We continue to explore! Saturday we went to the Higashiyama area in Kyoto. This is a busy tourist area but we headed to some small calm museums.
We started at the Shibori Museum run by a family who have a long history in shibori. The technique we were shown involves plucking very small pinches of silk fabric and wrapping them tightly at the base with silk thread, then dyed and unwrapped, it creates a pattern of tiny, dappled white circles with a small dot of color right in the center. The Hokusai wave hanging on the wall is fascinating because it is colored using shibori methods. It was a project that was born from covid. If you look closely you can see the wrapping and the dots in these photos. Fascinating and very labor intensive.
Next up ceramics, in not a traditional museum, but the former home, studio, and workshop of ceramist Kawai Kanjiro (1890–1966). It was great to visit a preserved traditional Japanese house with a studio area, large kiln and lovely ceramic art.
Outside the calm museums, there were woman and men in geisha attire enjoying the walks, shrines, shops and a Saturday out!
Sunday we traveled at top speed of 175 mph on the Shinkansen train from Kyoto back to Tokyo.
In Tokyo we headed to the Yayoi Kusama Museum where we had a reservation. The collection on display is small but it is colorful and appears to be a good representation of her visual work …and she was a writer. Kusama passed away at age 97 while we were planning our trip to Japan so we were fortunate to be able to see this exhibition which has been sold out for some time.
We stopped into a nearby cafe named for (someone unknown to us) but quite famous here in Japan. A 20th c novelist Natsume Soseki, who wrote ‘Japanese realistic, satirical, and psychological fiction‘. We did order the butter cake and famous (bean paste)monaka wafers famously referenced in Soseki’s novel I Am a Cat!
Sunday evening we had a cooking class where we learned how to make udon noodles, dashi, and a sesame spinach salad. A learning experience and a wonderful flavorful result.
Slurping allowed!
Only a few days remaining on the tour!
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