Now, Back to Japan - Restaurant Things

We were staying near Kiyomizudera, in southern Higashiyama, Kyoto. It is an old neighbourhood full of tiny streets, on the side of the hill. We discovered a cool coffee shop/restaurant and decided to make a breakfast stop there. I love Japanese "coffee" shops because they are great places for an inexpensive breakfast set and nearly always include a Japanese option; think grilled salmon, pickles, rice, miso soup, green tea for about CAD $8.

This place was newly renovated and was a cool mix of traditional Japanese lines with smooth, exposed concrete and stainless steel.  The owner/server was a slim, artsy looking guy with a pony tail. He had a lovely, unflapped manner and was managing all aspects of order taking, cooking and serving, himself.  I could tell as soon as we sat down that the service would be slooooow, which gave me lots of time to capture his groovy concrete countertop, complete with multiple rice cookers, stacked plates and bowls, chopsticks and cutlery.




The best of Japan is surrounded by beauty, down to the last culinary details.  This tiny, gourd shaped thing holds the chill pepper to sprinkle on soba and ramen. The ball at the top comes out as a peg and the pepper is shaken out the top. We stopped for a zaru soba snack in the late afternoon sunlight at a tiny restaurant, served by a charming middle aged woman and her sweet faced, elderly mother.

Interlude - Wet and Dry

Dry Blue Pear

Wet Blue Pear

Dry Green Pear

Wet Green Pear

I was experimenting with Chris' paint box last night. (the one I made up for him for our trip to Japan) It was really fun to dip into some colours that I don't have in my box. The colours were so gorgeous when they were wet, and also nice dry too. That is the thing about watercolour. I am always trying to chase that beautiful intensity and shine after the colour dries. Oh, like rocks and shells at the beach, why do things have to dry?

Tomorrow, back to work from Japan…..

Daruma - Here's One for my Dad

I remember when we lived in Japan when I was a kid, my dad loved daruma. The idea is that you buy one of these round, red figures, make a wish and paint in one of the eyes with a black pen or paintbrush. Then when your wish or prayer comes true, you paint in the other eye. I had fun sketching a few daruma in a small restaurant in Ueno while I waited for my lunch to arrive. Then on my last day in Japan, in the surprisingly lovely town of Narita, near the airport, I saw a huge display of daruma on sale. Here's to you, dad. 

City of Gems

Wash your hands. Cleanse your mouth. 

Kyoto really is one of my favourite cities in the world. When you first arrive there, it looks like other Japanese cities. It is relatively low rise, with tight streets and fairly nondescript buildings. But Kyoto is a fabulous place to discover with a bugs eye view. It is best seen close up and intimately. The details of doorways, the tiny temples and shrines, the winding streets and waterways. And mostly it is fun to explore the ring of amazing temples and shrines that are on the edge of the hills, encircling the city. I feel like you could discover new precincts on every visit. There are some really famous and stunning destination shrines and temples; Ginkakuji, Kiyomizudera, Saihoji, Tenruji. But to be honest, my favourites have always been the lesser know and almost unvisited places that you stumble upon. Kyoto is full of these stunning and yet largely overlooked gems.

This time we did make the effort to pre-book the famous Kokedera or Saihoji, The Moss Garden. The last time Chris and I tried to see it, the place was closed for something like 20 years so the moss could recover. So this time, prompted by our co-travellers, we decided to try again. In order to make the booking, you need to send a self addressed post card with a Japanese return address to the monks, requesting permission to visit. In order to ensure that our letter had been received and booking secured, I phoned Saihoji from Canada, twice. I think they may have granted us permission so that I would stop calling and harassing them in my less than perfect Japanese. So the four of us, and about 50 others arrived at 10 am, chanted sutras, wrote our prayers and then were allowed to walk in the garden. It was lovely, the moss seemed to have recovered. I captured a quick drawing in the rest area near the exit.

Kyoto Photo - A Confession

I really love Kyoto; temples, doorways, canals, glimpses of geisha. Your eyes just bug out at every turn. The details astound. Okay, so here is the confession. 99% of the time, I draw from what is in front of me, from real life. And very occasionally,  I use a photo. This painting of the Japanese woman wearing a kimono in front of the Kyoto doorway is from a photograph. And you may also be astute enough to see that it is from the cover photo of the Lonely Planet Kyoto book by Chris Rowthorn. The book is just excellent. Chris also has a wonderful blog called Inside Kyoto. (http://www.insidekyoto.com)

So there it is, out in the open. And the reason I wanted to include this little fraud is because of a lovely, new trend we saw in Kyoto during this visit. The cobbled streets and temple precincts were full of young (mostly) Japanese men and women, dressed in lovely traditional kimono and zori (footwear). There seems to be a new pride in things traditional and it was so lovely seeing these youngsters so beautifully turned out, strolling   through old Kyoto. I am fully aware that this is just another tourist service - rent a kimono for the day - but there was nothing tacky tourist about it at all. These young people looked elegant and resplendent. They were delighted and delightful.

Of Street Corners,Trains and Coffee Nation: Drawing on Marginal Time

Water soluble pen

I took a really wonderful online art course with Roz Stendahl this summer call Drawing Live Subjects in Public. Roz is a wonderful artist and also a fabulous teacher. She is passionate (I don't use that term lightly) about daily and intentional practice. I got as much out of her practice philosophy as I did from her expert technical instruction. I have never encountered a teacher who is as rigorous with her feedback and as devoted to individual students. Generous, creative, disciplined, hilarious, quirky and hardworking, always leading by example. Did I mention prolific?  Check her out. http://www.rozwoundup.typepad.com

All this to say, I have (with intention and efforts at daily practice) been trying to add lively, moving people and animals to my sketchbook. There is no shortage of subject matter, just the challenging reality that people and animals move, constantly. And yet, the urban sketching I admire most is animated with sentient beings. So during the recent trip to Japan, I made efforts to include live subjects. As an aside, cell phones have become my unexpected ally in that people sit very still when they are looking at their phones, a gift to the sneaky transit sketcher.









The other factor about urban sketching is that there are opportunities to draw in every circumstance. Marginal time; that is to say time at the edges of the "star attraction" travel experiences, is often the best time for fresh and spontaneous drawing. Drawing people on trains, or on street corners or even in temples, capture slices of everyday life that, for me, are full of meaning and conjure up memories of the trip. These are not always the "best" drawing or paintings to look at. But there is a rough sincerity in the quick, incomplete and often ill composed pages.

Grabbing street corner time while others wait for coffee

Let me say, my travel companions were quite attached to their coffee habit. Coffee is definitely available in Japan but coffee purists have to got to quite an effort to find the "real" espresso machines. Further, coffee is not a morning ritual in Japan so  Coffee Nation usually has to wait until at least 10 am (sometimes noon) to find a cup of java brewed to their standards and specifications.  Instant and drip do not meet the gold standard. On one particular day, after google searches and a destination trip, I had a full 15 minutes to sketch on a street corner  while the barista opened the kiosk and the Percent Arabia machine got fired up. The resulting fragmented sketches zoom me back to that day, people watching and capturing fragments.

Getting Stuff Done in Tokyo

In the couple of days before I met up with the other three adventurers, I had some business to get done in Tokyo. The plan was to spend a week in Shikoku, walking part of the Henro pilgrimage. There is one good guide book in English, the most recent edition of which was published 3 weeks before I arrived in Japan. Perfect. All I had to do was find the specialist map bookstore and buy it. I had not anticipated the Fall Equinox National Holiday so my first attempt to get the book was thwarted. I did find it but it was closed for the day. So I returned early the next day, too early in fact for the 10 am opening. (think jet lag) But as an urban sketcher, there is never an issue with waiting around. It is just a fab opportunity to get one more sketch in, which I did.

And then the rest of the day was free for cycling my rental bike all over Tokyo. That was superb. In Japan, everyone rides on the sidewalks so no worries about dodging cars and trucks. It was the first time, in all of the years that I spent in Japan, that I had a feel for how the districts of Tokyo link together. It is a mammoth city and yet relatively flat, so very doable on a bike. Whee!

Meiji Shrine

Rows of lanterns at Meiji Shrine, Tokyo. 

Chris and I still remember our visit 20 years ago to the huge and famous Meiji Shrine, near Harajuku and Omotesando in Tokyo. We settled onto a bench to do a bid of sketching and with seconds, a guard in a grey uniform came over, hand up and said: "No drawing long time." Needless to say, this time around, I expected a similar fate as I quietly pullout out my sketchbook. To buy delight, I sat for about an hour and to my double delight, the shrine was filled with traditional wedding activity. It was so colourful, serene and stately. And of course, I had to capture a couple of views of those official guys in grey. That day they were too busy trying to keep tourists out of the wedding processions to be worried about drawing infractions.

Getting Started

Getting the sketching started in a new location can take a bit of gumption. Before a trip, I have rosy fantasies of drawing my way through foreign cities but sometimes making the paint hit the paper is astonishingly intimidating.

I had a couple of days in Tokyo on my own, before I connected with Chris and our friends. Jet lag was working in my favour so I was up early and the days were warm and bright. As I wandered around Inaricho, near Ueno, I happened onto one of of the numerous shrines in the neighbourhood. There was a place to sit, where (ironically) local business men and women came to smoke so I got started. As an aside, it is remarkably hard to find benches in public places in Japan. There seems to be a general discouragement of lingering. And also, garbage cans are non-existent. The streets are impeccably clean but it is not that easy to find garbage cans and recycling bins. Hmm.

 So, I sketched, listening to the local salarymen gossiping. The sun came around and pushed me off my bench. And so the day and the sketching began.

Subway Sketching

Inevitably when you visit Tokyo, you spend a lot of time on subways and trains, moving around the mammoth city. I occasionally sketched commuters but with the seats set up as long benches, facing each other, it is hard to hide the fact that you are sketching someone if you are looking straight at them. Shoes are always a good option because it alleviates the stare factor. 

In this case, I surreptitiously glanced at this woman wearing her mask on the train. She was absorbed in her cell phone so was unaware of me studying her. This drawing has a very sketchy quality because, for obvious reasons, I was going fast. 

A Thirty Year Cycle

Text conversation between me and my daughter, B.
This after she drove and dropped me at the Seabus station, heading to the airport.

B: "Feels kinda weird to be sending my mother off alone on a backpacking trip."

Me: "Ha! Just like the old days when my mom sent me off to Japan in 1986.
Gosh that's 30 years ago. One big, cosmic circle."

And I could just not stop smiling…..

You see, my youngest  graduated from high school and is firmly launched at university. My eldest has finished her course and found a great job on the Island. So I have been given my parenting pink slip. I say that in the best possible way.

I and we, as a family, have had many fine adventures since my mom sent me off into the blue yonder all of those years ago. But this trip to Japan, with my backpack, somehow felt symbolic and frankly, great. There is something exhilarating about heading off solo with the prospects of unknown adventures. The other thing is that my kids are capable and independent. That makes leaving them behind really easy. And let's be honest. I was going for 2 and a half weeks. And, I was heading to Japan, my home away from home, to meet up with my husband and our two friends. It was a holiday... with a backpack. There were youthful resonances but also an itinerary, friends and kin,   accommodation  booked and way more Japanese language at my disposal this time around. In 1986, I arrived in Tokyo at 7 pm on a Friday night, with some money in my pocket, accommodation that had fallen through, the phone number of the cousin of an acquaintance, negligible Japanese language ability, no job and only a half baked plan. It all worked out then. And it was a splendid experience. I figured this time around would be also be splendid. And so it was.

What follows will be a few sketches and stories about a trip to Japan.
It all started with a sketch of Bill Reid's Haida Gwaii at YVR.

Yikes! Time for a Catch Up!

What happened?! Oh ya. Summer.

What is it about beautiful weather and blogging? They just don't seem to go together. And it sure was a beautiful summer, and fall for that matter, including an amazing trip to Japan. And now, the leaves are changing, the air feels cool and the light is at a completely different angle. Soon we will lose daylight savings and the evenings will be dark even earlier.

What is it about dark evening and blogging? They go together perfectly:)

Stay tuned for updates from my amazing summer course with Roz Stendhal and, of course, that trip to Japan.