KYOTO (2)

Yesterday the travel company organised a guide just  for us for the  whole day. We started with a tour (in English) of the Imperial Palace. They gave up using this in 1869 but still use it when the Emperor comes to Kyoto or when George Bush comes to stay!! This is an entrance. We only got to walk round the outside although sliding screens had been left open so that we could see inside. All very interesting. The roofs are of cedar bark and it is like the Forth Rail Bridge, they just work their way round replacing the roof. It seems like it would be uncomfortable in cold weather.

The Palace has gardens (everything has gardens in Kyoto) and they are 'landscape' gardens, that is, they imitate landscape on a small scale. No flowers.

One thing we learnt yesterday was how to deal with public transport. So we took the Metro to the Palace. We then took a bus to the Golden Pavilion which gleams in the sunshine as it really is covered with gold.. If you enlarge the photo, you can  see two herons posing, one on the island, the other on the corner of the Pavilion.

Every shrine or temple that we visited had a resident calligrapher who will write the name of temple and stamp it with a fancy stamp for you. Quite a few Japanese carry an ornate book in which the calligrapher writes directly. At the Golden Pavilion, you could buy a fortune. Ruth and I bought one and they both said 'Very Good Future' but the rest was quite different!!

The gardens at the Golden Pavilion.

We then took a taxi to Roanji Zen temple to see the Zen gardens. I had been told that going there was a waste of temple because of the press of tourists. Not so. There were maybe ten people there. We sat on the wooden steps and thought great thoughts (well maybe). I did not take any photos as it seemed difficult to do it justice. Instead I bought a batch of postcards which has the garden in various seasons and lighting conditions. 

The next mode of transport was the tram!! And we went out of the city to the bamboo forests. The bamboos are huge, we reckoned 50 to 60 foot tall and thick. This is one example of a fence. There are bamboo  fences all over Kyoto in lots of different styles.

And a complete gate made of bamboo.

We took a long walk through the bamboo forest up and down the mountains and came out on a river side where Japanese tourists were being punted up and down.

Next door to the entrance to the bamboo forest, there was a Zen temple with good gardens. Both a Zen gardens and a landscape garden. I rather liked this one which has moss in it as well as raked gravel.

By that time, it was 0330 and I had done enough walking. We had started out at 9 am. So we went home by way of the tram.

At 6 o'clock, Ruth decided she wanted to walk towards the city and in particular to a district called Gion. So we did. It was dark by this time but the
streets were very busy. This is where all the posh shops are -  Louis Vuitton, Joseph, Chanel.

After a long walk we decided we needed supper and thought a Department store might provide food. So we went up to the top (8th) floor and found a food court of sorts except that it was actually 8 or so different small restaurants. All the menus were in Japanese only although they had photos and plastic replicas. When we got to one which clearly did tempura, that was it and we went in.

We werer shown into a booth, took our shoes off and sat at a low table.  No menu in English and not much English spoken but  the photo shows the left overs. They only did tempura and very good it was too. It just seems very entertaining that one should eat at such a specialised restaurant in a department store. It was very reasonably priced too.

The thing that is expensive in Japan is drink. A glass of wine in a hotel will cost £15 upwards. Our hotel in Kyoto  does not cater for Europeans and has no bar. It does have a public baths which we must try out soem time. Today is Ikebana day. You have probably noticed there were no textiles yesterday. I don't think the guide was much interested in textiles!!



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.

Tokyo (3)

On Sunday we went to Meiji shrine which is the premier Shinto shrine in Tokyo. There was an extraordinary ceremony going on. People were bringing dolls, little dolls, huge dolls, dressed in traditional costume and handing them over to the priests who wrere organising a display of them. It was labelled 'THANKS DOLLS'. One priest is shown working his way through a pile of bags but there were six priests doing the same in various other places.

There were a number of weddings going on and a lot of posing for photographers. Each group had a middle aged lady who tweaked the kimonos, re-tied bows, rearranged feet!! In this photo, they were just rearranging themselves. I wanted to show the kimonos. You can just see the bride in white with a white hood over her head.

And a couple of small exuberant family members waiting (not very patiently) for their turn. 

We walked round the large gardens attached to this shrine. Very full of people. Lots of picnics, a live jazz band, a group of people practising a play, lots of runners, babies in prams. We then walked across the road into a district famed for being the place for the young to hang out and show off their outfits. Quite extraordinary. Vignettes were

- teenager in Little Bo-peep outfit. Pale blue crinoline skirt to midcalf, white socks, pastel blue shows with  buttoned straps, white top, pale blue shawl - and an enormous poke bonnet. Two bright red patches on her cheeks

- teenager with white ankle socks on - with ruffles of cascading white lace from the top of the socks (I fancied them)  

- teenager with jeans which were cut off at the knee and restarted at mid calf. The lower section held to the upper by four leather straps.

- very ordinary young man with a dashhound on a lead. Dashhound wore jeans, red and white jacket and sun glasses. (No I am not making this up)

- there were a number of goths. Witches hair, black torn cloths and black lace mittens with very long black finger nails.

I could go on. It was impossible to take photos. Firstly it seemed rude and secondly there was a great press of people. By 4 pm we needed lunch and ended up in a Bulgari cafe (I didn't know they did cafes). It was fantastically good and fantastically expensive but with a wonderful view of the street scene. After that we went back to the hotel. We are getting good at Tokyo trains.

The day before we had asked the hotel where we could eat Shabu-Shabu (see later) and they presented a choice of three places, one was very local, one was on the 35th floor of a skyscraper (we got the impression that the best that could be said of it was that the view was good) and one which she kept  saying 'very traditional. So we went there. It wtable!!as called Imahan. Firstly we had to take our shoes and then we were shown into a room just for us. Above is the alcove and flowers. There was alos a very attractive scroll. We sat on the floor but with a concession to us Westerns. There was a hole in the floor under the floor.

 And this is Shabu-Shabu. It is boiling water into which you put cut up vegetables and meat - in this case beef. The vegetables were several sorts of mushrooms and Chinese cabbage. The beef was the very high class Japanese beef (I think they sing to the cattle) which was delicious. At the end, noodles are cooked in the stock.

We did have several small first courses like sushimi and so on. It was expensive (about £100.0 each) but   it was definitely a cultural experience.

I am running one day behind and must try to catch up. Today we took the bullet train to Kyoto and had a fantastic afternoon - I will try to write that up either tonight or tomorrow first thing.

Ruth has decided that she must bring the whole family here for a holiday. She says Robin would have loved last night. So InsideJapan looks to be getting some more customers.

TOKYO (2)

Saturday we started by going to a park very near our hotel, just by the river. This is the view with my back to the river. Surrounded by skyscrapers! This is the business district. The park was very busy. There were a lot of people out painting views, I am guessing 30 or 40. And many more people just walking and taking photos.

Ueno Park of Friday was brown and dusty. This one is green, full of trees. Although the Japanese seem unable to leave a tree alone, especially if it is a pine tree. You can see some of the pruned trees in the photo.

 Another view of the park. This time showing the famous tea house. This lake was teeming with fish.

There were a lot of these flowers in the park. It had a paeony garden and an azalea garden as well as  a flower field which was full of rudbeckia and cosmos but a bit past it.

Then we took the train over to the Imperial Gardens, which are immense. No flowers there although there would be azaleas in season.  Every tree there is pruned into shape. We saw the Imperial Palace from a distance  and there are very substantial walls round the palace which they have incor-porated into the garden. The bit we were allowed into, although large, is about 10% of the Palace grounds.

These gardens are a big green space in the middle of th city. In fact the Japanese are very fond of greenery and everywhere you look, there are trees, in any spare corner, in front of office blocks, lining the streets. One street had gingkos!!

We walked a few blocks to Ginza which is the Bond Street of Tokyo and we were heading for the department stores when we came across one called WAKO. In their windows they had a beautiful handwoven kimono so we had to go and see. On their top floor they were having an exhibition of kimonos and kimono lengths by a weaver called Akiko Shimizu. It was all died in natural dyes and warp and/or weft ikat. beautifully done. A kimono cost about £7000.00 and a kimono length about £4000.00. And I saw one being sold!! I did not feel I could take photos but managed to acquire a leaflet which I will scan in when back home. What a treat.

We spent the next few hours pottering about, not buying anything, until Ruth took me to a paper shop she knew of. Amazing place called ITOYA. 9 floors of paper and one devoted to paper for book binding. I have bought Japanese paper for making books often and there several places you can buy it in the UK but it all comes from one source. They had   that - but they had a lot of other varieties as well so I had to have some. It has been wonderfully wrapped up and I am not undoing it until I get home so will post photos then. Eventualy returned to the hotel at 1730 having left at 1030.

And this is an ekonomiyaki!! I have tried making these and failed so thought we would try one here. They

are delicious, a sort of stuffed pancake. Now off to go people watching.

TOKYO

I am  a very happy bunny. All sorts of lovely things have happened. I will pass over the air trip and just say I arrived at 9 am, was in the hotel by midday and out again, after a rest, at 2 pm. And then the fun started.

 We went to Ueno Gardens and passed by a grove of cherry trees, okay in spring time, but in late September just dusty. But the manhole covers are reminders of cherry blossom!!

The gardens are dusty and not very green. There are many homeless living there and we saw an immense queue for handouts. Apparently a lot of homeless live in these gardens.

Also in these gardens, is the Tokyo National Museum. Marvellous and lots of textiles.

 A kimono based on a figured white silk fabric which has been heavily embroidered. 19th century. There were 18th century kimonos with hevay embroidery.

A haori (short kimono) of the 18th century in silk with the pattern created by shibori!!

I am sorry this is sideways on but I cannot rotate it!! Anyway it is still beautiful. It is 19th century and one of the oldest examples of Okinawan bingata which survives. The Battle of Okinawa in 1945 bombed the textile museums to bits and rebuilding cannot bring the bingata collection back. The oldest examples are those which just happened to be in the Tokyo National Museum in 1945. It is created by stencilling - with many many different stencils.

There were several examples in the Museum.  

This is a close up of the kimono shown above.

There is also an exhibition of kabuki clothing which is very extravagant.

The Museum shop is great and I bought four books on textiles there - all in Japanese. This includes one which starts at the back (UK nomenclature) and reads forward. I worked on the assumption that I could probably tell what was happening from the pictures.

After examining everything textile in the Museum, we set off Northwards outside the Ueno garden to walk through a different district. Lots of small houses with pruned conifers in their gardens. No flowers and lots of overhead wires. Tokyo is very peculiar in that it is built on lots of levels. It is quite usual to look out of a window on the ground floor and see a three storied motorway outside - only one of the 'bridges' carries a railway. Getting around is okay although I managed to get us lost in a station once. We are using the trains and Metro a lot.

That was Friday. I will catch up Saturday tomorrow morning.

Cards and Napkins

I spent yesterday (Monday) at Grove with two Kennet Valley Guild members, Chris Fletcher and Jean McVeigh. The idea was to make some of my DPW weavings into cards. I knew Chris and Jean were real afficionados of card making. butI was astonished at the way they approached doing the cards and the equipment they had. They spent 2 or 3 hours discussing what to do with each motif and then in the afternoon, they made one sample for each motif - see photo above. In one case, they redesigned the card three times, discarding the first two designs as not good enough.  My meagre contribution was to make some tassels for  the bookmarks. They thought that one section of weaving would be better as a bookmark. It was stunning - but my photo did not come out. They are proposing to run a production now and say it will not take long to complete them all. We all need to be very grateful to these two for using their expertise for the good of the Guild. And I got a smashing lunch.

Today, I dealt with the napkins, cutting them apart after zigzagging the edges and then hemming them. I also prepared the handouts to go with them which was a problem as it is based on filling up a form but you cannot import any graphics so how do you get the draft in? Answer:-you print the form out, stick on the two drafts, a photo of me and the notes because the form refused to allow a Carriage Return and so you only got the first line printed. Then scan it into the computer, get a pdf file and print that out. Bah!!

I also dealt with the upcoming exhibition, invites to our Private View have gone out, lots of emails sent. I have just about done everything I need to do before I set off but I admit that I keep remembering odd jobs that have to be done now!! And I must go off and complete one now.

Off the Loom

I have spent the last few days weaving. I did it in 2 hour sessions with 1 or 2 hours break between sessions, ending up with weaving three napkins yesterday (Sunday). I finished at 10pm, applied Fraystop to the end and went to bed. This morning it was cut from the loom, zigzag stitched at the ends of the six napkins section and cut into two. 

The photo shows some of the card motifs. There is also a section where I repeated ad nauseam motifs for the napkins, all different.

Here is one of the napkins. All the ends have been sewn. in There were only two broken threads to be mended in the whole length. Now they are all in the washing machine. 

Still to be done are the cutting apart and hemming. But I am hopeful that I can get these off on Wednesday to the States.

I have done the occasional 'other' thing. On Saturday, I went to Wightwick Manor with the Midlands Textile Forum. This house was built by the Manders of Manders Paints and they were William Morris/ Pre-Raphaelite fans. I have to admit a weakness about the Pre-Raphaelites - I can't stand them. There is a gallery in the Birmingham Art Gallery devoted to them and I feel physically sick if I go in.

Wightwick Manor was totally redeemed for me by having lots of William de Morgan. All the fireplaces had his tiles and there are a number of bowls. plates and vases. Very desirable. I bought myself a book about William de Morgan from the shop there.

I was slightly surprised at the program for the group. I should read documents more carefully. We had a conducted tour (very good) of the house which lasted about an hour and a half. Then we retired to a private room and had a lecture!!! This was about Thomas Wardle (William Morris's dyer of choice) and the Leek Embroidery Society - a commercial organisation which seemed to have decorated all the churches in the Stoke/Leek/Stafford and Cheshire areas. The lecturer was very good and knew her topic intimately. A real enthusiast. She brought a suitcase of samples for us to examine. After that a late lunch of a sandwich and then back to the house to see an exhibition of William Morris patterns. And then back home to the Megado!

Now I must get off to the card making day.   Soon I must start thinking about packing! I am reminded of a rather humourless Project Manager at British Aerospace where I worked for several (happy) years. There was a big notice in his room which read ' As soon as I have a minute to spare, I am going to panic'.