Flowery Speech

It's the most wonderful time of the year...sakura time, that is.  I've learned that in different countries "the most wonderful time of the year" means a lot of different things, but I have no doubt that in Japan, it's spring.  The weather is warm and the trees are in bloom.  What could possibly be better?

Although it's not a specific "thing," the blooming cherry trees were definitely on my list for this trip to Japan.  You don't have to be that culturally aware to realize that the sakura blooming is a big deal here.  The whole city is cloaked in the most delicate shade of pink because of the cherry trees.  The owner of the ryokan where I stayed made sure to tell me that it was a great time to visit Ueno Park, which was nearby, and I had to agree, since I'd stumbled past as I was trying to get there.  But after my wander through the cemetery studded hills of Taito, I came through the park and got to see the full extent of the blossoming madness.  The sides of the walkways were roped off, and people were enjoying picnics (with an abundance of trash receptacles on hand, organized by content).

It was also interesting to see people taking photos of the moon through the trees.  I managed to catch one, myself, although personally I like the way the lantern lit up the tree.

After breakfast at McDonald's on my last day, I made my way to the National Museum.  I grew up in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, which has the best collection of Asian art in the Americas, and this had a significant impact on the art teacher I grew up to be...so I was really excited to see the Tokyo National Museum.  Wandering through their halls gave me a sense of déjà vu, not only because of their amazing art, but I found the layout to be very similar to the Nelson's - it's a beautiful, easy to navigate space.  And even here, the blooms were the stars of the show.  As I was taking a look around the entrance hall, I noticed something about the cherry blossoms, and a lady giving out little pink buttons.  I asked her what it was all about, and she explained that it was the "Sakura Rally" - you went through the museum to find the different pieces of art with cherry blossoms in it, and got stamps at each piece.  I thought this was genius, and started thinking about how we might be able to use this for my upcoming student art show.

There were pieces of pottery decorated with sakura, of course.

And those famous printmakers wouldn't have been worth their salt as artists if they hadn't included some cherry blossoms in their pictures.  There was a whole wall taken up with ukiyo-e prints that included cherry blossoms, but I was particularly taken with this one - I love how they showed the rain.

Right now I am up to my neck in the school's recycled fashion show, and two different girls are working on designs centered around the kimono, so of course I took several pictures of blossom-spangled kimono.  This was one of the amazing things about the Tokyo National Museum - they actually let you take pictures of most of the pieces of art.  Maybe this is because the Japanese are such shutterbugs; whatever the case, I appreciated it a LOT.  The labels of the artwork had a struck-through camera symbol on them if you weren't supposed to take photos of it.  Other than that, you could take photos of everything, as long as you kept your flash off, which (of course) a fair number of people didn't, because they're idiots and don't realize what a flash can do to a delicate piece of art 200 years older than themselves.

One of the labels discussing the prints talked about how this art form helped circulate fashion from the city to the towns.  Ukiyo-e are "pictures of the floating world," which includes lovely landscapes, scenes from kabuki, and (predictably) beautiful women.  While photography was still developing (see what I did there?), these prints captured the fashions of their time.

Women's fashions weren't the only thing illustrated in ukiyo-e prints, either.  Men's fashion was also a huge part of it, as you could see if you were actually standing in front of this case of netsuke (the forerunner of cell phone baubles).

It was later that afternoon that I went to the cat cafe.  Just before I left, as I was scratching this sleeping beauty's head, the manager of the cafe came up and told me her name was Sakura.  If there was any doubt left by then at the fervor of the Japanese love for cherry blossoms, this moment cured me of it.

Harajuku Girl

As I've mentioned time and time again, I am NOT a fashionista.  I just want to put that out there so you don't get the wrong idea about me being in Harajuku.  I love the song by Gwen Stefani, and I might even have had it stuck in my head most of the day, but the actual reason I was in Harajuku was the fact that it's where the Ota Museum is, and they have one of the best collections of ukiyo-e prints in the world.  It's a small collection which constantly rotates to protect the prints, and photos aren't allowed because most people are idiots and don't realize you shouldn't use your flash in an art museum.  And it was one of my must-sees for Tokyo.

It just happened to be nestled between Omote-Sando and Harajuku, so I decided to make a day of it.  Omote-Sando is a neighborhood with a lot of cool architecture, so I decided to get off the subway one stop early and check out some of the buildings.  I don't talk about my feet a lot, but they've been in rough shape for - eesh - four years now, and pretty much every day I was in Tokyo I abused them, but what are you going to do?  At any rate, the buildings were cool, and it was a nice spring morning.

After the Ota Museum I decided to go ahead and prowl the streets of Harajuku - when in Rome, you know?  I pretty much saw exactly what I was expecting to see...

Although this little bit of sticker art caught me by surprise.  I didn't see a lot of street art in Tokyo, but finding stickered poles like this was fairly common.  It's probably easier to put a sticker on something without getting caught than it is to spray paint it.

A few years back, my friends Meen and Kate went to Tokyo from Shanghai.  They talked about how polite the Japanese were (for example, how they would wait for people to get OFF the train before getting on), and during my time there I noticed this as well (I don't think I even heard one person hawk a loogie!)  They also talked about how good looking the men were, and I can't argue with that one, either.  I am not the kind of person who notices men on the street, but hoo boy I did in Tokyo!  I've been in Asia a long time, and I've nursed a crush or two on Korean men, in spite of the fact that they're a little on the effeminate side.  I can appreciate Mongolian men, because they're tall and typically pretty well built, although they tend to be a little burly for my tastes.  I think Japanese men fit pretty well between these two categories - they're definitely pretty, but leave no doubting the fact that they are men.  I could get used to that kind of eye candy.  And just so you know, I did use this picture because it had a guy in it, but I took the picture because it had the subway sign in the background.  He isn't really typical of the kind of masculine beauty to which I am referring here, but I didn't go around taking photos of hot Japanese men because it makes me feel like a weirdo stalker.

Before leaving the area and giving my poor feet a break, I had one last place to hit - the Meiji Shrine.  This shrine is dedicated to Emperor Meiji and his wife, Empress Shoken.  Apparently this year is the 100th year of her "demise," and so there were lots of signs up telling about how wonderful she was, and how much she did for the Japanese people.  It was interesting to read about how they helped guide Japan into a more modernized mindset, and the shrine is in a beautiful park.

But the shrine itself didn't really leave much of an impression on me.  Maybe I wasn't looking at it the right way, but I just didn't think there was a lot to it.  I've been to some magical places - Fushimi-Inari-Taisha, in Kyoto, is my all-time favorite - and this just didn't hit that note with me.  Maybe it was the light, or the weather.  Or maybe it was the fact that I got told off for sitting on the ground, because the bench I was sitting on was so low that it really didn't rest my feet much, and they felt better stretched out in front of me.  Whatever the case, Meiji Jingu really didn't do it for me - I can take a walk in the woods any day I like.

QuickTrip

It's taking a lot to get me going this morning.  I just got back at 1 a.m. from the ACAMIS conference, where I was representing my school in the Cultural Enrichment arm of the organization.  It was an energizing weekend, followed by a soul-sucking trip back (ie, never, ever let me take trips with a layover in Beijing during the spring - I don't like it enough to get stuck there).

Also, Chinese Coke > Mongolian Coke. 

I'll talk about the conference on my teaching blog, but there were a few things to share about a short trip back to Shanghai:

The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Muppets:
Fashion is not so important that poor helpless Muppets should have to give up their lives for it.  Also, I bet that thing is not exactly flame retardant, not to mention spring has fully sprung in Shanghai, and it seems like she should have been really hot.  Who wears something like this?

Actually, this was parked just after where I saw her.  Maybe a person who wears a Muppet fur coat drives a car this color?  Don't care for the color, but I kind of dig the iridescent carnival glass looking rims on the wheels.

Food is always a highlight of time spent in Shanghers.  Last spring I didn't end up getting to go for teppanyaki; this weekend my friend Siobhan helped me to rectify that situation by making a reservation for me and 7 of my nearest and dearest at Uminosachi on Nanyang Lu.  The big bursts of flame didn't have that much to do with the food, as far as I can tell, but it made for an impressive show.  The fact that you can get all-you-can-eat teppanyaki (including sushi and sashimi) for 198 kuai (about $30) is excellent, and even after eating for a couple of hours, you don't feel sick from eating too much.

I ate some other delicious things - JoAnn ordered me a pizza from New York Style Pizza for when I got in on Thursday night (FYI - Air China's food sucks a big bag of ....), and barbecue from Bubba's for our Saturday night gab session, which I supplemented with the sweetest, juiciest strawberries, found as I was walking down Hongmei Lu, but nothing made me quite as happy as finding that Hongqiao airport had a Macca's serving breakfast at 7 o'clock Sunday morning.  I also would have killed for some xiaolongbao (soup dumplings), a visit to the jjimjjilbang in K-Town, or time with my friend Meen, but considering how long I was there and how much I fit in (I didn't mention the Ikea trip for frames, a stop at Marie's for assorted art supplies, or teapot buying at Hongqiao Pearl City), not to mention the fantastic conference, it was well worth a trip back into China and all the consequent frustrations.