December 10, 2009: Sagawa Art Museum in Biwa-ko

I must say the exhibit of the tea house under water was amazing. The use of water trickling down slowly into a shallow pond over a large area of a semi-circle built with heavy concrete with the ability to tell the time of day like a sundial was surreal. My only wish: that it was deep enough, and filled with hot spring water so that I could take a bath there. The exhibit also feels like a maze, because to get to the next room you have to bend over a bit to pass through a small door in the wall that reminds one of Alice in Wonderland.

When you exit through the other side, it’s a whole different world. For one it is dark with no sun, but the dim lighting allows you to see your footing as you climb a small set of stairs to a room with a wooden table, eight chairs, wooden planks from Australia that are said to be better than Japanese tatami mats because they do not soak up moisture, and smooth, grey concrete walls that were made by using symmetrical slabs of concrete and stacking them on top of each other. The only thing not symmetrical in this room is the table that looks like the biggest tree in the forest was murdered and the fattest slice was taken from its middle. The edges were not straightened like a normal wooden table. Instead the curvy, uneven shape was probably barely sanded so that your kimono wouldn’t get caught in the sharp edges when it was time to take your leave. Here we sat and I imagined we all were sitting in kimonos in a tea ceremony.

There is one tea house completely under water. Darkness overtakes the vision. The truth is only revealed on the tips of ones toes: a narrow but long slit in the wall reveals the surface level of the water and it is from here that a shy ray of light enters through. The angle is ingenious and it meets several clear rectangular prisms all neatly lined up together that reveal a small rainbow of colors. The color shines through and against the rice paper of the sliding door and this is how this tea house gets its barely adequate source of light.

Then there’s the tea house. Tatami mats cover the floor; the alcove seems modern yet ancient at the very same time. The sliding screen doors close and all eight people who decided to undertake this guided tour sit in utter silence and admiration as the dim lighting that fights for recognition seeps through slowly through the rice paper. Sitting on the tatami mat, in front of the alcove and facing the opposite direction is a barrage of black, cold waves. The current sweeps them in all directions and as they part and collide, their growling turns into high but broad bellowing wails. This is the effect created by the blocks of black rock that sit on the outer perimeter of the tatami mats that were carefully arranged.

My biggest question though: who had the time, energy, and money to build all of this luxury? Just to display it to the handful of people a day who make it out to this middle-of-nowhere, famous, yet not so famous museum.

Definitely worth going.

December 3, 2009: Illumination in Kobe, Let the City Glow!

For 2 weeks they set the city ablaze with beautiful lights.

December 3, 2009: Christmas is the Special Time of Year, in which Dolphins get Fed by Santa Claus.

This weekend I went to the aquarium in Osaka. Sometime before the age of 10, I went to the aquarium in Brooklyn, I think, but barely remember anything. So I was excited to go see some big fish in small tanks. How big can the tanks be in a country that is as big as the state of California, anyway?

Well, I found out that they were not very big at all. A whole world of sea life was swimming in tanks that seemed as cramped as a NYC studio is to one human being. But somehow it seemed rather peaceful. As long as the fish was able to swim around the furniture that is the rest of the fish, he was content. Differences in size didn’t seem to matter as well. As fish made their rounds about the tank, huge whale sharks and awkward sunfish, as well as catfish, x-rays, and bottom feeders all shared the same space without even as much as a shove or a sigh. But, then again, what do I know, I can’t speak fish.

It was mesmerizing to watch the fish swim round and round. I was sitting in front of each tank for as much as 10 minutes at a time watching the funny looking fish make their rounds. We spent about three hours in there! My friends and I saw a big nosed fish and jokingly called it a French person. To the fish with weird antennas or camera looking probes on their forehead, we called them CIA spies. There were tanks filled with crabs, others with octopuses, and a whole area just for the different kinds of jellyfish. I saw my very first sea turtle in person and fell in love with it. I wish I lived in Hawaii and could hang out with them everyday. I also have never seen a puffer fish get mad and puff out, and that was pretty exciting. My favorite player, although, was the most awkward fish: the sunfish. It looks like a regular flat-bodied fish, but instead, the part where the rest of the body and tail is supposed to be just awkwardly stops short and it looks as if it has a flat butt.

I was surprised when I saw Santa Claus at the aquarium. Dressed in your typical Santa suit with the hat and big bag of toys (but here they were most likely just crinkled newspapers to give it that full, but empty look), Santa was there with a tank of oxygen on his back and flippers on his feet in the Dolphin tank. This country is obviously blindly obsessed with Christmas. I say blindly because they ignore the meaning that comes with the holiday, but then again so do I. Materialism is an epidemic, that’s a whole new other topic.

After the aquarium, I bought some Turkish ice cream. I never had Turkish ice cream, and the Turkish guy who sold it to me made it a show by teasing me with ice cream that defies gravity. Eventually I won, but not without realizing that although it looked very different from gelato or regular Hagen Daaz, it tasted the same. Luckily, I love me my chocolate ice cream.

Then we went on “One of the Biggest Ferris Wheels in the World.” Now what does that mean? It can’t be one of the biggest, there’s only one that is the biggest. Anyway, ignoring the ambiguity, we still took a spin to see the city from above as the sky was changing color and it was beautiful. Then we decided to go to Kobe and see some illumination!

December 1, 2009: The International Manga Museum in Kyoto

I really didn’t want to go to this museum, had no interest at all really. The only reason why I went was because it was the cheapest museum on a list that my Japanese Civilization teacher gave us. She instructed us to go to one of the museums on the list for two hours, take notes, and somehow incorporate the experience in an essay for the final that we would take weeks later.

I should have gone to the Ainu Museum. I had intentions to, just no time in the end.

Well, this excursion wasn’t all bad. And I am sure the anime ‘otakus’ would love to hear about what I have to say. When you first walk into the museum, there is a whole section of anime from around the world and a timeline of Japanese anime, all pictures no writing except for the general dates. But, the pictures are self-explanatory, that’s anime for you all right. I walked through the timeline and realized that the characters in anime from the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s to the 60’s and up until the present got more realistic and probably sexier. It went from short midget people with powers and lightening bolts shooting out of their palms, and characters with too much muscle and awkward face proportions to skinny nerds with big glasses, and girls with big boobs in red spandex suits that were too revealing for my taste. I must say they also did something to their hair. It went from bald and little detail on the hair, to spikier, bigger hair. Is there some correlation in the way the characters in the anime look to the way that the actual Japanese people look in society nowadays? Take nowadays for example: just looking at a glance, out of the guys who are in their teens, 20’s and maybe early 30’s, I’d say about 70% perm their hair to make it curly or spiky. Girls, starting from the age of 5 wear short skirts and heels.

Anyway, flipping through Spanish anime, I was a bit more shocked. If the anime is for kids, then they must be traumatized. The Spanish anime was just as bad if not worse. Themes include: a half-naked woman who looked like she was a cocaine addict, a guy, holding a gun, who abused her not just once but many times, and it was all in black in white. And this was all in just one book. Need I say more?

Anyway, the rest of the museum was just filled with Japanese anime, written all in Japanese, as well as a bit of history of Japanese anime. I had to say that my favorite room was the room with the history written all over the walls. It was a timeline starting with the very beginning, the four strip comics in newspapers. The dynamic in this room was actually more interesting than anything else. Half of the room was set up to display the history, the other half filled with tables and chairs so that people could bring their favorite anime off of the bookshelf and read it. The history was written in Japanese and English. But, the people that were actually paying attention and reading the history: the foreigners! Not just any lonesome, otaku foreigner, but loads of them that travelled in packs as a guided tour. They were mostly men and some women, but all in their late 20’s and above. The ones sitting in the other half of the room, totally oblivious to the history: the Japanese. They were women, mostly in their 20’s, and some Japanese guys. Under a stack of their favorite anime, it seems like the Japanese people use this place as a library more than anything else.

In front of a museum is a lawn. A plot of fake grass made of black rubber painted green, you can actually see Japanese people sitting here and enjoying their manga. Even though it was winter and a bit chilly, there were about 10 people all together, all Japanese, sitting on the fake lawn, immersed in an imaginary world that must be much like this one.