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I changed my plans a little bit because Erez’s new hiking shoelace broke. Not sure how it happened, but he tried to fix it and it made it worse. I had the receipt (I forgot leave it with him). I checked out of the hotel, and then headed for a chai latte in Tully’s cafe again so I could use their fast wifi. My room wifi was inconsistent, so it made it difficult sometimes to efficiently upload photos. Besides, I had to check out. As soon as the store was open I went in and talked to the salesperson who remembered seeing us the day before.

With my Broken Japanese and the salesperson’s non-existent English, 15 minutes later, it was all sorted. Now I could head to Tokyo, albeit a tiny bit later than planned. On the way to the station I had passed this dapper looking sculpture from above many times, but never really had a chance to stop and look, so today I did – to my surprise it was of Hans Christian Anderson – apparently the other sculptures around the clock tower were characters from his stories. I am glad I took the time to find out.

The trip back to Tokyo went fairly smoothly, I made my connections ok, and this time I realized that having a non-reserved ticket did not tie me to a particular train, so there was less stress about catching a certain one.

A Shinkansen leaving the station (slowly). When one barrels through at top speed it takes your breath away.

Here are a few observational photos from my journey and when I first arrived and wandered in my hotel neighbourhood.

An amazing shirt worn by a man in the station – I want one 🙂

Shinagawa station when I got off the Shinkansen (bullet train)

Outside view when I got out of Hamamatsucho Station to walk to my hotel. Notice the living green wall at the bottom of one of the buildings. It is called “The World Trade Centre”.

To check in, I was directed to a machine, but the staff mostly did it for me.

Originally, I thought that maybe I would take the evening to chill out and work on my blog and take it easy before the trip home, and then I decided…Who am I kidding? I have one night left, I am going to enjoy it, even if the forecast is for rain :). I packed up my umbrella and my small pack and hit the town…

I researched a few vegetarian restaurant options and found an interesting one not too far away by train, in Ginza. I walked by this sushi bar inside the station that I had seen on my way to the hotel, so I decided to stop there for a pre-dinner meal (it was fairly early – maybe 3:45pm). Wow – it was delicious!

The above Aburi (torched fish) was really great.

This billboard was emblematic of my trip, then I noticed it was for Tokyo Disneyland. The dot on the “I” should have been the giveaway.

The restaurant was in the Ginza Shopping district. Wow has it ever changed in 28 years!

In the photo below is the UNIQLO flagship store. It was huge! This is just the front that you see in the photo – it extended most of a block – it is 4 floors of only Uniqlo and then has a bonus Daiso (100 yen store) and a few others on the 5th floor. The 6th floor is food 🙂

I am not a shopper, but I had fun browsing there, picking up a few last minute things to bring home, now that I didn’t have to carry my purchases around with me for three weeks, and now that I had Erez’s bag to check.

A couple of photos from the Daiso store:

Here is the Kura Revolving Sushi Bar on the 6th floor – I would have loved to try it but I was still too full from the excellent sushi I ate in the station.

Cool Mikimoto building:

Next I found the 2Foods vegan restaurant. I don’t know what kind of witchcraft was involved, but it was really good – usually I do not like vegan cheese, but this was great.

Next, I hopped on a train and tried to find an illuminated garden that I saw in some of the promotional materials in my room. It was at the Grand Prince Hotel New Takanawa. I didn’t realize that there were many different Grand Prince hotels, all having slightly different names, all owned by the same company. It took a bit to find it, but when I did, it did not disappoint. Here are a few highlights:

This was in another part of the hotel complex – I guess an intact historic building with a vintage car parked out front.

More observation photos on my way to my next destination – the Tokyo Tower:

Zojoji Temple – I wish I had been there this time in the daylight – I probably have pictures from 28 years ago though – will check when I get home. It was pretty eerie at night with no lights.

The Tokyo Tower was worth the walk – it was a warm night and it was beautifully lit up. I think last time I was there during the day.

There was a whole hangout area around the base of the tower which I don’t remember seeing before. There was an amazing looking crepe place – even the plastic food looked good, but I was already too full from my other two meals. This double decker bus was an eating area 🙂

You can see how humid it was by my fuzzometer:

I was walking away from the tower, turned around for one last look and the lights had totally changed so I had to go back.

Overall, a great night out and about. I think I milked enough out of my last evening in Tokyo. I got home around 11:30pm, and I was still vibrating with energy for quite awhile.

We started out the day with a spectacular breakfast. So many items! Delicious!

After breakfast, when we checked out, we asked the front desk about a taxi so we wouldn’t have to start the day with a 35 minute hike to the bus stop. To our surprise, the gentleman from the front desk offered to drive us which was great! We hopped on the bus and headed towards the Navy Castle.

On the bus, there was a lady who we are pretty sure was deaf who struck up a conversation with Erez. They were communicating through hand motions while I was trying to sort out which bus stop we were supposed to get off at. I first made contact with her when she was concerned that someone had left his cart at the back of the bus. I think he left it there on purpose for a moment, and I tried to tell her that, but she was adamant about getting him his cart and helping him off the bus with it. Very helpful lady. I think Erez enjoyed his interaction with her as well, even though he is not sure they were talking about the same things 🙂

We got off the bus, and started trying to orient ourselves so we would walk in the right direction. It was of course at the top of a rather large hill. We confirmed with some people who were at the bottom that we were going the right way, and then one of the men ran after us to give us a free Mandarin – so sweet of him! It is a special orange called a Hassaku orange which is specifically grown on Innoshima. It was delicious!

Of course, walking up the hill there were many interesting things to see:

Below is the view of a cemetery and one of the shrines from the ascent to the castle.

Now when we heard Navy – we thought it was the Japanese Navy, but it was not exactly. This was a museum of the Murakami Kaizoku Pirates who controlled the waters and defended the land around the Seto Inland Sea from the Muromachi to the Sengoku period (approx.1338-1590). They built many temples, shrines and castles, including the one we had hiked the day before. Their role was to act like the coast guard kind of, in cooperation with the local feudal lords.

View from the ground:

View from inside the “castle” (note: the castle was built is 1983 to house exhibits for the museum):

The Museum was so interesting – they had many artifacts from the Murakami clan like armour, chainmail, and very ornate helmets. There was a lot of documentation that was preserved including calligraphy scrolls, maps etc.

We also learned about the Innoshima Suigun Festival that is held every year to honour the memory of the Murakami Clan and their accomplishments. It is broken into three parts – the first is called the “Island Festival, and people dress up and parade in Warrior costumes, usually at the end of July, or beginning of August. The second part is the Sea Festival where people have a large scale dragon boat race in replica boats from the time (photo from the museum exhibit)

The final Festival is called the Fire festival and is described as follows on the Japan Travel website:

“As night falls, fires are lit and everyone’s attention turns to the beach as historical reenactments begin. The whole event is meant to the represent the triumphant return of the suigun warriors dressed in samurai armor and the joyous reception provided to them by the villagers who have kept the home fires burning while they were away at sea.

Things start with the reenactment of the return of the boats, followed by samurai pirates marching up and down the beach, and the parading of huge torches which sometimes clash creating showers of fiery sparks.

The whole evening ends with more drumming, the punching of fists in the air of the assembled suigun warriors and an impressive 15-minute fireworks display over the sea.

I wish I was here during that time because that sounds epic!

Here is the URL for the Japan Travel site if anyone is interested in seeing photos and to learn more:

https://www.japan.travel/en/sg/jbyj-blog/innoshima-murakami-suigun-samurai-pirate-fire-festival

There was a lovely small Buddhist temple at the base of the mountain where the museum was:

Then we started the trek back to Kurashiki – and as usual, it was a journey. Google Maps was convinced that we had to walk 35 minutes in the heat of day, on the concrete to catch our bus. It also led us astray in the morning. It was like the bus we took didn’t exist according to google maps. We checked the closer bus stop and figure out there was a bus, talked to the driver, he advised us where to transfer (hint – not where google wanted us to go). At the transfer point, we saw a couple wearing t-shirts with matching slogans on them – I managed to sneakily get a photo of the husband.

Solid words to live by in my opinion…

We also tried some hilarious “food” from a vending machine:

Here is Erez and the bridge

We got back to Kurashiki around 4 and I checked into my hotel. We then headed to the outlet mall to shop for some outdoor stuff that Erez needed – raincoat, rain pants, and some hiking shoes. He has committed to two hiking trips with his coworkers and was planning on wearing his Blundstones. I have tried to buy him hiking shoes in the past with great difficulty – we always gave up. It took him an hour to choose a pair, but we finally bought him some.

We finished off our night at an okonomiyaki restaurant. Okonomiyaki is a giant savoury “pancake” with shredded cabbage and other vegetables as well as seafood and meat. Erez ordered the “special” one which basically has everything but the kitchen sink in it – and was advertised as 1.5x regular size. I ordered a vegetarian one. It was HUMONGOUS – we could have shared one. The pictures do not really convey how big the plates were. We felt guilty leaving food on our plates, but Erez doesn’t have a fridge in his dorm and I was leaving in the morning.

This was mine:

This is Erez’s

All good things must come to an end. We said goodbye at the bus station. I miss him already, but am so excited that he is having this adventure. He told me today that he is going to play at an Ultimate tournament on a beach on June 8th with a team here- so that’s really exciting 🙂 I am also so glad that I got to accompany him for a few days on his journey here.

Tomorrow I head to Tokyo and then home on Tuesday. Hard to believe it is almost over…

Our next leg of the journey involved a 20 walk to the ferry pier. As usual there was lots to observe – here are a few shots from the road.

We were very early so we hung out in a waiting area in a building, and took the time to cool off and sample some of the strange drinks from the vending machine. Finally our ferry arrived. It was full of school kids.

It took about 20 minutes to get to the port where there was someone from the hotel waiting to pick us up. In this hotel there weren’t any private showers in the rooms, only a public bathing area with a hot pool. It was not a natural hot spring, but it was a large public bath with a beautiful view. The baths were segregated by gender, no private baths at this hotel. I didn’t give Erez the full rundown before he went in as in the past, there had been English signs to help explain the process. Oops, not at this one. The only thing he knew was that you wash yourself before you soak in the hot bath. I also forgot to bring our small towels that are needed in the public bath for washcloths and of course covering up if you choose to. It is a very small towel though – it doesn’t cover much of me, that’s for sure!

Us in our yukatas ready to freshen up:

I was fortunate in that I had the place to myself. (I forgot to mention when I first wrote this post that in the public bath, everyone is naked – let’s just say I don’t exactly look like everyone else – not that it matters at all to me at this point in my life) In the room was a large hot bath, a cold plunge pool and a sauna as well as a shower area. I took my time and washed, did my hair, soaked and did the cold plunge. I did not think the sauna would be wise after I overheated on the hike. Just after I went back into the locker area, another woman showed up and then a few more. – it seems I beat the busy time.

Erez had a different experience. There were several men coming and going, and the writing on the front of the hair products was mostly rubbed off, so he had to ask someone which was shampoo, conditioner and body wash. Also they pointed out the fact that he did not have his mini towel (no opportunity to cover anything) Overall, he was able to use some of his Japanese skills, and learned his way around for the next time. We had a good laugh when he came out eventually.

We had a delicious traditional dinner set and then watched the sunset from the fire escape. Beautiful!

This was my veggie tempura set:

We also did an hour of Karaoke which is always fun. The hotel had a decent selection of English tunes we could sing.

After Karaoke, we settled in to chill for the rest of the evening. Erez went out to make a couple of phone calls as he had wifi (at his dorm there is no wifi and he is almost tout of data until next month), and I ended up falling asleep before he came back.

Here is the monk statue in the courtyard in front of the hotel lit up at night:

Also, we kept seeing posters for this festival in July and we couldn’t stop giggling over it – we need to do some research but I am pretty sure it is not what we think it is, I hope something was lost in translation…

***After some research, Porno Graffiti is the name of an alternative rock/power pop group from Innoshima. They are famous for doing music for many movies including anime. Maybe this is an exhibition about them? Stay tuned. (Name came from an album by the same name by the band Extreme.)

After we finished at the Innoshima Flower Center we found the starting point for our hike up Mt. Shirataki. The internet said it was about a 30 minute climb if we took the flower line route. We decided to take the more interesting route. It took quite a bit longer, but not sure exactly how long. We consulted the map and changed our path several times – one time we decided to follow the path to the “Inner Sanctuary” it was rugged, involved some scrambling up rocks at times, sometimes going through unmaintained trails through rock formations, and it was a lot of fun.

It was very hot and humid, so I got a bit overheated. By the time we got to the top I looked like a bright and shiny tomato. It was worth it ( this photo is untouched- I was really that red!)

I will write about the next part of our day (taking the ferry to our hotel) in the next post.

Erez and I woke up to a spectacular view of the water from our hotel room.

We were planning on heading directly by bus to one of the islands, Innoshima, to see a couple of attractions, go for a hike and then head to our hotel on the far side of that island. There are many islands and they are currently linked by a series of beautiful suspension bridges. Cycling the Shimanami Kaido (the route through several of the islands) is approx 70km. According to the Japan National Tourism Organization, an experienced cyclist could complete the circuit in about 4 hours if they just do the cycling part. A leisurely cycle while taking in the scenery and stopping at local tourist spots along the way, will take at least 10 hours. We saw many people cycling along the way, both Japanese and foreign, some serious cyclists, and some just leisurely enjoying the journey.

We checked out of our hotel and headed to the bus station, exploring the neighbourhoods on the way.

On the way we noticed a ropeway gondola, so we decide to deviate from the plan and check it out. I mean, I am always up for a scenic gondola ride up a mountain 🙂 There was a lot we could have seen while up there, and then made our way back down leisurely, checking things out, but we wanted to save our time to see more once we got to the island. That being said, the gondola ride was scenic and the views at the top were breathtaking.

The station had a resident cat who hangs out – we also saw two memorial plaques for previous station cats with their dates. Erez tried to pet the current station mascot who seemed pretty indifferent to the attention.

Here a a few photos from the journey up and then back down.

At the foot of the gondola there a was a temple we quickly checked out.

After our detour up the mountain, we caught the bus. To get to Innoshima we had to travel through another island called Mukaishima Island. (Actually, the word “shima” or “Jima” means island). The trip to our first stop, Innoshima Flower Centre took approximately 45 minutes, and then we had a bit of a walk from the bus stop to the Flower Center.

Admission to the Flower Center was free, and it seems that it has been a bit neglected – maybe because of post-COVID situation? maybe because of the season? There was evidence of some rejuvenation, perhaps in time for the summer tourist season. It was still a pleasant place to hang out, but certainly did not quite live up to the pictures I had seen online before. There were large open green spaces as well as several large greenhouses.

After refueling and rehydrating, Erez and I went in search of our hiking trailhead.

I will put our hike in a separate post. 🙂

I met Erez at my station and we quickly stored the giant hockey bag I was going to take home for him, having replaced it with a sleek proper travelling backpack. After taking care of this, we got on the train from Kurashiki to Onomichi in the Hiroshima prefecture. We accidentally got on the wrong train ( it came three minutes before ours and we got on it, assuming it was the one we were waiting for). While consulting the map in the train car, a fellow passenger offered his help and confirmed my plan B of taking the train to the end of the line and then switching. He was an American teaching English at a high school in Fukuyama, and was on the train with a classmate of his from university who was visiting from the States. It was interesting chatting with him and his friend about their experiences studying abroad in Japan a couple of years before, as well as his experience of now working in a high school. At the end of the journey we exchanged names, and when asking what kind of name Erez was, we established that we are both from the same tribe 🙂 He says that he doesn’t really practice, but as it was Friday night he wished us a good Shabbos as we were heading our separate ways. Another wandering Jew…

We arrived in Onomichi late, but even in the dark, the views looked pretty spectacular, I couldn’t wait to see what they would be like in the light of day.

Erez had heard from some coworkers that this area had a bit of a pirate history, and we started to see some pirate motifs right away, although we are not sure what this was about.

We settled into our hotel and tried to get a good night’s sleep – we needed our strength as I had lots planned for the weekend, and it had been a long week already for both of us.

Today I had a sort-of repeat of another day on this trip. I set off on a 30 minute walk to find that where I ended up was not the shrine I was looking for. It was still nice and I always like wandering the streets away from the tourist area observing life around me, but it was quite humid and the hour return trip made me feel a little bit wilted.
Here are some photos and videos from the walk:

When I came back to the tourist area, I sat down for awhile and slowly ate a shaved ice treat to cool myself down. It was a magical shaved ice treat as it never melted! It stayed frozen all the way down to the bottom of the cup – remarkable.

I wandered the historic quarter for awhile and then decided to return to the museum I missed out on yesterday.

The museum had a large collection of ornate wood block prints. Most were by the artist Utagawa Kuniyoshi. The prints were unbelievably detailed – I could have spent 30 minutes looking at each one individually. I really enjoyed the exhibit but I was not allowed to take any photos. You can look him up if you are interested. The building it was housed in was also very interesting. I had to wear slippers and I was directed through a series of tatami rooms on different floors of the building. I really enjoyed this museum.

Here are a few more photos from my wanderings on Friday: First the famous Ivy Square.

Now I am waiting at the station at dusk for Erez to arrive so we can start our weekend adventure 🙂

Once we left the Achi Shrine, we headed to the station to meet Erez. He was delayed by a bit of traffic, but we didn’t have to wait too long.

We headed directly to a restaurant called Brasserie Aile. Maria had seen it on Instagram. It was an amazing food experience, there were 7 courses – each more beautiful than the next. I did not take a photo of the first course, but it was fried crab and I didn’t eat it 🙂

Here are the photos of the meal for those who are interested – all of my courses were either vegetarian or with fish. Norie, Maria and Erez had a couple of courses that had meat – all were exceptional.

Celery and potato soup -mouth watering!

Because I did not have the steak course like everyone else, I think they prepared the “rest of the fish” that we ate earlier. There wasn’t a lot of meat on it, but the concoction that it was cooked in was surprisingly scrumptious. Amazing that the chef could make a fish carcass taste that great!

And… Dessert!

And here we are, stomachs and taste buds fully satisfied:

Spending the day with Norie felt great. We were both remarking on the fact that in our daily lives we are not able to make time for strolling through museums, yet today we made the time to stroll through them together. It was nice having someone to share the experience with. She insisted on treating me to everything even when I tried to pay. She said that I had already spent so much money to get here to come and visit. It was incredibly generous. It was also a bit surreal having our kids, who are both adults now, meet each other. Maybe one day Maria will make it to New York and I will go to visit her there :).

I will finish off this post with a pic of a present I bought for myself this afternoon that I forgot to post earlier. As we were strolling through the historic quarter, Maria wandered into a tiny shop that you could barely notice from the outside, but for some reason, the small table in the doorway caught her eye – there wasn’t even a display window. It was a store which sold incredibly delicate pieces that were replicas of different flowers and natural items like leaves with tiny acorns and berries. They were so incredibly realistic, I was completely captivated by them. As many of you know, I do not wear a lot of jewelry, but I felt compelled to buy a leather necklace with this simple, yet beautiful pendant which reminds me of Japan in June when Hydrangea season is in full force.

When I went to pay, the owner showed me this information sheet which explained how he captured the natural beauty so accurately:

Well, that is part three of my beautiful day with Norie. After checking out of my hotel, I was lucky to have found this cafe which allowed me to hang out for hours using their excellent free wifi, documenting my day from yesterday. I will explore a bit more of Kurashiki this afternoon, hope to have an interesting supper and then will meet up with Erez for our weekend adventure to Onomichi and Innoshima. I am in the home stretch now. That will be my final adventure before heading back home.

We met up with Maria, Norie’s 23 year-old daughter, at around 4 o’clock, after a comedy of errors where we went to where she was, only to find out that she came to the Ohara museum where we just were.

After returning to Jeans Street, we did one of the things on my to-do list which was to try a local desert treat – Extruded purple sweet potato “noodles” on ice cream. I wanted to wait for them because I didn’t want to have to eat the whole thing. That is one of the downsides to travelling alone – it is difficult to just “taste” something. Here is a video of the process of extrusion – they purposely do it in front of you for the fun of it 🙂 When we tasted it we found a slice of yellow sweet potato in the bottom under the ice cream – a nice delicious surprise.

Things were closing up, so we missed one of the museums, as we arrived there literally 2 min after the last people were being let in. We then headed to the Achi Zodiac shrine. As with many shrines, there were many steps just to get to the shrine, but we were rewarded with some beautiful views of the city. I guess the location adds to the feeling of being elevated when you reach the shrine where you will be petitioning the gods for whatever wish you would like to be granted. We passed a woman of advanced years, hunched over, walking with her cane on her way back from the shrine. It reminded me of when I was climbing the 8 hour trek up Mount Fuji in 1995 and was occasionally being passed by 80+ year- olds with walking sticks, who probably make the pilgrimage every year. It was great having Norie and Maria with me so they could help interpret the signs at the entrance to each of the individual shrines within the compound.

Shrine Gate

Petitions tied under the heads of the signs of Asian animal signs of the zodiac:

Daruma shrine – Traditionally people buy a Daruma, make a wish and colour in the pupil of one of the eyes. They visit the shrine and pray. Once their request has been fulfilled, they colour in the second eye and bring it as an offering as thanks to the gods at the shrine.

A few more shots:

Here is a beautiful representation of the animal signs in the roof of a small pavilion, plus many sets of 1000 paper cranes hung up as an offering. The photo below is one set of the 1000 paper cranes.

I will break this up into one last post about the seven course dinner once we met up with Erez.

I woke up very excited as I was going to see Norie today and hadn’t seen her since 2001. I woke up early, did a Bat Mitzvah lesson on Zoom and then went downstairs to see what the breakfast buffet was like – this time I booked it ahead of time. I found lots to eat. There was also “western style” breakfast which I avoided. This is what I chose to eat: Delicious!

Right at 10:03, I met Norie at the station – We were so happy to see each other! This incredible feeling of lightness I felt once we reunited and hugged, carried me like a cloud through the day. Our first stop was my hotel room as I had a present for her and she had present for Erez and me. My present was something called a grand marble loaf – a light buttery croissant type loaf that was marbled with green tea and red bean paste baked into the dough – it was quite delicious.

Next stop was the Bikan Historical Quarter. Norie had a rough idea of what she wanted to see. First thing we did was get tickets for the canal boat tour. The tours were sold out until 1:30 where there were just two spots left. We snapped them up. We wandered around a bit and then went into the Kurashiki Museum of Folkcraft. In it there were example of things used in everyday life that people had put great effort into making by hand. Some of the artifacts were quite old. It reminded me of how much we take for granted in life. When we need something, we just pop out to the dollar store or some other place to buy it, but back then, everything you used was made by hand. Some examples were: vintage tansu cabinets, storage chests. hand woven baskets, handmade tools from metal or wood, and some everyday and ceremonial clothing made from various interesting materials. I found it fascinating. The exhibit also included artifacts from other places in the world, perhaps for comparison. Here are some examples:

Here is an antique loom:

A period example of a room with a hearth.

This is a kimono that was woven from wood fibres, some dyed with indigo, and then appliquéd on top with hand dyed cotton and embroidery – an exquisite amount of work went into it. Zoom in for a good look 🙂

Here are two more examples of the hand dyed indigo stencilled fabric – some were designed using batik methods, again – so much work went into them.

When we finished at the museum it was almost time for our lunch reservation. On the walk there, we soaked up more of the atmosphere:

Lunch was a predetermined bento box and was delicious. As always, there were new things to try that I had never seen before, and the presentation was so beautiful, I almost didn’t want to eat it.

We talked so long during lunch, we almost missed our boat. When we got out of the restaurant, Norie was looking around to see what to do next and I reminded her that we had boat tour tickets. What came next was us comically sprinting through the Historic quarter, hoping the boat wouldn’t leave without us, and we didn’t know exactly where we were going. We got to the dock just in the nick of time, the tour guide gently scolding us for being late, commenting on the fact that we were supposed to be there a certain amount of minutes (I didn’t hear him exactly above the pounding of my heart, having sprinted to get there) before the embarkation time. They quickly gave us our woven hats to wear and we set off.

Our guide then told us that he was going to sing a traditional wedding song for us. Here is a small sample 🙂

We passed the Ohara Museum of Art which we visited later on in the afternoon:

This is a 140 year old tree!

This area is understandably a popular place for wedding photo shoots. We saw at least two couples wandering around posing with a photographer:

Our next stop was “Jeans Street”. Because Kurashiki is famous for producing over 70% of the denim in Japan, this was a specific tourist attraction. About a 15 min car ride away is the Kojima area where the factories are, and there are many more denim-related things to see including a museum about the history of Jeans and denim. In this area, there were many “denim themed” snacks you could try:

The denim stores had many creative denim items for sale. We came back here with Maria as she is a denim enthusiast. She just graduated from her fashion degree and for her final exhibition, she designed and made some pretty innovative interesting pieces from denim, including a floor-length denim formal gown that looked pretty spectacular.

Here are some pretty cool things you could buy that were not “jeans”.

Notice spelling of “jeans” in the above brand name 🙂 Cute play on words.

Here was a chill-out corner for people to take a break:

Lastly, here are a few examples of a few cool denim clothing items you could buy:

Our next stop was the Ohara Museum of Art. It was established in 1930 by Ōhara Magosaburo, an influential businessman in Kurashiki. It was the first collection of Western art to be permanently exhibited in Japan.  In the beginning, it mostly contained French paintings and sculptures of the 19th and 20th centuries. The collection then expanded to paintings of the Italian Renaissance and of the Dutch and Flemish artists of the 16th and 17th centuries. American and Italian artists were also included. Currently, the museum has expanded to several buildings, including exhibits of Asian pottery and sculpture (many buddha heads discovered in caves in China) as well as a crafts area.

This collection was amassed in consultation with the famous artist Kojima Torajiro (1881–1929) (yes you may have noticed the Jean brand is called Kojima) and the French artist Edmond Aman-Jean. (1860–1935). In the exhibits we learned a lot about the intercultural exchange between the European artists and the Japanese artists of the 1900s. I remember being in Amsterdam at the Van Gogh museum and there was an exhibit of Japanese Block prints to recognize the inspiration and influence this art had on his work. Kojima was a fascinating artist. He studied in Europe and tried to emulate all different European styles, some of which were on exhibit in the museum. He was incredibly talented. I found it so inspiring to read about how artists on both sides of the ocean were striving for intercultural communication and exchange during a time where countries really kept to themselves for the most part, especially in light of the wars that had been going on in the first half of the 20th century. We were not allowed to photograph anything in the museum, so here is a photo of Norie and me outside, as well as a couple of photos I took before I realized that it was not allowed. We were lucky not to be thrown out – those docents are pretty hard core.

Below was a piece that I saw in one of the pavilions at the open air museum but was not allowed to photograph – we had misunderstood one of the docents, and I thought in this area photographs were allowed so I snapped this one before I was scolded. I am assuming it was a bronze cast from the same mold.

I know this post is getting long, so I will create a new post for the rest of the day.