Art Tourism

hello again


Cathy's family are only gonna be here for another couple of days, but its been amazing having them here- they're all such lovely people. one thing their visit highlighted for me was the fantastic "Art tourism" available in Kagawa Prefecture (this one). Isamu Noguchi, a famous Japanese-American sculptor, spent a few months every year at a house near here for his sculpting because theres a special type of stone here that i dont thinks very common. Theres a gallery of George Nakashima, another Japanese-American, who was a furniture designer but had a background in architecture so the wooden furniture he designs was really revolutionary (its lovely).
Theres an island called Naoshima about an hour by ferry from Takamatsu, and on it there's 3 art sites. I haven't been there, but Cathys family were raving about it when they came back. They have lots of famous artists there, they even have Monet. Joan, whose really up with art, told me that it was definitely world class.

Theres lots of islands in the Inland Sea between mainland Japan and Shikoku, and on these islands theres lots of shrines and things that are no longer used. They were given to a number of artists to make into an art work, I guess kindof what Michelangelo did, and in 2010 next year theyre going to be opened as an exhibition, the "Art House Project".

They're visit though, obviously hasn't been great for my Japanese, cos I've been surrounded by English and also going out with Andrew & Angela (who can't speak Japanese as of yet but are studying it heaps hard). The other day, the 3 of us went to a park with Ando-san's English speaking group to have "English conversation" I was amazed at how good they were, particularly cos they all lived in Japan and were also of the age where learning foreign languages is said to be difficult. It was funny though, the teacher of the group, another Japanese lady, commented on how slowly I was speaking. It was pretty funny to have a Japanese person point something like that out- and it was true. Most of the English conversations I've been having have been with people who English is their 2nd language, and even people who seem really good at it I think would find it difficult to follow my usual speed of talking. When I first got here, speaking slow, simple English was as difficult as speaking in Japanese, but now its not a problem.

Yesterday Cathy's English group (a different one) went to Konpira-san, a shrine in a neighbouring town which is famous for the number of steps there are to reach it. They went for English conversation practice with Cathy's family. To get to the main shrine, you have to climb 785 steps and to get to the back shrine, its 1368 steps. The main reason we went was because there's an art gallery located a bit under the main shrine. The art gallery is famous in Japan as the best artist of every era was invited to live there and to paint a room. A lot of the works are only displayed every 120 years (Cathy tells me, but Ando-san says its 60 years) but however long, its a long time. That particular exhibit of course was not open though. Because Cathys parents can't climb up all those stairs, we had lunch at a restaurant on the same level as the art gallery which meant we could use their private car park.


Sonia