What I've done so far in Japan
On Saturday at the hotel, I had the smallest bathroom I've ever seen in a hotel room. I think that it is even smaller than all of the apartment bathrooms I've seen.
Sunday as I've mentioned was taken up with train travel and getting settled in at the temple. For dinner we went out to a local Chinese food restaurant with Daisuke-san, one of the instructors. He loves to eat.
Monday, we started out with a full Japanese breakfast. I knew what to expect, so I wasn't surprised by rice and miso soup. It was very good. As part of the breakfast they served a fruit plate that featured banana. I'm of the opinion that banana attracts mosquitoes, so I didn't eat the fruit. Later that day we took the train/lightrail/tram thing out to Arashiyama. We didn't actually go to Arashiyama but we went to Tenryu-ji to have our first watercolor class with Satoku-san. Surprisingly, we got told to pack up and leave before we were done with the watercolors. I say surprising because they have never been kicked out of there before and usually there are 25 students with the program. We also went to the bamboo forest before heading home.
Tuesday was a very full day, especially for me. I started out with a watercolor in the garden here at Daishin-in at 6am. I had to be done by 7am for our last breakfast here at the temple. We are now responsible for our own breakfast. After that, we all sorted out the bikes we'd rented and took off for a meeting at city hall. I had the unfortunate luck to get a bike whose air valve wasn't working. When I made a sharp turn right at the beginning, I lost what little air I had and nearly wrecked myself. Kyoto traffic is chaotic at best for bikes and I was now thrown from having nearly crashed. I had to go back to the temple and, not having enough time to get the bike fixed, if the shop had even been open,borrowed Naomi-san's bike. It was exceedingly gracious of my hostess to lend me her bike for the day. After our meeting with city officials about the Takaseigawa canal redesign, we ate at a fast food place before heading over to a monthly flea market at one of the large temples. Since I never got my watch battery replaced I didn't bring my watch. So, at the market I found a watch necklace that is quite adorable. I may not be into steampunk as much as Tania, but I do appreciate the aesthetic. I'm more into the traditional Victorian look than much of the steampunk look. Anyway, it was a successful market trip. I did not enjoy the bicycle ride from hell getting back to the temple complex. I'm not the easiest of bicycle riders and when you combine riding on the left, pedestrians who don't get out of the way, cars that pass with no room to spare, passing bikes in a lane that does not exist and is only wide enough for one pedestrian, and riding against the flow of cars I just plain am terrified. Those things don't happen all at once, but they do happen. Once we reached the temple I was so sweaty I had to rinse myself off before my afternoon watercolor session.
Today we started the day by watercoloring outside the Daishin-in gate. Although my group did not actually get around to watercoloring. We spent the entire time working on pencil perspective sketches as preparation to watercolor. Then, after a quick trip to the awesome convenience store out of the north gate for onigiri, we all headed to one of the other subtemples within Myoshin-ji. The temple of Shunko-in often hosts U of O students when we are more than Daishin-in can house. Taka-san, the priest there, gave us a lesson in Zazen meditation before painting in the garden of Shunko-in. Since I'd eaten some onigiri and a yoghurt at 10:30am I felt no need to leave early and eat. That allowed me to stay and paint after everyone else left. That left me with time to paint by myself until 2:30pm. I had to be back at Daishin-in for a studio meeting at 3pm. It was rather interesting, we had a local landscape architect who had been researching, on his own time, the creator of the Takaseigawa canal and subsequently the canal itself. He was researching it because of a waterfall that he is interested in at Arashiyama. The river control and canal start at Arashiyama was created by the same man as the Takaseigawa canal. It was a very interesting talk and gives us much to draw from in our design. We've all pretty much separated ourselves out into the groups we are going to work in, and I only hope that I prove useful to mine. My group in comprised entirely of landscape architecture students. The three architects from the Portland program are rather obviously going to be in a group by themselves. That makes the last group the architecture student, he art student girlfriend, and the last remaining landscape architect. We will see how this all works. Jennifer, Laura, and I decided to go to Coco Curry for dinner. Apparently it is a chain that Jennifer loved when she was stationed on Okinawa. I had the eggplant curry and it was quite good. I ordered it at two stars above regular and found it to be of appropriate spice level for me. Jennifer found hers at one star to be a bit too spicy.
Sunday as I've mentioned was taken up with train travel and getting settled in at the temple. For dinner we went out to a local Chinese food restaurant with Daisuke-san, one of the instructors. He loves to eat.
Monday, we started out with a full Japanese breakfast. I knew what to expect, so I wasn't surprised by rice and miso soup. It was very good. As part of the breakfast they served a fruit plate that featured banana. I'm of the opinion that banana attracts mosquitoes, so I didn't eat the fruit. Later that day we took the train/lightrail/tram thing out to Arashiyama. We didn't actually go to Arashiyama but we went to Tenryu-ji to have our first watercolor class with Satoku-san. Surprisingly, we got told to pack up and leave before we were done with the watercolors. I say surprising because they have never been kicked out of there before and usually there are 25 students with the program. We also went to the bamboo forest before heading home.
Tuesday was a very full day, especially for me. I started out with a watercolor in the garden here at Daishin-in at 6am. I had to be done by 7am for our last breakfast here at the temple. We are now responsible for our own breakfast. After that, we all sorted out the bikes we'd rented and took off for a meeting at city hall. I had the unfortunate luck to get a bike whose air valve wasn't working. When I made a sharp turn right at the beginning, I lost what little air I had and nearly wrecked myself. Kyoto traffic is chaotic at best for bikes and I was now thrown from having nearly crashed. I had to go back to the temple and, not having enough time to get the bike fixed, if the shop had even been open,borrowed Naomi-san's bike. It was exceedingly gracious of my hostess to lend me her bike for the day. After our meeting with city officials about the Takaseigawa canal redesign, we ate at a fast food place before heading over to a monthly flea market at one of the large temples. Since I never got my watch battery replaced I didn't bring my watch. So, at the market I found a watch necklace that is quite adorable. I may not be into steampunk as much as Tania, but I do appreciate the aesthetic. I'm more into the traditional Victorian look than much of the steampunk look. Anyway, it was a successful market trip. I did not enjoy the bicycle ride from hell getting back to the temple complex. I'm not the easiest of bicycle riders and when you combine riding on the left, pedestrians who don't get out of the way, cars that pass with no room to spare, passing bikes in a lane that does not exist and is only wide enough for one pedestrian, and riding against the flow of cars I just plain am terrified. Those things don't happen all at once, but they do happen. Once we reached the temple I was so sweaty I had to rinse myself off before my afternoon watercolor session.
Today we started the day by watercoloring outside the Daishin-in gate. Although my group did not actually get around to watercoloring. We spent the entire time working on pencil perspective sketches as preparation to watercolor. Then, after a quick trip to the awesome convenience store out of the north gate for onigiri, we all headed to one of the other subtemples within Myoshin-ji. The temple of Shunko-in often hosts U of O students when we are more than Daishin-in can house. Taka-san, the priest there, gave us a lesson in Zazen meditation before painting in the garden of Shunko-in. Since I'd eaten some onigiri and a yoghurt at 10:30am I felt no need to leave early and eat. That allowed me to stay and paint after everyone else left. That left me with time to paint by myself until 2:30pm. I had to be back at Daishin-in for a studio meeting at 3pm. It was rather interesting, we had a local landscape architect who had been researching, on his own time, the creator of the Takaseigawa canal and subsequently the canal itself. He was researching it because of a waterfall that he is interested in at Arashiyama. The river control and canal start at Arashiyama was created by the same man as the Takaseigawa canal. It was a very interesting talk and gives us much to draw from in our design. We've all pretty much separated ourselves out into the groups we are going to work in, and I only hope that I prove useful to mine. My group in comprised entirely of landscape architecture students. The three architects from the Portland program are rather obviously going to be in a group by themselves. That makes the last group the architecture student, he art student girlfriend, and the last remaining landscape architect. We will see how this all works. Jennifer, Laura, and I decided to go to Coco Curry for dinner. Apparently it is a chain that Jennifer loved when she was stationed on Okinawa. I had the eggplant curry and it was quite good. I ordered it at two stars above regular and found it to be of appropriate spice level for me. Jennifer found hers at one star to be a bit too spicy.