wanted to at least give you a visual update on time spent in tokyo. in a rush to get on a train. will fill you in on the blanks later.

5/27 at collex SPEAKFOR a gallery in Shibu-yu, Tokyo

a show featuring limited edition/rare books by:
Herb Lubalin, Max Huber, Paul Rand, J.Muller-Brockmann, Wim Crouwel, Bruno Munari, & 亀倉雄策, etc. it was heavenly. thank you tokyo.

chuck-san as he captures...taken at the Itsukushima Shrine on Mijajima island (located in the Hiroshima Bay.) The shrine is believed to be constructed in the year 593; a very similar shrine to the current was built in 1168 during the Heian period. Painted in vermilion, the shrine is built on the water, on the border between Mountain Misen and the Seto Inland Sea.

the day was heavy for most of us, as we visited hiroshima peace memorial park and museum, and the atomic bomb dome. i did not take any photographs or recordings, i made a conscience effort to do so-- i'm not exactly sure why, but it felt right to me. i will remember the feeling i had as i walked throughout the city without the reminder of a photograph. a haunting place, but new and full of life. i've never visited a place that so much had been taken from, perhaps it is my youth, but i just didn't know how to handle it. i learned so many detailed facts today, but the overall lesson was so familiar, war and destruction will never be a solution to any problem.

spent the last two days at naoshima island, the site of the benesse art site. we took a number of trains to uno and then finally a ferry to the island. this beautiful place has been home to locals well before it was claimed as an island for art. privileged art seekers drop in everyday, most take the ferry over as we did, as do a number of workers who come to the island daily for their jobs, mainly construction it seemed.

in the two days that we spent there, we saw most of the art the island had to offer, but not much beyond that. some of the work was interesting, and some even tried to integrate the community somewhat, like Tatsuo Miyajima's 'sea of time', which was part of the art house projects. even though this was the most engaging work to me, it did not reach beyond a single encounter with people.

perhaps this work is important to some, but it was not important to me. it left me wondering how important it was to the majority of the people that live on naoshima, and have lived there before it was turned into an exclusive art destination for those that keep art high and out of reach of so many.

maybe i'm being a bit too scathing in my review-- the island is beautiful, the people are charming, found some comfort and good food in a local cafe, and swimming was great even though the water was cold.

the other day, catherine, charles and i teamed up with a local chindonya band to promote our exhibition. the band leader filled me in on the history of chindonya, she recently graduated from shiga prefecture's school of human culture, where she wrote her thesis on chindonya bands. the name chindonya comes from the sounds that the drum that is played makes, 'chin' goes the little gong, 'don' goes the drum head.

this type of performance has been dated back to over 300 years-old; however, within the last 200 years the chindonya performance has been linked with advertising. a musical commercial of sorts, where signs were waved to bring business to a store. ever since television became popular the sight of a chindonya band has become a rare thing. yet, from my brief participation they seem like a great way to remind people of the past, as we received many nostalgic smiles. we mostly played traditional songs with the exception of a few american tunes, my favorite being 'you are my sunshine', made me smile lots and lots.