The Wonderful Town of Kanazawa

Kanazawa is a wonderful town on the western coast of Japan that blends both traditional and modern better than any place I’ve seen so far.  It values and honors its traditions while being contemporary in outlook, and has a confident energy.  I liked this city, even in its 90-plus degree heat.

One of Kanazawa’s central attractions is its 21^st Century Museum of Contemporary Art.  Designed by the Tokyo architecture firm, SANAA, its form is a traditional Japanese circular tray with shallow sides.  Inside are a number of small boxes of different heights, mostly square but some round.  Blown up to roughly 430 feet in diameter, the “tray” is now a base of concrete with one-story glass sides topped with a white ceiling.  The gallery “boxes”, some of which protrude through the roof, are mostly white, though some are glass with sliding floor-to-ceiling curtains. 

Statuette (from the catalog)

Kutami ware (from the catalog)

The special exhibit was a stunning display of recent work by several contemporary ceramic and lacquer artists.  The show was powerful for me because the objects were quite traditional in form, technique, and detail and at the same time very modern in style and approach.  The artists seemed to combine the two confidently and more effectively than I recall seeing elsewhere.  For example, one artist made red kutami ware, a traditional Kanazawa form of white porcelain painted with a red design.  Each large shallow bowl was painted with a very fine, detailed pattern that looked like a kaleidoscope.   My favorite was an artist who made foot-tall statuettes of Japanese and westerners from the late 19^th century.  The faces were gorgeous, capturing the person’s humanity in the slight tilt of the head or gaze of the eyes in a way that traditional statues do not.  The inlaid lacquer pieces were jaw-dropping in their intricacy and beauty.  One piece, a goblet for use in Jewish ceremonies, looked like bronze.

Oh yes, there’s an “underground pool” in the center glass-clad atrium.  You can look down into the water and see people below you looking up, then go downstairs and look up at the sky.  There’s also a kids’ workshop area, something I often see in Japanese museums.  One little girl had made a tower of paper plates and bowls, bound together with colorful tape.  Seeing me behind the glass wall, she ran over to me and whopped it on the glass.  I pretended to collapse and she laughed in delight. 

Up the street from the museum was the Noh Theatre, and I was lucky enough to catch the final performance of its summer run.  Noh is a traditional Japanese art form, known for the painted wooden masks worn by its performers.   It is truly a pageant of ritual.  First the chorus of eight men in grey enter from a little door and sit on the right, fans laid carefully in front.  Next, down a hallway on the left come three musicians – a flutist, and two drummers – and finally the three actors for this play, all with slow, stately steps, gliding the heel while tilting the rest of the foot up, then carefully lowering it.  Clad in simple, traditional garb, only the protagonist wears a mask.  Each has his particular place on the small stage and moves around that spot.  The play is “sung”, somewhat atonal, with intonation that I suspect is hard even for a Japanese to understand.  But in its own way it is quite lovely.

Kanazawa is also known for its Kenroku-en garden, one of the “three great gardens of Japan”.  Its name refers to a Chinese garden that is said to have combined the six attributes needed for perfection:  seclusion, spaciousness, artificiality, antiquity, abundant water, and broad views.  Like the Japanese gardens I have enjoyed most, at every turn – and turn around – there is a different and equally beautiful view.  This garden was full of pine trees, often with branches supported.  One particularly old tree had a concrete “trunk” supporting what trunk it had left, young branches springing forth above.  And there was lots of water:  a couple of little lakes, some streams, even some rippling brooks, all of which were welcome sights and sounds on these hot summer days.

Samurai House & Museum

Old & new houses together

Between the museum and the river is Nagamachi, an area known for its preserved samurai houses, made of wood and surrounded by walls of stone, mud and topped with tiles. It’s a lovely area.  The old houses are well maintained and clearly valued, and newer houses blend in with the others.   It’s also a neighborhood, with people living in both old and new homes, walking or riding their bikes to work. it’s another indication of how much Kanazawa values both old and new and has created a successful mix of the two.

Little Adventures in Japan: Rice, Soba, and Wasabi

Nagano seen from its shrine

I’ve spent the last several days in Nagano and Matsumoto, towns nestled in the mountains near the Japan Alps.  Roughly three hours from Tokyo, both are big jumping off point for hikers and climbers, and I saw lots of people with heavy boots, backpacks, walking sticks, and a few layers of clothing in the mid-90’s weather.   One local train I rode was packed with hikers, including a group of five muscular teen-aged boys with packs that seemed as large as they were.  I’m not sure I ever was a serious hiker, but I certainly am not in this kind of weather.  Instead, I took advantage of the area’s other attractions.

 

I went to see Matsumoto’s castle, one of the four great castles in Japan.  Unlike most castles, it is made of wood and is black in color, not stucco and white.  It is also one of the few “original” castles left in Japan.  That means that the same materials and techniques used when it was originally built were employed when it was restored.  Whatever parts of the castle were still in good condition were kept, so I got to touch 400-year-old wooden pillars. 

Ripening rice

My volunteer guide

The castle was interesting, but talking with my volunteer guide was even more.  I’ve learned to ask for a volunteer guide; you get to know about a person as well as the place.  As we sat and rested at the top of the castle, we talked about his rice farm, which I suspect has long been in his family.  I’ve been watching the rice fields all year, so asked him whether the fields were always full of water.  “No,” he said.  “As the rice grows, you change how much water there is.”  Once the rice has been planted (in water) and is several inches high, you alternately drain and fill the field.  When the rice starts to ripen, though, you keep the field filled with water to encourage big grains.  Right now, for example, he has to keep adding water because of the summer heat.  Then in early September you once again drain and refill the field until late in the month, when you drain it so that a machine can harvest the grain.  This ritual makes for delicious rice, and his field will more than feed his family for the entire year.

One day I took a bus to a village near Nagano to take a soba class.  Soba (buckwheat) is another Japanese grain staple, and is delicious cold in this hot weather.  I went to what was a soba factory, surrounded by fields of buckwheat.  There was a workshop filled with individual tables, each with a shallow lacquer bowl resting in a hole cut out of the table.  One woman was working on her soba beside me, and eventually three other pairs of people joined. 

An instructor showed and told us what to do (in Japanese, of course, so I followed the visual instructions).   Not surprisingly, making soba is both art and ritual:  how you use your hands to mix the flour and water, knead the dough, roll it out, and cut it.  Naturally, as a gaijin I was the messiest of the lot.  But I probably had the thinnest soba noodles, only because I kept rolling the dough until someone told me to stop (I hadn’t picked up how big my rolled out circle was supposed to be).  Afterwards, someone cooked the noodles, rinsed and cooled them, and presented them to us for lunch.  The soba I made was delicious!

Another day I went to Daio Wasabi Farm near Matsumoto, which turns out to be the world’s largest.  I must say it was quite impressive and was jammed with tourists, something I would not have imagined.  Wasabi, Japanese horseradish, is a root vegetable that needs to be grown in very clean water, so Matsumoto is very proud of its farm.  The plant grows in beds of raised gravel, surrounded by moving water and shaded from the sun by mesh screens.  To me the covered fields, which seemed to be in a shallow river, reminded me of a Christo project.  It was quite a scene, with the added touch of Burt Bacharach music playing in the background.

The harvested roots seemed quite expensive:  a root that was roughly 1½” in diameter and 6” long cost 1,500 yen or about $19.00.  I guess you can grate a lot of wasabi from that.  That night I went to a lovely fish restaurant and had sushi, where wasabi is nestled between the fish and the rice.  It was the most potent wasabi I have ever tasted!  As my eyes watered and sinuses cleared, I thought it must have been picked today from the farm.

Catch the Beat: Sado Island's Kodo Drummers

At the festival (not a Kodo drummer)

This is the first time in my Japan travels that I wished I could rent a car and drive comfortably on the left side of the road.  Sado Island, off the western coast of Japan, is gorgeous.  As I crossed the island by bus, I saw hamlets of well-maintained traditional style homes with tiled roofs, some with lovely gardens and pruned trees, and acres of rice growing golden in the summer heat.  The towns I visited had many old-style wooden shops, still very much in use.  If I had had a car, I could have driven all over the island and maybe seen a crested ibis, a rare Japanese bird with a pink breast; found an old gold mine; or visited a traditional Noh theatre.

I came to Sado to see the world-famous Kodo Drummers perform at the 25^th annual Earth Celebration.  Kodo is a group that lives on the island, training drummers from other parts of Japan when they are not traveling around the world to give concerts.  Their performances combine traditional and contemporary drumming, virtuosity and showmanship.  They use traditional Japanese drums, deep-throated and resonant, ranging in size from 18” in diameter to 4-5 feet.  For the biggest drum, which sits vertically, there often will be a drummer (or two) on each side, drumming in unison or with different rhythms. 

Trying to beat the heat

The Earth Celebration was a classic summertime festival, complete with heat in the high 80’s to low 90’s and humidity near 100%.  I don’t think I’ve ever been so hot and sweaty for so long.   People wore hats, wiped themselves with their ever-present washcloths, and had towels draped around their necks.   Children stuck their heads under the water faucet to cool off and a few adults went over the fence to swim in the harbor.  There were food stalls around the public park with both Japanese and American food (Wisconsin-style bratwurst, “yummy hamburgers”), though I think the most popular was the little stall that sold various sherbets (the grapefruit was luscious).  And there were a number of people selling clothing: lightweight skirts and tops in a somewhat hippy style, hats, and a bit of jewelry.

Waiting in line

Seafood dinner on the concert lawn

I was quite impressed with the organization and crowd control for the sold-out Kodo performances, which were in a park on a hill behind a shrine.  Since there were no seats – everyone sat on the grass – people could pick up “distribution cards” during the day to get a seat close to the stage.  The cards were numbered and came in four different colors.  An hour before the concert, you lined up behind signs according to the color and number of your card in rows four people wide.  There was also a line (first come, first served) of “no cards”, people who had tickets but who didn’t get there early enough to get one of the limited-number distribution cards.  The groups were successively led up a steep hill into the venue, then directed where to sit.  A couple of times on the way the staff made sure you stayed in line according to your number and that people couldn’t cut ahead.  Because the concert started at 6:30, people brought dinner, sometimes in coolers, sometimes food they bought from the vendors near the harbor.  People had a great time, but being Japanese they were quieter than would be the case at an American festival.

The concert crowd

Japanese male at the concert

I went to see two Kodo performances.  The crowd was a mix of young and old, teens and children. The concerts were wonderful and completely engrossing.  The first was the more festive of the two, with lots of rhythm that practically begged people to dance (in the areas to the side of the crowd so everyone else could see).  There were guest artists, a riff on Bruce Springsteen, and a lot of virtuosity and humor.  The second was more of a “listening concert” and included marimbas that looked like they were made of bamboo.  One deep-voiced marimba had bamboo that was 6” or more in diameter.  Maybe because this was the second performance, I concentrated more on Kodo’s artistry:  how they could get both music and beat out of the drums, how each drummer had different parts that formed a cohesive whole, and how they managed to move smoothly from one piece to the next without stopping for two solid hours.  The only time Kodo seemed a bit too commercial was when they played a phrase or two from “Someone to Watch Over Me” and what sounded like “The Flight of the Bumble Bees”.  It was a great experience, and much fun.

Seoul: Style, Energy, Color and Fun!

Seoul is an eye-opener.  I confess I had little knowledge and no expectations about Seoul before I went, so it was a real delight to find such a cosmopolitan, stylish and enjoyable city.

When Karen and I walked into our hotel, we found ourselves in a contemporary, funky, and very stylish lobby.  There was a wall full of traditional Korean pottery jars across the lobby from a giant gold “Alice in Wonderland” sofa with a very high back and five swings with bright green vinyl seats.  Our room was roomy and lovely.  We had a balcony with a great a view of the city, white linens and a giant red strawberry painted on one wall.  The bathroom was a room with frosted and clear glass walls, mirrors and a toilet that dings genteelly, once when you sit and twice when you get up.  How could you not like such a place?!

Seoul’s big, sprawling metropolitan area is home to roughly half of the country’s almost 50 million people.  As we toured the city, we found it to be a lively, cosmopolitan place with an eclectic interior design sense that is stylish, sizzles, and just plain fun.  True, the architecture is generally rather drab and uninteresting – the buildings, including miles of Co-Op City type apartments, seem to have been built in the ‘80’s – and it is dirtier than Japan.  But there is sculpture throughout the city, some ordinary but others quite fun.  The subways system is easy to navigate, taxis ubiquitous and inexpensive, and people helpful.  There were even red-shirted volunteers who would run up to you and ask if they could help whenever you seemed lost.  And there is a much wider range of food than I saw in Japan.  In the expat area around the IP Boutique Hotel where we stayed, there were Turkish, Arab, Mexican, French, German, Japanese, American and Nouvelle European restaurants, to name a few.

Seoul street scene

Man in summer garb on the subway

The people we saw are interesting and diverse, too.  We saw Koreans, Japanese, Chinese, Indonesians, and Arabs in addition to people from Germany, Australia, Sweden, and Italy.  As is true everywhere, there is a wide range of dress, and Seoul is generally casual.  But there was a lot of stylish dress, too, with women and men putting together outfits in new and quite interesting ways.  Koreans are more casual than the Japanese, slouching and lounging, laughing and talking more loudly, while the Japanese sit straight, are quiet and reserved.  Everyone had a Smartphone, with the Korean-made Samsung being somewhat wider than the American brands.  In the subways, we would often see an entire row of riders with Smartphones and ear buds, watching videos, playing games or emailing.  Yes, Karen noted, they get reception in the subways, even when deeply underground.  Korea has the fastest Internet system in the world.

Contemporary Art.  We went several times to Insadong, where we indulged our love of contemporary art and crafts.  In one gallery we saw wonderful sculptures including one of Queen Elizabeth and of Marilyn Monroe.  We spent the better part of a day at the Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, a building complex that houses the collections of Samsung’s founder.  The Lees had a superb collection of traditional Korean ceramics as well as of contemporary Korean and international art.  Outside was a pair of Louise Bourgeois spiders and inside a special exhibition of young artists.

On one hot and sweaty day, we took a tour bus up to Seoul Tower so we could see the city from above.  As we walked up to the tower entrance, we saw children playing in a shallow pool where misty rain spurted up out of the ground.  They laughed and danced, stepping on the water holes then leaping back in delight as the water burst forth.  On either side of the tower was a row of plastic trees made of Smartphone covers, hearts, key tags, and the like, many with little notes or sayings.  As we waited for the bus to take us back, we noticed a couple of green buses who drove up, backed into their parking spots, and plugged themselves into a charger: electric buses being refueled.   

Ceramics. We came to Korea in large part to see the ceramics, since Karen had been a potter.  Korea’s ceramics were so beautiful and finely done that several centuries ago the Japanese came to Korea, abducted some potters, and brought them back to Japan.  The country is known for its celadon, and the Leeum Museum’s collection is outstanding.  The objects are beautiful in shape, with painted or inlaid designs ranging from the simple to the intricate.  Some were white porcelain, others had a lovely green celadon glaze, while still others were a mix of white and red figures underneath a green glaze.  Korean ceramics had a big influence on Japanese and Chinese art, and they in turn affected Korea’s pottery.

We took a day trip to Icheon, about an hour from Seoul by bus, to visit the World Ceramics Museum, which sits in the middle of a park dotted with ceramic sculptures.  The complex includes the Toyaseum, which houses the museum’s collection of fine ceramics from all over the world; Ceramix, which had an exhibit of the best ceramics of 2011, studios for resident ceramicists, classrooms for children’s workshops; and a museum shop.  Everything was decorated eclectically with ceramics, perhaps the result of student projects.  It was fun, fascinating, and wonderful stuff.

At a nearby pottery area, we visited only a few of the shops and kilns of more than 300 potters offering a wide variety of traditional and contemporary ceramics.  Karen bought a lovely traditional set of bowls with a deep red glaze, a gorgeous celadon bowl and some contemporary plates.  I added to my collection with a couple of plates and bowls.  We came back tired but thrilled with our purchases and the day.

Gyeongbokgung gate detail

Tradition.   No trip to Seoul would be complete without visiting at least one of its palaces to learn something about the country’s history.  Korea was ruled by a series of dynasties from 2333 BC (yes) until 1910, when it was annexed by Japan.  W went to Gyeongbokgung Castle, a large complex of buildings that was first built in 1394 as the main and largest palace of the Joseon Dynasty.  Its wooden buildings were richly painted in lively green, blue, orange and pink geometric shapes.  Like Japan, the roofs were tile, often with small statues on top to ward off evil spirits.  Surrounding the complex were walls of brick laid in geometric patterns, with narrow gated entryways.  It was quite lovely.

Wood carving, Mokin Museum

The castle museum housed a number of exhibits depicting the traditional Korean way of life.  There we saw several ceremonial masks, traditional garb, some huge baskets, and a wonderful palanquin for a senior official with one wheel that helped the carriers.  Both there and in Insadong, we saw lots of pongaji, a decorative fabric piecing technique used with linen and silk. 

We had a great time at the small Mokin Museum, which houses colorfully painted wooden wall hangings and statues with a human face.  Rustic in form, the work was delightful, with very expressive faces.  They are used to decorate funeral biers (there’s usually one for a village), to ward off evil spirits, and for other celebrations. 

Fabric.  I brought Karen with me to a fabric market, housed above a large produce market.  We walked upstairs into a shop filled to the brim with gorgeous silk fabrics.  There were so many it was hard to focus and choose, but ultimately I bought several yards for quilting and Karen a number of scarves for gifts.  When we walked out, we didn’t see any more fabric shops, instead stalls selling ready-made clothes.  Then Karen pointed left.  There down a hall and around the corner was a seemingly endless line of fabric stalls, each packed to the ceiling with bolts of fabric.  We think the entire market must have been at least a couple of blocks long and a block wide, selling mostly silk, but also cottons, linen, and other fabrics.  I have never seen so much fabric in one place in my life.

Shopkeeper's handiwork

We stopped at one of the many shops selling traditional silk used to make clothing for weddings, baby celebrations, etc.  The shop owner proudly showed us some of the gowns he had made himself, with lovely piping and detail.  Much of his business, I think, is in making custom gowns for his clientele.  He also showed us silks in deep hues, each with small hand-painted designs on them.  After some discussion, Karen bought enough of that silk for me to make her a scarf.  Then I started, selecting half-yards of many different colors of the more gauzy silk to use in making a wall hanging.  The shopkeeper was so delighted at our interest in the silk and his handiwork that he pulled fabric off the ends of bolts for me to have – free.  I think he gave me more fabric than I had bought!

Food.  One morning Karen and I went to a Korean cooking class taught in English.  In a lovely studio with carefully laid out utensils and ingredients at each cooking station, we joined four others:  a Swedish couple, a young German man on vacation, and a Parisian woman here while her Bulgarian husband played a series of concerts with the Seoul National Orchestra.  Our teacher was wonderful, showing us how to make the kimchee cucumber and beef bulgogi, two traditional Korean dishes.  She helpfully told us what other ingredients we could use that we could easily find back home.  Afterwards, we got to eat what we had made – quite tasty!

Nanta.  How can I describe Nanta?  Formally, it’s a "90-minute nonverbal performance".   What it really is, is a lot of fun, slapstick, energy, rhythm and “music”, built around a bit of a plot and with a lot of audience participation.  It’s a theatrical experience like you’ve never seen, and one that packs the house, 4 shows a day, every day, in four theatres around Seoul.  It’s played in 41 countries and a couple of hundred cities and is, I think, a Korean specialty.   The show is so popular that we had trouble getting tickets.  But it’s another great example of Seoul’s spirit, fun-loving and with pizzazz. 

 

Me & my Chinese zodiac sign, the rooster

All in all, we had a great time in Seoul and found ourselves energized by the sights, sounds, and people of this cosmopolitan city.  If you’re thinking of traveling to Asia, think about including Seoul in your trip.