Otaku Pilgrimage: Garden of Words

So, it's been more than a month since I came back from Japan.  My 6 faithful readers have probably been wondering if I was going to write anything else about it, and honestly, I kind of wondered the same thing.  BUT one of my projects for this summer is to catch up on my backlog of posts, so I'm starting here: the Otaku Pilgrimage.  Specifically, the setting for most of the film Garden of Words, Shinjuku Gyoen.

This is not the mecca I originally intended to get to this time around, but I couldn't bring myself to go to Shimokitazawa when I got back to Tokyo, even if the live shows DID start earlier than they would here.  On the other hand, Shinjuku Gyoen was in the neighborhood I was staying in...approximately.  I still took a train two stops, because a.) my JR Pass was in its final hours and I wanted to get as much out of it as I could, and b.) my feet were busted as shit by that last day.  And for that reason, when I got out of Sendagaya station and was unsure which direction I should go in, I looked carefully at Google Maps to try and be sure I knew where the entrance was.  This was a futile move, because apparently the main gate for Shinjuku Gyoen is no longer the original location.  There's apparently a sign that points you in the right direction, but it's not visible when you come OUT of the station, so that's a fail on somebody's part (it might even be mine).

The park is pretty big, so I also scoped out Google Maps to try and figure out where I was going, rather than aimlessly wandering around.  If aimless wandering is your thing, more power to you - Shinjuku Gyoen is a beautiful park - but I was going back to Otome Road after the park, because the Lashinbang there had been working on a grand reopening the night before, and I still had money I needed to spend!  So I knew roughly where I needed to go before I entered the park, and headed in the direction of a small picnic shelter immediately.

In the movie, this is where the two main characters bump into each other, and gradually get to know one another.  For the greatest "pilgrimage" value it really should have been a rainy school day, but a sunny Saturday was all I had left.  The male protagonist talks about how when it's rainy, he can't go to school - something draws him down different paths.  He sits and draws on the bench while the woman he meets there drinks canned coffee.  I sat down and drew in my sketchbook for a while to try and get into the right mood, but - like the staircase at the end of Your Name - it seemed like this had become a bit of a tourist attraction, so I tried not to monopolize it for too long.  

Close to the shelter is a building called Goryo-tei (or the Taiwan Pavilion).  It's a pretty distinctive building and the landmark that let me know exactly where to find the correct shelter.  The pond stretches around both areas, and everything was green - kind of a shock coming from Mongolia, where only now is it turning fully green.

Another thing I was looking forward to is the wisteria.  I'd been in Japan for nearly a week, and although I'd seen it here and there, I hadn't yet had the chance to smell it.  In case you don't know, wisteria has the most amazing fragrance, and it seems strange to me that it's not used in more perfumes or candles.  So I finally got the chance to experience it - the first time in 4 years, since it only blooms in spring.

I struggled with Tokyo when I first moved to Japan.  There's a feeling of magic and history that saturates the streets of Kyoto that's just not apparent in Tokyo.  However, over the 2 years I lived in Yokohama, I slowly discovered it, hiding in small shrines by the wayside and the occasional crumbling building; it doesn't reveal itself for just anyone.  I think this is one of the reasons I love Makoto Shinkai's films so much.  He gets it - he notices the way two trains veer away from each other, or the potential in hiding from the rain.  It was nice to see it again in my last night in town.

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.

Staycation

A sad reality of my life in Japan is the fact that I never seem to have enough money.  Case in point: I have been on vacation for a week and a half but I haven’t left Yokohama.  Unless you count Tokyo, which I don’t...who really knows where one ends and the other begins, anyways?  And maybe I’m just getting old, but the idea of two weeks of staying up late and sleeping in, and generally just puttering around however my heart desires kind of appealed to me.  And that is why after a week and a half of vacation the most I can say I’ve accomplished is drinking enough coke to kill a horse and staying up to date on my photography assignments toward my master’s.

Be that as it may, I felt that I couldn’t, in good conscience, leave my six faithful readers without any adventures to enliven their dreary existences this week.  I had a great plan.  I was going to go out to Sanrio Puroland, since my suggestion to go there with friends had been shot down by said friends.  And then I walked out of the house last Friday to do exactly that, and I realized that it was cold and rainy and I wanted no part of the great outdoors.

Well, that decision made, I started looking for what else I could do on a nasty afternoon.  I opened Google maps and started looking at the places I’ve starred over the last few years.  I have a tendency to mark places I find out about where I want to go as favorites, so that I can visit them later when I have time.*  I had been looking at the west part of Tokyo, and decided to get a little weeb-ish.

One place I marked about a year ago was Shiro-Hige’s Cream Puff Factory.  This is a little place out in Shimokitazawa owned by Hayao Miyazaki’s brother, and it’s the home of the most kawaii cream puffs on the face of the planet.  I got there around 1 and was really only thinking about dessert until I stepped in the door and realized there was a restaurant with real food upstairs and it smelled delicious.  I inhaled the fettuccine carbonara, didn’t ask for a hundred refills of ice, and took my cream puff to go, which is actually pretty good behavior for me, but what can I say?  There was just something about the place that made me want to be respectful.

Next I caught the train over to Chofu.  At some point since I started watching Gegege no Kitaro I found out that Shigeru Mizuki used Chofu as the setting for his manga.  In fact the entrance for the forest is through Fudaten Jinja, so it had a star on it as well.  There’s also a Kitaro Chaya by Jindai-ji, the temple I visited last year for the daruma market, but I’d already eaten pasta and a cream puff, and since I shouldn’t reaaaaally be buying anything else, I decided to give the tea house a miss.  

I checked out the shrine itself, and then tried to find Gegege no Mori.  The back part of the shrine is restricted, but I noticed a row of stone lanterns along the east side of the shrine.  I followed them back to a small cemetery, where I could see the back part of the shrine.  Mostly it was an empty lot with a sakura tree, which was kind of disappointing, but not altogether surprising.  After all, you can’t just leave the entrance to the unseen world lying around where anyone can find it.

Although I may not need any more stuff to pack, I couldn’t stop myself from visiting Nakano Broadway, since I was already all the way out there.**  Call it a fact-finding mission in case I decide to sell off any of the stuff I already have and leave it at that.  At least on this occasion I successfully resisted temptation.  A few days later I was browsing the craft section of my friendly neighborhood Daiso when the opening song from The Promised Neverland - which I’ve just finished binge-watching - started playing over the PA system.  It was about that moment that I realized I really, really didn’t want to leave Japan.  There are things that bug the ever-loving shit out of me here, not least of which is the fact that it’s impossible to enjoy an art exhibit here (don’t even get me started on my job).  That said, it’s going to be really hard to leave it all behind.  Here’s hoping I make it back in the next life.

*The flaw in this otherwise brilliant plan is that I don’t always remember why I wanted to go some of these places.
**For the record, Nakano Broadway is nowhere near where I was, other than that they are both geographically west from the rest of Tokyo. 

The Otaku Report: New Year, New Love

Anime boyfriends are the best.  My friends may tease me, but it's true.  For starters, they are literal works of art.  Anime boyfriends don't get jealous.  They can't knock you up.  They won't leave you but if you decide it's time to move on, they'll let you go - no stalking or manipulative threats of suicide.  I know, because it hasn't been so long since I left my last anime boyfriend for my current one, and this post is about the shopping days of a certain anime fan in a certain city.  Because I needed some new swag.

Being away from Japan during Jump Festa and Comiket was torture.  On one hand I was enjoying my time with the fam, but every time Twitter butted in with a notification it was like being stabbed with a needle.  At least a few things were left for me when I visited the Jump Shop my first Saturday back, though.  Til that point I hadn't really thought about the fact that Jump might have more/better swag to sell for their titles in their own shop than Animate.  Normally this wouldn't be relevant but Golden Kamuy (aka, my #1 obsession these last few months), is published in Young Jump.  I managed to walk away with a several things I probably didn't need, but that I justified buying by reminding myself that when I'm back in Mongolia I may wish I'd taken better advantage of living in the Promised Land.

Before that happened, though, I treated myself to dinner with my mostly-completed Sugimoto doll, back in December.  Area Q in Harajuku hosted a Golden Kamuy treasure cafe, and although I took a long time deliberating whether or not I needed to go to another cafe, in the end I decided that I deserved that quality time with my new anime boyfriend, just like I’d deserved it with the old one.  The Golden Kamuy cafe had a special dimension to it - you were supposed to hunt for the treasure using QR codes hidden throughout the cafe.  I came loaded for bear (BOKKI!), with a QR reader on my phone, my pocket router, and a mobile charger, in the end, I couldn’t make the magic happen.  You needed a specific app on your phone, which I downloaded while I was there and tried to start up, but there was either issues with my tech or with my Japanese abilities, so in the end I gave up and just enjoyed the cafe.

For the record, I had actually forgotten about to include this little gem in this post until I was sitting at Denny’s indulging in my weekly Coke bender.  I’ve been trying to knock this post out since I wrote about the fox village and I’ve got Hina Matsuri to write about this weekend, so it’s time to buckle down and get shit done.

The thing I was really waiting for didn't happen until school had been back in session for a week.  One theme of this post is the power of Twitter, which is how I learned that there was an exhibition of Ainu art paired with Golden Kamuy at Tokyo Skytree (as well as how I knew about the cafe and some of the other swag I got).  The Skytree is the world's tallest tower, but it's still shorter than Burj Khalifa, so I walked straight past the very long line to ascend to get to the east end of the shopping and entertainment complex.  (Probably this makes me a really bad travel blogger, but in my defense, I was in the early stages of the anklebiter plague and hadn't yet made it home from my monkey trip).  

The Golden Kamuy part of the event actually wasn't that interesting - there wasn't special swag to buy and the "art panels" were just stills from the anime, although I did get a free folder.  The Ainu part of the exhibition, on the other hand, was totally worth going.  Ironically I had just started working on clothing for my Asirpa doll, so it was really cool to get to see specifically how their attush are constructed and decorated.  It had me thinking that I might need to plan on going to Hokkaido on a return trip to Japan, when I actually have enough money to do it properly, with a JR Pass to get me around the whole island.  

There have been a few other things I picked up.  I used the power of Google Translate to order these incredibly tasty macaroons right to my door (hell, I don’t know that I’ve ever thought much about macaroons, and now I can’t get them out of my head), as well as a nice, warm Golden Kamuy chanchanko, leftover from Comiket.  The free hot springs collabo bath salts Animate offered, which tied in with that hot spring episode, were another fierce contender for my favorite.  I also made a side trip to Shosen Grande after a field trip last month to pick up...well, I thought it was a tapestry, but it turned out to be a curtain, and that's okay, because sometimes more is more.  Besides which, I finally finished my second bijinga painting - a nihonga painting of Sugimoto on a small shikishi board, which I very conveniently had a scroll for.  Now, usually the bijinga genre is thou ght of as pictures of beautiful women, but the characters its written with don't specify gender, so I'm subverting it to my own purposes and painting men.  That's just how I roll.

On a separate but related note, I've been forced to reconsider my evaluation of Touken Ranbu (aka, that anime with the sword boys).  I mentioned earlier this school year that I discovered that I had a little otome friend in my grade 4 class.  She asked me if I watched it, and I had to admit that not only had I, I'd also gone to see Mikazuki Munechika at the national museum.  For literacy week she came to school dressed as one of the Toushiro brothers, and when I looked up which one she was, I began to recognize the genius of the anime/game.  See, there's a certain amount of subtext invoked by the usual fans of anime with all male characters, and while I respect everyone's right to enjoy what they enjoy, I get a little pissy when there are multiple figurines of fujoshi-favorite characters but GoodSmile apparently won't make me a Sugimoto n endoroid.

So while I had watched Touken Ranbu, I wasn't obsessed, and on a bad day, I found it irritating and at least a little embarassing.  After seeing how much my fourth grader enjoyed it, though, I decided to watch it again and try to see it with different eyes.  The first thing I noticed was that there is such a variety of personalities, ages, and sizes amongst the touken danshi that there is literally a boy for otome of all ages (or at least there is as long as you don't hate pretty men).  I also decided that the so-called subtext was barely even implied.  After rewatching it, the characters really seem more like best friends or siblings, rather than lovers.  I think it says something sad about our global society that a cartoon about male characters having fun and being caring towards each other (with the occasional battle thrown in to keep things interesting) instantly gets interpreted as being homoerotic rather than as an example of non-toxic masculinity.

It was around that time when I realized that the nendoroids at my Bookoff weren't that expensive and I only had a few months to get my fill of the good life, which ALSO just so happened to coincide with the need for a good old fashioned bout of therapy shopping.  All of which explains how I ended up bringing home my #2 and #3 sword boys this week.  No ragrets.

Art on the Town

Honestly, sometimes I would kind of kill for a weekend with nothing to do.  I didn't appreciate how nice that could be when I lived in Mongolia, and now there's way too much to see and do (particularly when the school steals a Saturday from us each month.  It isn't that I need my downtime that much.  It's more that my feet wouldn't mind a few days where I stayed the hell off them, and now that I've started arting again I could probably put it to pretty good use.

I bring this up because a few weeks back was Roppongi Art Night...and by night, they apparently meant weekend.  There were, of course, things that stayed open late, but I missed some really cool activities on Saturday afternoon, aka Nihonga time.  The Tokyo International Art Fair (as opposed to Art Fair Tokyo, which I visited in February) was also going on in Roppongi, but I couldn't convince myself to go before my lesson (read: I was enjoying my Denny's time too much that morning) and I had just enough time afterwards to make it there and find Maman before it was time for my Meetup group.

See, I decided I would make an effort to be social.  Although I've become better friends with my favorite colleagues, I've been watching Wotaku ni Koi wa Muzukashii since I got back from Golden Week, and it has convinced me that I need an otaku friend in my life.  So when I saw that the Art in Tokyo meetup was going to Roppongi Art Night as a big group, I joined the waiting list, and eventually got a spot.

Did I find the fujoshi friend of my dreams?  No.  (Probably I should go to some sort of anime meetup if that's what I'm really looking for).  I talked to a bunch of people though, most of whom seemed like decent human beings, and exercised some rarely-used social skills, so I guess that's a win?  I'm open to going to another one, but I think the real joy of Roppongi Art Night is found alone.

Here's the deal: Roppongi Art Night is, by and large, installations scattered throughout a neighborhood of Tokyo.  Getting to see them involves walking around a LOT, and being part of such a huge group means standing around for possibly a lot longer than you would have on your own (I mean, how long do I need to stand in a field staring at a big, inflated plastic person?  Not a half hour, that's for damn sure).  More to the point, sometimes it's just nice to wander down a street, not looking for art, and coming across your favorite piece of the night, which is how I came across a shrine being guarded by two rows of foo dogs, covered with string and glowing in blacklight.  There was something magical about stumbling across something you weren't expecting to be there.

Particularly when it's not surrounded by people.  After grabbing a bite to eat, I made my way to the National Art Center, where DUNDU was going to perform with their giant, light-up puppets. They were fantastic, but I couldn't help thinking to myself that I would enjoy them a lot more if there weren't so many people around.  Of course, not being able to get close is a drag, but it was made worse by the fact that everyone and their brother were using their phones to take videos and pictures.  Admittedly, I did this too, but I tried to keep my phone down, and made an effort to experience it with my eyes, and not through the screen of my phone.

Work of Art

They say that fortune favors the bold.  Maybe I spent the better part of two months visiting the shrines of art's own Lady Luck, but at the end of the day, I'm a child of God, and God helps those who help themselves.  That means I had to start putting my money where my mouth wanted to be, and both make my art and put it out there.

Small Benzaiten shrine found on the corner up the street a few blocks from CLOUDS

Now it isn't like I'm starting all this from ground zero.  My class last fall produced some work that I wasn't totally ashamed of (and one piece that - now that I've resolved all its issues - I'm damned proud of), and my Nihonga paintings are coming along.  The problem is that since graduating with my pair of BA's, I haven't really tried.  Nearly the entirety of my involvement with art over the last 14 years has happened in my own classroom.  I really had no idea how to get to the other side - instead of looking at others' work, having people look at mine.  So I asked my good friend, Google.

He pointed me to Tokyo's pretty active art scene.  One of the things I enjoyed most about my course last fall was participating in critiques with my classmates, so I signed up for the Art Byte Critique group first.  Along with the actual critiques (in which I couldn't take part this month due to a conflict with my day job), they post open calls and other art events on their Facebook page.  While I couldn't win an artist residency if I tried, participating in contests seems manageable.

I say that now, but when I first started digging into their page I was in Mongolia, far away from all of my materials, and although I was able to lay down the groundwork for my entry in CLOUDS Art+Coffee's competition, I couldn't actually get started on it til I was back at home with my gouashi (yes, that's right, I've brangelina-ed my media of choice).  I spent the following week hurrying home from school so I could get started working ASAP, feverishly trying to finish in a week so I could deliver it to the gallery on my Sunday off.*  And then when I did, I discovered things work differently than I was expecting.  Apparently I should have emailed for all the details, so I would have known to deliver it a week later, and how much the entry fee was.  Oops.

(By the way, if you're reading this and you haven't voted for me yet, go vote now by clicking this link.  Consider it a way of paying me back for all the hours of free entertainment you receive from reading about my misadventures.  Unfortunately these days being successful relies on how involved your friends are willing to be as much if not more than on how good you are).

Speaking of which...one of the problems of going off on this venture is the super awkward part where I have to meet new people.  It's less that I hate people (this time), and more that I'm enough of an introvert that most of the time people are optional.  Nevertheless, the next thing I decided to try was PechaKucha.  This is an event that actually started here in Tokyo, and has branched out all over the world.  On a PechaKucha night, presenters show 20 slides for 20 seconds each while they talk about their work.  I think of this as the sorta-networking equivalent of going on a blind date to the movies - even if your date sucks, you won't actually have to talk to them for two hours. 

Photo courtesy of PechaKucha Tokyo

My first PechaKucha was actually the 156th since its inception.  From what I understand, normally it is artists and designers talking about what they do, but this was a special event - for this "PowWow" they had presenters from all over the world talking about PechaKucha in their city.  During the two hours I was there I talked to all of two people, but I figure that's a start.  I left before the end, because I had an hour's ride on the train between me and home, but luckily the organizer for Yokohama was one of the presenters I got to listen to, and it's a shorter commute home from Minato Mirai than it is from Roppongi, so another awkward night is probably in the cards.

In fact, another awkward night came along the following weekend - the opening reception for the contest at CLOUDS.  The school had its festival that morning, so I was slightly sunburnt and sweaty, and Koenji is pretty far from Yokohama, so I was flying solo (although if by some miracle I win, I'm guilt tripping everyone into coming with me to THAT opening, which they should anyway because Koenji is a fun neighborhood).  It was a little surreal seeing my art on the wall, but also good.

The honest to goodness truth, though, is that all of this is incredibly daunting.  I feel like an outsider, in spite of spending my adulthood going to galleries, teaching students day in, day out, and actually holding two student shows in galleries in UB.  Walking in alone, both to PKN and the opening at CLOUDS, was terrifying in a way that I can't even quite explain, as if somehow everyone there was weighing me and finding me wanting.  However, since I've never been one to let my fear stop me from doing things, you get to look forward to more posts about how awkward my attempts to transform myself into an artist are. Of course, maybe it won't be that bad.  When I end up in a workshop with a group of art teachers, usually I manage to get along and hold my own.  I guess I'll see if it holds true when working alongside other artists this Wednesday night when I go to Dr. Sketchy's Anti-Art School - a life drawing event where burlesque dancers model which takes place in a bar (I know, sounds fun...try not to be too jealous!)  Even if that's a bomb, the next contest I'm entering is taking place in Germany, so if my drawing is accepted I won't have to worry about feeling awkward at the opening reception, since I won't actually get to go to it, and honestly, that's kind of a relief.

*At least not now...perhaps I'm developing a new retirement plan that involves traveling the world by making art at different residencies...  Perhaps by then I'll actually be a good candidate for one.
**Half-assed Mormons like me look forward to our semiannual General Conference, which is broadcast from Salt Lake City and is viewable online.  Thus, a Sunday off.

Courting the Muse

I mentioned a few posts back that the DVD release of the last season of Hozuki no Reitetsu was marked by a promotion at Animate, and that this promotion included an art contest.  What I did NOT tell you was that around that time I found a couple of Benzaiten's shrines around Yokohama.  She came up in my post about the Shichifukujin Meguri, the only female deity included in the lucky seven, and the patron of artists and musicians, so she holds a special place in my little infidel heart.  Because I really, really wanted to win that contest, I decided running around Tokyo visiting every one of her shrines that I could find would be an AWESOME use of my resources.  I mean, I'd put every bit of cleverness and ingenuity I had into my entry, but I was a visitor playing on the home turf.  I needed to lure her into my cheering section, if I could.

Okay.  So it's possible right now you're thinking that this is some next-level blasphemy.  Maybe you're even right.  I choose to look at it as me addressing prayers to my deity through a power spot.  Since the lightning hasn't struck yet, let's move on...

Honestly, at first this was just kind of for funsies.  The first shrine I found after leaving Sankichi, the pigment store near Kannai station.  I was on my way to Coco Curry (who I've mentioned probably more times recently than either Coke or Lonely Planet, so I'm going to start hitting them up for a sponsorship as well), and only knew it was affiliated with Benzaiten because it had a money washing station.  There's a long story about my Dad and I passing a lucky $100 bill back and forth, but for now suffice it to say that I don't need to wash my money, but I did drop a five yen coin in the box before hurrying on into the night.

The next shrine I found a few days later, as I was about to catch the train at Myorenji.  At the edge of Kikuna-Ike there is a small shrine, and as I walked passed the alley leading to the park it caught at the corner of my eye.  Since I'd just seen the train leave the station, I decided I had enough time to go see whose shrine it was, and when I saw the dragons and the symbol of the Triforce surrounded by waves, I knew that this was going to become a thing.  I was going to start my own Ichifukujin Meguri.

However, this is easier said than done.  It's not always clear who's enshrined where.  Google Maps spat out a few answers for me, but I suspected that there were a lot more, so for the first time in my history I became an expert* in iconography.  Back in college my croaky old art history professor talked about how you figure out which saint was which.  I cared slightly more when my Tibetan guide was telling me how to figure out which Bodhisattva was which, but for me, visiting old temples and churches has never really been about who's there.  Now, though, I learned that the goddess of water was usually located next to a pond - like this rather incongruous pond on a hill at Atago Jinja - sometimes on an island.

"The" Itsukushima shrine is a great example of this, and when I realized that I'd been to one of the three major Benzaiten shrines in Japan already it actually gave me a clue to finding more.  I was taking the train back from Shibuya after my lesson one Saturday when I saw a shrine on an island in a pond.  When I found it on my phone I realized it was an Itsukushima shrine as well, which helped me to find others.

Not only is water associated with Benzaiten, so are the animals associated with water.  I mentioned dragons, but the animal that is actually sacred to her is a white snake.  You don't always see the snake, though - her shrine at Kamishinmeitenso is one of the few I've seen with prolific white snakes...you can even buy a small votive snake at the shrine office.

Instead, because there is almost always a water feature at Benzaiten's shrines, you'll see living animals - fish, frogs, and even turtles.  Maybe the fish are a coincidence...after all, this is Japan, and what would a pond be without some koi?  Maybe the same is true of the turtles, but since I almost never see them anywhere else, I'm suspicious that they were put there in connection with the shrines.  But I freely admit that I may be talking out my ass...I've been known to do it before.

Although the first few shrines were easy enough to get to - one was practically in Tokyo 2nd Ward's backyard - it wasn't long before I had to start clocking lots of kilometers on my Kansai OnePass.  There were a couple in Shinagawa, a few around Asakusa, one on the pond in Ueno, which I first saw four years back as I went looking for Ryokan Sawanoya.  Several were west of the city, including one in Inokashira that we walked past when visiting the Ghibli Museum.  I didn't make it to them all - there were five I identified but hadn't managed to visit when I left for Mongolia on spring break.  See, that was my deadline - the exhibition that the contest was a part of wrapped up on March 31, and that was what this was all about, right?  Winning a contest???

Actually, I made it to my last shrine - Sanno Itsukushima - on the last pre-deadline Sunday before church.  After clapping my hands and bowing my head, I began my prayer, but about halfway through I realized I hadn't mentioned the contest. 

From the beginning of my pilgrimage, I justified wanting to win the contest because it would mean that someone had acknowledged me as an artist.  "Being acknowledged" - having some sort of skill, being worthy as a rival, that sort of thing - is a recurring theme in anime, and there's a reason for that.  Having someone validate you helps to give you purpose, makes you feel like you can hold your own.  And I want that.  I really do...hell, who doesn't?  But although this is freaking cheesy to say (and I'm cringing just a little as I write it) nobody can really tell you your worth except you.  By that last shrine, I had realized that as nice as winning a contest would be, I actually cared more about being an artist, and simply winning wouldn't make me something if I wasn't it already.

As far as I know, a winner hasn't been announced (hey, maybe it wouldn't change whether or not I'm an artist, but winning would still be wonderful).  I've kept an eye on my email as well as their website and Twitter, without any word.  But an artist doesn't sit around waiting for someone to say, "Yeah, you're the real deal," no matter how much they want to hear it.  They've got art shit to do.  And so do I.

More on that next week.

*I use this term loosely.  I'm probably exaggerating.

Otaku Report, Vol. 2

What they say is true: there's nothing like new love to make you see your world in a different light.

Okay, possibly I just made that line up.  And possibly, by "new love" I'm talking about my new anime obsession, Bungou Stray Dogs.  However, the sentiment remains true:  I've been seeing Yokohama through rose colored glasses, and if that color is the tinge of blood shed by the Port Mafia, so what?  I'm not sure what finally made me decide to watch Bungou Stray Dogs.  I believe I first read about an anime set in Yokohama last fall, and even saw some sort of promotion for the movie which is currently out, Dead Apple, a couple of months ago, but I have a certain amount of reluctance to get too caught up in an anime with that many pretty men in it, because traps.

I was not planning to write the second (long overdue) Otaku Report this weekend, but rather about the Koganecho Bazaar.  I only found out that there was a stamp rally going on in Yokohama last night, and let me tell you, it was a feat of Google Maps engineering, figuring out how to get there as well as around all the sites that were participating, but that was my plan.  I would be a good art teacher, and check out the artist residencies, leaving the second half of the rally for another day.  To that end, I spent at least twenty minutes taking possibly the only bus in Japan - nay, possibly the world! - that simultaneously smells of old people and unwashed private parts, just to get to the neighborhood from the Kanagawa Museum of Modern Literature.  But when I got to Koganecho it was kind of a bust - there only seemed to be about one gallery open - so here we are, dancing around the fact that I spent my morning collecting stamps like a giddy eight-year old.

That is, essentially, what a stamp rally is.  You go around a museum, or a city or whatnot, collecting stamps, turning them in for a small prize at the end.  Since Bungou Stray Dogs is set in Yokohama, it's kind of a perfect way to get people excited about seeing the sights.  Admittedly, I've been through these sights previously, but not since I started watching the anime, and far be it from me to miss an opportunity to fan girl out.

Stamp rallies can be hard on the feet, and some of them offer special one-day passes that let you use public transportation (in this case, certain lines of it) as many times as you like.  Next time I'll definitely buy one.  I didn't really think about how many buses and trains I'd be using, and they are expensive enough here that they really add up.  Since I didn't end up spending long in Koganecho, I ended up finishing about four hours after I started, at the Animate by Yokohama station, with just enough time to get to my Nihonga lesson.

You may be tempted to infer, based on the length of time it took me to put together another Otaku Report, that the tide of my devotion had ebbed.  You would be correct, at least partially. I still keep up
with several shows and manga, but grad school and art have done a pretty good job of keeping me in the real world since Christmas.  Add to that the fact that winter just plain sucks - cold without too much going on - and it turns out to be difficult scraping one of these posts together.  I do have a couple of things for you, though...

The National Art Center of Tokyo had its first show about an animator last fall, for Shinkai Makoto.  I don't want to compare him to Miyazaki, because it's apples and oranges, so let's just say that I've seen a lot of anime during the last few years, but I can only remember the names of two animators, and let you draw your own conclusions.  Unfortunately you couldn't take pictures in the exhibition, but I did buy a gorgeous catalog from the shop.

Hozuki has still had a few things going on, but most of them are in Japanese, so I didn't see a lot of point...my study of the language has been more or less stymied by the fact that it's ridiculously difficult.  The most exciting thing for me was that, in celebration of the DVD release of the first half of the second season - deep breath - Animate hosted a "Museum of Hell" at 4 locations, which included a drawing contest.  Entries were artwork of the cat - often referred to as looking like a curse - drawn by one of the show's antagonists, Hakutaku.  If I understand Google's awkward translation right, the winners will receive a drawing, or possibly just an autograph, from Natsumi Eguchi.  (I've got my fingers crossed that it's the first - I really want some legit manga art).  I spent some time sketching ideas out before deciding on my entry, ganbatte'd my heart out, and brought it in to Yokohama's Animate, the exhibition's second stop.  There's still a couple of weeks left before the promotion wraps up in Osaka, which means I'm stuck waiting til then to learn my fate.

My final bit for this edition of the Otaku Report comes to you courtesy of Sensei.  She got the coveted tickets for a couple of us to the Ghibli Museum.  This is a big deal since the museum is so popular that you have to book tickets in advance, sometimes months.

When I visited Tokyo in 2014 this was the one thing I hoped to do that I missed out on, for that exact reason.  It was a great experience, although I didn't get to watch Mei and the Kittenbus.  Instead I learned how endearing the struggles of pond life could be...a subject I have no doubt would be far less interesting in anyone else's hands.  You couldn't take photos in here, either...these two I snapped while waiting to get in, before I was told the restriction on photography extended to the entrance as well.  I'm not totally sure what I was expecting, but seeing the process Miyazaki uses as well as memorabilia from his works was pretty cool.  There was also an exhibition about the way food is used in so many of the films.

Well, that about wraps up this edition of the Otaku Report.  I'd tell you to stay tuned for the next, but since this one took so long, that might not be wise.  Next week I'll be back in the wilds on Mongolia, but if I don't do anything new or exciting there, I still have that back post on my interior decor to finish, and maybe I'll teach you something about painting.  So stay tuned anyways.