First two days in Japan

All I can say is - wow.

It's been full on!

First of all, it's a lot different from the last time I was in Japan, most notably because that was when I was 15, and didn't to worry about anything more than trying to decide which keroppi plastic fantastic to buy.

Nowadays I get so into thinking about what Xi needs that I forget things for myself - most recent example, today in fact - my jumper and we WENT INTO THE SNOW TODAY!!!!!! First time I've ever seen it falling (more on that later, will try and keep things in order)

So, yesterday we went wander shopping/looking, happened upon a fabric store, had to have a browse (of course). We can get beautiful Japanese cottons now in the quilting stores and speciality shops at home, so I was interested in seeing what was in a store here.

And these lovely ladies were. They thought my baby was 'kawaii desu ne!' They are of the gothic lolita persuasion, and it's a pretty hilarious fashion/life, like little bo peep crossed with .....not porn, but something close to it.

The process of buying the fabric was really interesting. I didn't understand our friend when he tried to explain it to me (I think it's maybe because he'd never bought fabric himself)

but the whole shop is just samples, so I was looking through the designs, thinking, wow, there's not much here, or this one has more, but geez these pieces have got terrible cuts on the edge (thinking where it's been cut to be sold). In actual fact, the person comes to you (like DK's) cuts off a sample, staples it to a card, tells you to wait x minutes then you go to the counter and your order is dropped down a little shute, already bagged up. ..........Tom just told me that the sample card gets sent upstairs by vacuum tube and the order drops down - I missed that bit, I was probably back to fondling fabrics. So there's basically two stores of fabric on top of one another!

Other things that happened:

We went to a toy store,

and a grocery store,

And today we discovered a wall of greenery, (DC these are for you) which was really cool and looked very successful, on our way to Kyoto Tower, which has an observatory up the top.

This is what the individual plants were living in.

This is Xi holding a can of hot coffee from the vending machine as a hand warmer, since I couldn't get mittens on him. I think he's going to be a can-a-day boy.

Then we met up with Aogu and went to find Kurataniwashi, which is a famous paper making village, which was an adventure. First we had to drive about 2 hours out of Kyoto, and we started to pass little bits of snow, and then it got 'real countryside' (Aogu) and very rural, cold and more snow, and actual flakes hitting the windscreen!! (remember, girl from NQLD, this is my 6th meeting with snow)

We went to the old centre first, not the new tourist one, and we found it pretty deserted, and kinda twin peaks weirdy, but had a peek around before going to the new one, look at the snow on the vegie patch - frozen lettuce!

The GPS to us along a very winding road, where we only passed one old man on a kinda motorcycle into some hills, we were surrounded by more and more snow on the road, and it wasn't looking like we'd end up somewhere at all, but then we hit a main (ish) road, and found the place, only to find out that they only are open on Fridays and Saturdays (but don't advertise that fact).

However we were lucky enough to run into a papermaker who stayed on for the afternoon and she gave us a personal tour, so we saw the studios, but were not able to see the process, and were sad to hear that the school (which the new centre is) will probably be closing down soon due to lack of students (and possibly funds).

It was a full on day, and I am hoping not everyday will be like that!

Tomorrow is Costume Museum and temples.......!

whatever o'clock in the morning

I don't know if it's because I feel guilty that I've let this slip so much, or that I finally have some time for it, or that it's whatever o'clock in the morning, and we're in Hong Kong, waiting to get on a plane to Osaka.

But hopefully it's the restart of this blog, exploring stuff, and pondering 'what the hell am I doing?' kind of questions....

Melbourne Trip

While Tom was away at Pilchuck, I had to pack some work for inclusion in the Melbourne Art Fair and sort out what we needed for the installation.

This was done by multiple emails and skype conversations over a really bad internet connection on both ends. This was one of the reasons I didn’t keep up with the blog, I was so annoyed at how slow and unreliable the internet was that, and I spent so many hours on the phone trying to figure out what the problems were with the technicians that I couldn’t bear to spend anymore time on the computer. I finally found out that it was a physical fault with a broken line and weird connections at the exchange, but I feel that that experience has scarred me in terms of loving technology, or alternatively I have been thinking that I could possibly become a phone tech support myself……..

Anyway, back to the show!

We sent everything across earlier for a preview at Helen Gory Galerie so we just had to take ourselves across with Tom’s outfit for the opening party.

The idea was to set up the installation, and then have some time together to wander Melbs. The reality was that at 8am when we rocked up to the Melbourne Royal Exhibition Building we were told that no children were allowed (under 16) and so I would have to go… We know now to double check if we can drag Xi with us, but as he’s already been part of three installations, I didn’t even think that it would be a problem. However, we are finding out that the more official and fancy an event or exhibition, the more rules and procedures there are!

This was Tom's wall of work.

So, we did try and sneak in, and succeeded for a while, until I’d just hidden the pram behind the wall set up, and was emerging with Xi on my back in a sling and ran face to face into the same guard that wouldn’t let us into the building.

I got escorted off the premises, and wasn’t allowed to bring baby back until it was open to the public. First time that’s happened to me.

We wandered around the area for a while until it started raining (and it was cold in August as well) and then hid out in the museum café reading until Tom was finished.

But on Wednesday, our free day, we got to go to the Tim Burton show (that DC went to as well),

It was great!!! That's us underneath a big sad balloon.

And then Tom went to the opening party (I did the stay home with baby gig) and on the Thursday we got to check out the MAF in all it’s multiple galleried glory. The building it was in is amazing, it was derelict for years, and then restored, and as they were restoring it, they found all these paintings had been covered up, so they restored the paintings, and now it’s a totally glorious example of 1890’s art deco interior grand hall symbolistic design with LOTS of swirls everywhere.

So we cruised all the stalls.

This is a photorealistic, yet distorted perspective supersized sculpture that messed with your head. ......I can not remember the name of the artist (bad bad me!)