KYOTO (1)

The bullet train on the right is stationary. The one on the left is coming into Tokyo station to carry us to Kyoto. It is the Nozumi SuperExpress.

And this is a pink lady waiting for our train, one to every carriage. You can see other pink ladies further down the platform. They changed the head cloths at every seat, tidied up and hoovered the carpet. She has the hoover in her blue bag. Then we were allowed on. No special place to put the luggage but much more space between seats than in the UK so that having the cases there was not too cramping. The journay took 2 hours and 20 minutes and it was mostly built up. Not much in the way of agricultural land - and no animals at all.

At Kyoto we took a cab to the hotel, ate lunch and considered the afternoon. Then set off on foot to two places which we thought were local. The map is different scale to what we thought. Eventually we arrived the Yuzen Museum. We went to buy a ticket and were very startled to be offered a go at Yuzen. So we said yes - well you can't turn an offer like that down. So here are a few photos.

Yuzen is a stencilling technique. Ruth and I chose to do a cotton shopper each and selected our pattern. You can just see a pencilled circle on the lower pink tape which is one of the registration marks.

The first stencil is lined up with the registration marks and the colour applied using the brush shown in a circular motion. The instructor made us show him the circular motion - definitely not to be dabbed up and down. The stencils were of mulberry paper and varnished with persimmon juice as they should be.

After three stencils - and three colours

After five stencils and five colours and a final screen print in white, it is finished. We were using acrylic paint and textile medium. And have been instructed to iron it well when we get it home to fix the paint.

This is Ruth's finished piece - she is delighted with it.

Next door, there were two people working on two kimono lengths. In this one you can see the way the 13 m length, of kimono fabric is strung up so that it can be rolled around without touching anything.

And here is another artisan with her dyes out in front of her. These are dyes, not acrylic paint.Her kimono was strung up in the same way.

There was an exhibition of historic garments decorated using Yuzen and this was one. Just to show what can be done. The exhibition was badly lit. There were overhead lights in every case. I would have thought that would eventually damage the fabric. It certainly makes photography difficult.

We walked round to a very large temple where there was noone about. Now up to date. We  had tempura for supper tonight. Tomorrow we have a guide to ourselves for the whole day and have made a huge list of questions.