Kyou wa yo kata!

I'm really glad I had a good time today because after Saturday (when I have 6 kids classes) I was f***ing fed up!! The morning I went back to Yamakita with Tetsuo to pick up the pottery I made at Yasu's studio a few weeks. I love going there! Tetsuo's birthday is a few days before mine in March so we are planning on having barbecue on Yasu's land under the cherry blossom trees! I can't wait! Song gi will come too and we can all make pottery together. I also went to Yashi Park today (a park on the ocean) and collected rocks and shells. I must do that more often, it was really relaxing.

Tonight I went to an eizakaya (Japanese traditional restaurant) with one of my beginner classes: Mayumi, Junko (my shodo sensei), Satomi and Takesha. It was really fun but I always get a stomach ache at those things, it's just too much food. 1.fried chicken skin salad, 2.chicken/radish salad, 3.sashimi, 4.maki and more sashimi, 5.nabe (huge Japanese soup), 6.nabe with rice, 7.dessert, also all you can drink. No wonder it's $40 a person...

I've been thinking a lot about how extremely generous and honest people are here. I guess they can afford to be because there aren't nearly as many threats as back home. I love it, I love giving gifts and being polite to people and having that reciprocated. It just makes life easier and more pleasant. That's why Japanese people always get there wallets, handbags etc. stolen whenever they go to other countries. They are naive and expect other people to be decent human beings.

I was amazed and super lucky when I left my purse on a Kyoto subway last weekend and got it back with nothing stolen. I was going to Kyoto Station with Song gi (to return to Kochi) and I was carrying many bags and talking to SG. Why we got off the train and the doors closed, oh shit, I forgot my purse! Stupid as usual but we told the ticket booth guys and called the guys on the train who retrieved it and held it for me at the next station. So wonderful! That would never happen anywhere else. I've turned my back for two seconds in Paris or Montreal and my wallet or camera was gone.
mata ne...

Photos of Song gi when I first met him in Nov. 2005. Kawaiii! i love him

Kochi Art Museum

Today I went to Kochi Art Museum for the second time, it's about a 15 minute bike ride away. It's interesting because Kochi is quite a small city but the art museum is pretty good and has a lot of international exhibitions.

Today was the last day to see Monet's collection of Japanese woodblock prints. It was really fun to see this in Japan because they recreated Monet's kitchen in the museum and I've visited the original in Giverney 7 years ago when I was an exchange student in France. I felt so worldly;) It was quite a collection with Hiroshige's series Scenes on the Road to Edo and some of Hokusai's series Views of Mount Fuji. Maybe I'm getting the exact titles wrong but I was reading all the French text so close enough. I know it's really cliche at this point to be a Western artist inspired by Japanese woodblock prints but it gave me a lot of ideas for some collages I've been thinking about making. I'll put images of that up when I've done some.

^ Hiroshige

^Hokusai

^Hokusai

This is also the second time since I've been here that they're having a performance art troupe from Quebec. Le Compagnie Marie Chouinard is performing Orpheus and Eurydice on Feb. 1 . It promises to be interesting since the flyer has a half naked man in platforms and topless women with golden nipples. I'm really excited about this since I've been reading Greek mythology this past year and just finished Salman Rushdie's The Ground Beneath Her Feet, which is based on Orpheus.

Orpheus and Eurydice

So, even though Kochi isn't like Osaka and Kyoto, I'm getting my fill of art with my shodo lessons, making all kinds of stuff in my apartment and the museum. yay!