Made in Japan

The UF in Tokyo students had their official show opening last night, at the Festa Gallery in Harajuku. They did hard work, not just with their own art pieces, but putting the show together, hanging it, doing the publicity, and making it work. It was fantastic. Below are some pictures.

Here's the graphic image they put together, followed by their overall concept statement:

Here's the gallery...a beautiful building, with small rooms that one can rent for exhibits. Harajuku gets lots of traffic, so there was a good stream of people passing through, and several of the people we've met showed up to see the show.
Walking in the area, I saw a few flyers for the show...

Most of the pieces were collage work, so the art could be prepared here in Japan using materials here. Work by Bethany (comparing mapping of sign images with spatial maps):
Megan (who combined found objects with rubbings of corresponding Tokyo surfaces):
Anthony (who prepared an elaborate mapping across one wall of different Tokyo spaces):
Mike (who put together a book of found objects and images):
Lindsey (who had images hanging from the ceiling in clusters of red, blue, and gold):
Czar (who created giant floor pieces of receipts, here a receipt blown up to 3' x 6', and next to it a mat made of original sized receipts):
Rachel (who did a sequence on grids and motion based on the Shinagawa station):
Chris (who reworked some photographic images to map body language):
Mike (a second piece, water color on the wall, of "cute" images from pop culture):
David (who found older pop culture images from magazines, and put together a sequence):

Ueno

Ueno is an area in the northeast of Tokyo, one of the older neighborhoods, and known (affectionately) as Grandparents Town for all the seniors who live there. It's a mix of shops and apartments, but has a large park (where the main zoo is), and many of the big art museums. It has a different feel than the hyper-new areas of the city, which are made over in the latest style. You can see this in the modest station exterior:

and in the very different feel of the station interior which, by the way, is filled with the smell of pastries. Is it that the seniors like to buy the pastries, or that people buy warm gifts when they visit their parents and grandparents?
Here, a stand for gift boxes...

A great little coffee shop I've visited a few times...
And some pictures from out in the park and zoo...
Here, a kanji carved into a nearby Shinto shrine...
From a bamboo grove...
And some visuals from the zoo map...

Shinagawa Station

We are staying a few blocks from the Shinagawa station on the main circular Tokyo line called the Yamanote. The stations are real hubs within the city--not buried underground, like in New York, but whole elaborate complexes. On the Yamonote line, there are probably a dozen stops that are like Grand Central station, with multi-story malls, corridors with restaurants, sometimes huge skyscrapers of office buildings attached. Shinagawa is a huge station for connections with other rail lines, but it's mostly a residential and working area--not as much shopping as other stations--and in the morning, the flow of people out of the station is amazing. Last week we arrived at the station at 8:30 in the morning, and found ourselves fighting the flow of tens of thousands of people, all silently heading to work. It was one of the most unusual experiences I've ever had, and I went back this morning to take some pictures.

They don't really capture the number of people, but you can get some sense of the traffic. Here's the main corridor, as photographed from a second-story Starbucks overlooking it. This picture was taken at about 7:45 am...not many people.

By 8:00, the stream was steady, but still not at its peak (which was around 8:40, for the 9:00 workday). But you can see that the flow is almost entirely in one direction.
Here you can see one poor foreigner trying to cross the traffic. The yellow lines you see in the pictures are actually grooves to help the blind move through the station; you can see this on almost every street, either grooved for canes, or rippled so you can feel where you are with your feet.
It was just a steady flow from about 8:00 until 9:15, when it began to die down to mere hundreds per minute. There are a few chime tones going off every second or so, and every few minutes a train announcement in the distance, but there's almost no talking, so you hear ambient noise and the sounds of thousands of footsteps.

Here, closer to the east exit (there's a west exit with just as much traffic), you can make out two people, I think, trying to move in the opposite direction.

Kimonos

Our first week here, I was hunting for the Takanawadai subway stop on the other side of the Shinagawa station. I got hopelessly lost in a residential area of winding streets with no people, and then I saw someone and was able to ask for directions. That person was Yoko Kawakami, who I discovered was a graphic designer. After a couple weeks of correspondence, we arranged for her to come to the Bureau and talk about her design work, and she came with two friends, Natsuki (half-American, half-Japanese, living in Tokyo, who helped as our translator), and Isana (who does freelance graphic design for magazines). They came and talked with our students for almost two hours, a great conversation about different impressions of Tokyo, Japanese design and fashion (and our perceptions thereof), and, above all, Yoko's interest in kimonos.

Here's our full group: (front row, l to r) Doug, Bethany, and Jane, (second row:) David, Lindsey, Emily, Rachel, Devon, Anthony, Mike, and Natsuki, and (back row) Megan, Czar, Chris, Isana, and Yoko.

Yoko is self-trained, self-educated in graphic design, and works for a large company that makes clothing accessories (for example, she just designed buttons for Burberry, and has worked making these accessories for other big name labels). But she's very interested in rethinking kimono design, taking the traditional kimono and adding new accessories. As a great exercise, she brought a bunch of kimono materials, and asked students to make combinations. The basic elements: the robe (as foundation), the obi (the large belt-like sash), a smaller fabric tucked behind the obi (as an accent), and then a thin belt or sash around the obi itself.

A.
Here the base kimono is the black and white fabric, with the flowered fabric as the obi, the purple as the accent, and the green cord as the final belt.

B.
As an example of Yoko's play with the traditional grammar of the kimono, here's a different kind of belt to finish the ensemble.

C.
And another set: black foundation, gold-weave obi, blue accent, and a belt using pop-cultural elements.

D.
And one more. This and the others were constructed by our students. When they left, our guests presented us with beautiful handmade cards which included Yoko dressed in a kimono ensemble prepared from the above materials. Her choice almost entirely matched one of the students' arrangements. Take a guess of which it was...A, B, C, D, or E?

E.

Disney, Part 2

I've been trying to think more about why Tokyo Disney was so strange. I think Tokyoites view it as an American theme park...something they visit to see American culture, which is presented as boisterous, wild, rough, and kind of crude. It would be like the reverse of Americans maybe visiting a Japanese garden, to get a sense of order, quiet, and reserve. But human behavior adds an uneasy element to this. Americans might like the Japanese garden experience, but would act "American" there, and might be unnerved to see an American acting "Japanese." At Tokyo Disney, something like this seemed evident. One could see Japanese people comfortably interacting with characters, like Goofy, who must come across as the epitome of an American: big, somewhat unreal, somewhat ridiculous, playful and loud.

And one might sit next to the burnt-out tepee on Tom Sawyer's island, and still feel serene. (Here, what I imagine to be three generations, with grandmother in kimono, daughter in Disney gear, and granddaughter biding time.)
Disney headgear was really common, and not just with kids (like below). My favorite moment was seeing a middle-aged man, with gold chains and tanktop, sitting on a parkbench with Minnie Mouse ears and a little bow on top. Not a moment when I could take a photo, though.

Here, mass transit, American-style, on the raft to Tom Sawyer's island.
But the really challenge seems to come when Japanese people see other Japanese people acting American. A couple of times, we saw groups of people silent, maybe astonished, as Japanese Disney employees acted like "Americans," loudly reciting their scripts and laughing artificially. This comes through in some of the pictures of Disney employees below. Not this one,
But you can see it here, I think.

Tokyo Disney

Today, I went with Doug to Tokyo Disney, determined to figure out what was different about the Japanese Disney, beside the funkier color scheme of the castle. Some of the differences were subtle: the landscaping was more refined (more like a Japanese garden) though many of the rides were strikingly similar, with the exception of Japanese dubbing (which didn't always happen).

And there was the Mickey-shaped pork-stuffed rice bun, though its ridiculous price was like Disney...
But maybe the biggest difference was in the employees, who, in expressing Disney gusto, come off as distinctly bizarre in their behavior...almost to the point of puzzling the Japanese guests. I took a series of pictures of employees, all of whom adopted great poses, including this guy below, working at the Pirates of the Caribbean.
Otherwise, some of the rides didn't seem to translate, as with this little girl, unsure what the heck this bear thing is, though sure to make the peace sign for a photo.
Country music in general seemed confusing to the audience, and the revue was set up to provide an intro to American country & western, but also more familiar kinds of pop. So there was a Beach Boys hit (sung by American country bears), as well as this guy, below, an Elvis impersonator--Elvis is super-popular here.