Sunday, July 29, 2007

Fireworks and other explosions.








Ok, so these are some funky pictures that I took at the fireworks last night, not sure how it actually happened, but some of them are pretty cool looking. The Sumidagawa Hanabi Taikai (Sumida river fireworks event-thing) is big. There were 10,000 blasts!

The group photo is, from right to left, back to front: Sasha, I classmate of mine from Lincoln, me, Larry Kominz's (a teacher of mine at PSU! and fairly famous person concerning Japan) daughter, who is friends with Sasha's little sister, who is the last person in the top row. The two girls in the front we ran into completely randomly there at the fireworks show, but there were friends of mine from Teikyo! They are a year older than me and are now first year students at university.

Today I went out and bought a book about the exam that I have to take in November, the exchange student one, and my jaw dropped. I'm not screwed, I am triple 'b'ed. Boned Beyond Belief. How the fuck am I supposed to know what the 26th country was to join the European Union, and WHY IS THAT NECESSARY TO GET INTO AN ART SCHOOL!!!!!!!!!!??????

I also got the wrong book, I got last year's test, and I just wanted something that would walk me through the kind of problems there would be!
also known as not good.

Saturday, July 28, 2007

Hectic

Over the past couple of days, we have been packing stuff up, and today is the 3rd and final day that the movers are here.

The Fukudas are moving!

They have SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much stuff.

I have been trying my best to help, but the big problem is sorting, which I can't help with, so I just sit around and provide moral support, and reach the occaisional high-placed object.

From tonight we will be sleeping in a different house.
I am skipping an alley cat this afternoon to help unpacking and then I am going to a big fireworks show in the evening.

Not much else.

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

東京藝術大学

Tokyo Geijutsu Daigaku
Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music

Is the best art school in country.

Today was a beautiful day, so I went across town to Ueno Park, which is where GeiDai is, and went to their museum, where they had a wonderful show on Utagawa Hiroshige's Hundred Scenes of Edo. They have all of them. Wow.

Anyway, I thought that it, and the school, were pretty cool, so I tried something gutsy. I walked into the admissions office and asked if it was possible to enroll. I little while later I walked out with a lot of paperwork encluding some of last years tests, just to get a look a head, several various pamphlets, and a phone number for a place where I needed to pick the application form for the Japanese University Entrance Exam for Foreigners. It was only then that I found out that the deadline is this Friday!! Damn good timing!

I am going to fill it out, and see what happens.

http://www.geidai.ac.jp/

Saturday, July 21, 2007

AIAJ

stands for the American Institute of Architects in Japan.

Every two months, they host a lecture, and tonight, there was one. I had been in touch with the President-elect, whom I had met once at a lecture before, and we had been talking about getting me a position at an office somewhere.
Anyway, I met him there, and we talked for a bit before, and then the presentation went on. An American architect practicing in Kyoto, working mostly with traditional Japanese structures. He mentioned something that was actually a term I had heard in calligraphy and my heart jumped! So there IS a connection!!!!! Something I knew there was and had been looking into for a long time!

I talked to him after the lecture about that, he knew nothing about calligraphy, and I was really stoked to be able to talk about both calligraphy and architecture with MIT graduates. After that, Jim, the guy I had been in touch with, said that they were going out to dinner, and invited me along!
The visiting architect, Jim, the current president (?), and I went out for a very nice dinner and we talked for probably over 2 hours about all sorts of things. I got to take out a pen and paper and show them some things I had seen between architecture and calligraphy, and they seemed really interested!

Fuck yes.

Wrote some fun stuff today, mostly experimenting with a cool effect with the darkness of the ink. If you write something, and then write something over it, the thing you wrote first will come out, so, if you wait change the darkness of the ink etc, you can get some really cool effects!
I took out a small brush and drew somethings, and then wrote characters over the drawings, which had some cool effects.

Yesterday, I went to the New National Museum, which is a really nice building, and it had some neat exhibits, one called "Skin + Bones" about fashion and architecture. The architecture was pretty cool but the fashion was ugly.

There was also a HUGE calligraphy exhibition, and I spent a REALLY long time trying to run through everything, and that was only a 5th of the collection!!!!!!!! TOO MUCH!!!!!!

I am getting everything together for my visa application.

In other news, I saw a while back that they changed the Seven Wonders? BOOO! I am disappointed with the new choices.

I saw a T-shirt the other day with had the 7-eleven logo on it, but instead of 'eleven' said'inches'.
I thought about it for a while and decided that it is really only funny in Japan.

I am staying the night in a internet pod so that I can get to the station early tomorrow morning because a special ticket goes on sale which has a stamp rally on it, and if you get the stamps you get this awesome Ghibli thing!!! And it gets me 100 yen off admission to the Ghibli show at this museum, which opens tomorrow. It is all about sketches from the studio.

Thats about all I can think of for now.

Peter

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Roger and I.

Today, tomorrow in the States, July 15th, 2007, is my grandpa's 90th birthday.
I had originally planned to have this be a nice, well thought out, long piece about him, but as soon as I started writing it, it just didn't work out, so I decided to most of it with pictures.
This is a picture of the two of us, probably about 2 years ago, in front of my old house, which, when I went back to look at when I was last in Portland, was completely different!
I just wanted to show I ripped I was. I am probably in better shape now though!
This is a picture of, from left to right: half of my mom, Yuki, the Japanese girl who lived with us for a while, me, and grandpa. This picture means a lot to me, because I was really interested in Japan thanks to my grandpa. He was an interpreter after World War 2, and thanks to that, I have grown up with Japan being in my house. I have his old text books, which are VERY interesting to go through.
This is a picture of Me, Grandpa, and my dad. I don't know much about Granpa's family, but I am at least the second son of a second son, both of which here Art History Majors at Harvard. I wish I could continue that tradition!

Considering how much I love and take after my Grandpa, I am ashamed at how little I know about him. Despite all of my interest in urban planning and architecture, I didn't know until a couple of months ago that he studied civil planning at MIT under I.M. Pei, was close friends with Walter Netsch, and for some reason, I always associate him with Frank Lloyd Wright. He has a picture of FallingWater in his study, and we went to Taliesin West together several years ago.

This poor attempt of a blog post doesn't begin to do him anything near what he deserves, so I will end it.

Grandpa, I love, and wish that I could be there to celebrate with you. I will see you soon.

Happy Birthday,

love

Peter

Recent Art by Peter

This character means 'shadow'.
This is my stamp, which is used to sign pieces of calligraphy. I made it myself!
This is pretty self explanatory.

A typhoon is coming!

Which means that it won't stop raining.
Which means that it is hard to get outside.
Which means that I am feeling cooped up. Again.

I was able to go out a little in the morning yesterday, but then came home and watched Sumo on TV with Julie. She knows A LOT about sumo, because she said that she first took up an interest in it at the same time that the first Hawaiians were getting into the sport. In such a xenophobic time and place, she was trying to make a little bit of a connection to some of the very few other foreigners.

That is so strange, I tried to do the exact opposite.

Sunday, July 08, 2007

Pictures of People Eating Things.





Wait! You aren't supposed to eat that!










Saturday, July 07, 2007

Shinrin Koen.









I went to Shinrin koen, a big park about an hour from downtown by train, and once you get going, it quickly turns into the country, which was really pretty. It took me about 3 hours to get from my door to the entrance of the park (I did stop for lunch, but still) and then, when I got to the park, I was only there for like an hour, because the place is fucking HUGE, and I wouldn't have had time to get to an entrance before it closed. Then I sat back on the train and went home. It was a long, mostly uneventful day.

the pictures are pretty selfexplainatory.

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Teikyo

I went to back to school today. I waited until nobody was in the main courtyard area, and then ran for the entrance, making sure to use the stairs, which is shortcut. I then ran straight for the nurse's office, because she is a close friend. She was kind enough to get me a visitor pass, which I was nervous about. ]I then saw some of the English teachers, saw a bunch of kids who are sorta screamed my name, which ruined my stealth plan. I saw most of the kids I wanted to see, really none of the ones I didn't want to see, saw most of the teachers I wanted to see, except for two, who I will go back and see on Saturday, and saw my old homeroom teacher, who helped ruin my time there last time, and I really grinned and bared that one, and he seemed impressed with what I was saying.

Left, mostly painlessly, but still some people I wanna see.

Park Pictures


Monday, July 02, 2007

July 1

I went to the park today. I will post some pictures of my adventures tomorrow. I hurt my back because I rented a rowboat and rowed about in the pond for a while. That is a lot harder than it looks!
Sunday night means big dinner at the Fukudas. I got to see Norie again, which is fun, we chatted for a while, and I plan to spend more time with her and Hiro this summer. I also met a nice Chinese woman, who I will also keep in touch with, and want to have my little brother email her son, who is the same age, and in a similarily difficult position.
Norie gave me a book of 20th century Japanese architecture and two tickets to a LeCorbusier show at a big art museum in Tokyo. Maybe I should find some cute architecture girl to go with me?

All sorts of strange architecture stuff is happening, though maybe all deadends?

ps. I hate beaurocracies, and especially ones involving immigration. More later?