964 and designed by the reknowned Japanese architect Kenzo Tange. Among his best known buildings are the Peace Museum in Hiroshima and the Olympic gymnastics stadium in Harajuku. In fact, the cathedral has a similar curved roof to the Olympic stadium.

Standing freely from the cathedral there is also a 60 metre bell tower.

The bell tower is very narrow and the bells are only visible from the side - face on all you can see is the narrowly tapered tower with a crucifix at the top.

The interior is built in grey concrete with minimal decoration. The beauty comes from the big open space and the sweeping lines converging towards the ceiling.

When Kenzo Tange died in 2005 his funeral was held, appropriately, in this cathedral. The cathedral is located in the Bunkyo district of Tokyo.

Warm November sun

One of the nice things about Japan (in the middle and south of the country, at least) is the relatively warm autumn weather, which carries on well into November. On sunny days the temperature can go over 20 degrees, and yesterday (Nov.7th) I cycled to a park and sat there for a couple of hours enjoying the warm sunshine and listening to music on my headphones

I also took 360 degree panoramic photos on a new app on my phone, which you can see here

Who is the Japanese prime minister?

It occurred to me recently that I can't remember the name of the new Japanese prime minister, and not only that I don't even know what he looks like. I honestly wouldn't be able to pick him out in an identity parade. Prime ministers change here as regularly as teenage girls in Shibuya change their shade of nail varnish. Since I moved to Japan in 2003 I have no idea how many prime ministers there have been and would be hard pushed to name half of them. Maybe I don't need to get to know what the new one looks like - the new one will probably be along before I've returned from my Christmas holiday.