Archive for Japan
Days 9 through 12 recap
Well I promised I’d update you on what happened the last 3 days in Tokyo so here we go… hold onto your hats cuz it was a crazy ride!!!
Day 9 – Disney Sea
Now I know what you are thinking – why are you taking your students to a Disney theme park? What possible educational purpose could it serve? Well let me just tell you that this particular park is absolutely stunning in its attention to detail – everything is designed to enhance the complete feeling of immersion into the theme you are in – down to the doorknobs! You walk through the venice section and my god it is venice! or the early American area and I’m in san fransisco in the early 1900′s. Everything is themed to the max. Granted this is disney so it is a bit skewed towards the cutesy and overly PC feeling and then you put that on top of the Japanese’s interpretation of us and it gets a little funny. We spent all day there and had a real blast. I will say that their version of an American hot dog is a bit odd – they slice the bun from the top and its made of pork…
Day 10 – Ueno Park zoo
We did the zoo again this year – was a bit cloudy and started to rain at the end, which really kind of stunk. I got some really cool sequences shot of elephants… one of them looked like he was dancing, swinging his head back and forth. I managed to get some decent animals drawings done, but not as many as I had hoped. The students really rocked it up and turned out some rather impressive drawings.
Day 11 – TCA Tokyo Communication Arts
We were very lucky this year to be able to sit in on classes and have a private lecture by esteemed Manga Artist and professor Hiroki Mafuyu. Hiroki was kind enough to have our classes sit in with his classes and allow Ray, Dove and I to participate/help in his basic inking class. It was really amazing. Our students got to learn from a master inker and film tone artist and we got to observe how they teach their classes and participate in helping his students. Let me tell you trying to teaching someone inking when you don’t speak their language actually isn’t as hard as it sounds. There is ALOT you can do simply by demonstrating and gestures.
TCA is like Japan SCAD - literally. Their set up is very similar in facilities and they offer a diverse selection of majors. I was very impressed by there industrial design and comic work and their staff and faculty were just top notch and so friendly. It was a very good day.
Day 12 – Kamakura
A hard trip to do on the last day – but soooooo worth it. If you remember last year’s trip to kamakura – this year was ten times better. We didn’t see as many temples, but we saw the right ones this year in the right order. We started with the Great Bronze Buddha, then gave everyone time for lunch and met up at one of the big red Tojo’s that stand in Kamakura for Tsurugaoka Hachimangu temple. We roamed around, saw the 1000 year old ginko tree, drew, took pictures – I managed to try a candied grape on a stick. Despite its glassy, slimy looks it was actually quite good!
After spending a hour here, we gave everyone the option of either leaving early or continuing with me to Kenjo-ji – my favorite site in Kamakura. Most of the group opt’d to leave, but a few hard core peeps stayed and were rewarded with an amazing sunset atop the mountain we climbed! Kenjo-ji has probably 2500 stairs that you climb to reach a look out that views the temple complex and all of Kamakura. It is one heck of a climb, but it was soooo worth it for the view. Everyone who went was spell bound and swore that this was why they came to Japan. So for those cats who opt’d out – your loss. : )
Day 13 – traveling home
Well the trip home was insanely long, tiring, confusing and as always hectic. I think I watched the remaining movies I didn’t watch on the trip over, slept a little, and prayed constantly for the pain of boredom to go away. We made it safe and sound – all of us – despite some delays, hang ups and general travel issues with connecting flights and such. So I think I’ll call that a success.
Photos from days 9 through 12 will be in the next post for your viewing pleasure, cuz I’m still processing all of them. : )
Day 9 through 12 will be up soon
Hey all – packing up now – its day 12 and we leave first thing in the morning. I’ll update you on the remaining three days of the trip when I get back to the states. For now be satisfied that our Kamakura trip was amazing!!!
J
Day 7 – The Imperial palace, and drawing…
Well day 7 came and went and we spent it at the Imperial Palace, mostly site seeing and drawing in the park. It has been a really great trip so far – I’m for sure coming down with a cold, which is pretty normal I think considering we are going out of hot stores into cold weather. For some reason the Japanese keep their stores smoking toasty – which is nice for the first 5 minutes then you sweat and just when you are about to shed a layer you are back out into the cold again. So it is alot of back and forth. Luckily today we were outside for most of it and being the cloud watcher that I am I spent a small portion of it laying in the sun at the park changing clouds into dragons, spaceships and imaginary animals.
Here are some photos from the day – hope you enjoy! Movie coming up next post!!!
Our hearty adventurers
Plant under glass
Just got termination notice
Swan
gardenia - I think
Chillin'
Mark and Denise - two amazing people!
Sandford and the man
Storm Rider
Day 6 – Edo Tokyo Museum and a typhoon!
The surrender document
So today we ventured out to the Edo Tokyo Museum - where they have some pretty amazing stuff. It was school field trip day at the museum so we had a ton of japanese children all running around. They would all run up to us and say Hello, what’s your name in english and ask all sorts of interesting and bizarre questions. Especially the 8 to 10 year old boys – lets just say they were VERY blunt and VERY personal. It was all fun and interesting, letting them practice their english while we practiced our Japanese – or at least I did.
I took mostly sequential stuff in the museum and got a few decent shots of some of the kids. When we exited the museum it was raining and blowing like one of our good storms from the mid-west. I had Tyson ask a guard and he said the museum was closing due to a typhoon (their version of a tornado)… needless to say – no tornado, just a little wind.
After that we had the artists pick their favorite drawing for the day two sequential and one animation (1 for every 12 students) the winners got to go to dinner with us and the artists. Lilly, Mark, and Dixie got chosen for their amazing drawings. We managed to eat at an italian place (a very popular one at that) which wasn’t too bad. The rest of the students were on their own for dinner and traveling – some went to Roppongi, some Shibu-ya, others back to Nakano and Akiharbara for shopping goodness.
After dinner I joined a few of the artists and students for sketching at McDonalds of all places – it was cool. We just hung out and sketched people. Here are some of the photos from that day…
4 yellow hats
The helper
Waiting for a date
Day 5 – The Fish Market, Asakusa Temple, and god help me Disney
Lonely Gaijin
We got up at the serious crack of dawn – 445 am – to go to the fish market. This year we had an interesting thing happen. All was fine and dandy we came, took our pictures, were respectful of their space, etc. and left. Well later that morning apparently some Australians got all worked up in the fish market and disrupted the flow of the place, got hit by the little trucks, didn’t move out of the way etc – so the Japanese government has banned all foreigners from the fish market starting on the 15th of this month. One report I read said for 1 month others said indefinitely so I don’t know for sure. I was very concerned that we might have caused a problem – but based off of the reports I saw and what my students whom speak japanese have told me – it wasn’t us. So Whew… but burn. You would think that people would be respectful of these guys. I mean they are at work, hauling fresh fish, trying to make sales, close deals that’s their livelihood and here are all these big bumbling gaijin walking through their office. I’d be a bit un-nerved myself.
Anyway after the fish market we had a break for breakfast, and then trucked it over to Asakusa temple – my favorite temple in Tokyo. Where I took some cool sequences and did some pretty decent quick people sketching. Near the end of the day a small group of us clustered together on the front steps of the main temple and were drawing – we drew a HUGE crowd – so big in fact that the guard had to politely break it up, he looked like he didn’t want too but had no choice. So we split up and headed off into our own different groups.
On my way back I managed to run into Dove, Asia, Ray, Matt, and Grace – all of whom were heading to Tokyo Disney. Now I’m not a big disney park person – but Dove knows EVERYTHING there is to know about theme parks so even though I was beat tired, I tagged along. It was worth it – fun actually. Space mountain still is a wussy roller coaster – I don’t care what anyone says. But the star tours ride was cool and so was the Pirates of Caribbean ride. We managed to get home before the train stopped so that was good.
All in all a very packed day. Here are a few photos from the day – not much actually – most of my time was spent sketching and doing frame sequences – which I”m in the process of adapting into a film, which will be put out at the end of the trip.
Love me some squid
Three dead fish
tuna steak... yum
Texture
very random
The subway
Poor Sanford
M.Shumway and Kyle
Day 4 – Ghibli Museum, Nakano Broadway, and crazy people
Today we continued our workshops with the artists, I snapped a few pictures of them in the act. I have to say these guys have just been fantastic -they are engaging with the students outside the workshops, Sanford started an evening sketch club at the starbucks. They are just an amazing group of people and we are so fortunate to have them with us this week. They will be missed next week for sure!
After the workshops we headed out to the Ghibli museum which is one heck of a train ride. Took almost 45 minutes to get there -but as always it was worth it. We all had a seriously good time there, and just like last year they had changed the art on the studio walls so it was new and fresh stuff. But my favorite part of it is still the zoetrope. I wish I could show you it -but alas – no pictures inside the museum. You’ll have to settle for this one of Sanford…
Group wave...
After Ghibli we went to Nakano broadway, where I bought my mom a tea pot – yes mom I didn’t forget and its iron so it won’t break on the way home. I also got a really killer cel from Lupin III: Castle of Cagliostro. We had conveyer belt sushi for dinner and jetted then back to the hotel. I managed to snap a few cool photos yesterday – here are some of them…
crazy homeless guy...
Sticker...
bikes
trees
Day 3 – Acting, Tokyo Science museum and Fungus!
So today’s hearty workshop for our budding animators involved showing off their walks that they observed yesterday. It was an exciting, funny, and freeing experience I think for them all. Mr. Shumway did a killer job switching them up, giving them a sense of what it is like in production when you do a shot and then the director doesn’t like it and changes animators out. It was really nice. Mr. Schultz should talked about how the Japanese art prints – Ukiyo-e - influenced america’s great master illustrators guys like- Howard Pyle, Winslow Homer, N.C. Wyeth. He gave a really good lecture on the connections and how showed some really stunning examples.
After the workshops it was the mad scramble for lunch then off to Ueno Park for the museum. We split up into 2 big groups on the subway and made our way just fine to the museum. After negotiating with the ticket lady (Thank you Tyson for speaking Japanese!!!) we made our way into one of the coolest special exhibits I’ve seen at a museum yet… Fungus and Bacteria!!!
The entire exhibit was made out of cardboard… it was amazing!!!
One of the other wicked things that they did was used these really cute characters to represent various deadly germs/bacteria and had this exhibit where it showed you in your home where they lived. The worst of course was E-coli – represented here by the happy red octopus thingy…
After the special exhibit it was onto the main exhibit where we spent most of our time drawing dinosaur bones (or at least I did.) and taking reference photos of all the other amazing things there. I’ve been here like 3 times so this time I drew more – spent my time studying people and practicing my drawing.
Once we finished up with the museum we took everyone to Akihabara for dinner and exposure to the insane amount of electronic/toy/amazingly cool stuff stores. While in the book store I happened upon this very interesting object – I guess it is necessary when you pack this many people into such a small place…
Tomorrow is Ghibli museum and Nakano broadway. I will also be posting up some time-lapse experiments, which have turned out interesting…
J
Day 2 – Meiji shrine, workshops and my legs hurt already
Well peeps – we managed to get settled in yesterday and today we got up, had breakfast, and made our way to the conference center nearby to partake in the words of wisdom of…
and Matt Shumway.
Three really amazing artists – and just down right fun and goofy guys. Check out their work and you will be impressed.
After the workshop we headed out for our first adventure a day at Meiji Shrine a real magical place. This year the Ravens were really noisy and did a great number of fly bys, but we managed to survive. I spent my day sketching, and shooting photos of people this year. Here are some samples of what I shot today for your viewing pleasure…
Day 1 – the Journey to Japan
Well gentle readers we made it safe and sound – but it was a journey fraught with the usual hiccups – nothing that us seasoned travelers couldn’t handle though. The biggest debacle happened in our transfer to our plane in Atlanta. The atlanta airport had weather problems so it grounded all the planes coming in and going out – so you think no problem right? Wrong – we had a 50 minute lay over – the planes were all grounded for 1 hour, leaving us like 10 minutes to get to our plane. Ray had the foresight to call Mark Schultz -whom was on the plane in Atlanta – and had them ask the stewardess to hold the plane for us – they gave us 10 min. Thank you Delta – and we ran from the A concourse to the E concourse which is like a mile with luggage. But we made it. I was thinking the whole time – well I guess our luggage is lost for sure – Nope that came through as well. So despite the adversity – we have triumphed and the gods have shined on us. I’m taking it as a sign that the trip is gonna be really special, because nothing worth while is ever gained without a little risk and effort.
I can’t believe I’m back. It is amazing how much I’ve missed this place. The sights, sounds and smells. I’m simply giddy. I’m going to be updating the blog pretty religously over the next 15 days. Will post photos and some experiments – I am going to be doing some timelapse and pixelation style animations with the students. I’ll also be putting up some of their sketches via photos of them for your viewing pleasure so stayed tuned!!!
Maurer sensai
