In the Pink

Saturday night I caught a pre-emptive case of the Sunday night blues.  Strangely enough, two weeks of doing almost nothing - hell, even with the two days’ work unpacking - didn’t prepare me to come back to school today.  Commuting is mendoksai and even though the new building is nice, I can't help thinking that moving sometimes don't solve old problems, and may actually create new ones.  It's probably too early in the game for me to be so cynical, but there it is.

I had a couple more chances to art it up before I surrendered to despair, though.  I've especially been trying to catch nihonga shows before the clock runs out.  Last Saturday I went to the Suntory Museum of Art to see their Kawanabe Kyosai exhibition.  I was a little irritated that it was so hard to look closely at the works, and for the most part it didn't knock my socks off, although the notable exception was a scroll depicting a fart battle.  Apparently this is a thing in Japanese art, dating back to the Heian period, and if you want to see what it looks like, Dr. Yokai has written a post about this unique genre over on his blog.

I wasn't done with nihonga yet, though.  I took leave of my sanity long enough to decide that the height of hanami season was the time to go to Ueno to see the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art's exhibition about the "lineage of eccentricities" in Edo-era painting,  There were some really knock out paintings in the show, but there were so many people AT the museum that I was so triggered that I didn't really enjoy it.  After two years, I still haven't figured out how art students are supposed to do serious museum studies in this country.

After leaving the Met going to another art museum, particularly one that promised to be even more crowded, was the last thing I wanted to do...and yet, that is exactly what I did.  Sensei, the Director, and I had been talking about going to the teamLab installation at the Mori Building Museum in Odaiba for months, and finally we'd settled on a date and gotten tickets - a last hurrah before returning to the trenches for the last term.  We met up and walked over, where we were met by a long line of people, which turned out to be the line for pre-purchased tickets. 

So far, I was not impressed.

We waited outside for a while, then we waited INSIDE for a while, and finally, we made it to the real entrance.  We were ushered through a curtain into - I shit you not - a different world.

Let me back up here for a moment.  Last year the three of us and Horn Blower saw a performance of Drum Tao's Mangekyo.  Although the staging was relatively simple, the multimedia effects really added to the performance.  teamLab was the company that created those effects.  As a musical performance, it was sublime, but imagine, if you can, using the same ideas in - essentially - an infinite blackbox theater that loops in and around itself.  Words become butterflies, lights create waterfalls, and in a bamboo forest it's perpetually firefly season.  That's kind of what Borderless was like.  

In one room paths led through crystal ropes of light.  The colors changed, as did the patterns.  After we'd wandered in, the lights dimmed and started trickling downward.  A little while later the "rain" slowed down, and on the outskirts of the room parts of the installation changed colors, creating a rainbow effect.

All of my favorite rooms included that sort of 3D element.  One you entered to be greeted by poles holding up transparent plastic disks, across which flowed patterns of light.  The floor angled upwards and suddenly it was like you were standing in a pond surrounded by lily pads.  When the light tracked across the disks, it becomes apparent that those patterns are actually fish swimming.

The crazy thing was, once you were in the museum, it actually didn't feel that crowded.  The lines set me up to feel like there were going to be a ridiculous amount of people annoying me, but the inside of the museum was so big, and the installations made such good use of the space that for the most part, you could actually enjoy it.  There were parts that you had to wait for - the mirrored room with all the lanterns, for one, but I felt like it was totally worth it, and because they regulated how many people were in it at the same time, you really didn't feel like you were packed in; it was just you, your friends, and a few others.  Although I wasn't impressed when I got in line, by the time I walked out, I was definitely a fan.

Sadly, I can't say that about every part of my life in Japan.  Even though I'm glad to be out of the old school, where the air was toxic and my classroom was constantly occupied by other teachers, I miss my walks to and from work next to the stream that runs through my neighborhood.  I miss seeing the ojiisans who'd be exercising together along the way and telling them ohayogozaimasu!  I miss being able to hit the snooze button until 6:55.  But I'll soldier on somehow.