Kyoto art & washi

Went into Kyoto today, figured I'd make it a day of museums. The first place I went I had a free ticket given to me by a classmate, for the Hosomi Museum and an exhibit called the Fantastic Age. It was interesting, but not fully to my taste. Not many pieces caught my eye, the artwork was from the Edo period and involved a lot of crafts and miniatures. Walking through, I felt like I was examining each piece less because of personal interest, and more simply because I was supposed to. Still, a few pieces attracted me, particularly the paintings of court life, and scrolls including calligraphic elements. Shodo, japanese calligraphy interests me, it is very expressing and free in it's creation. Meaning is bound in the movement of the image, but without knowing the kanji and being able to read the script, I feel like a blind man looking upwards at the cathedral ceiling.

Nearby was the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art and the Kyoto National Museum of Modern Art. The Modern Museum had a Renoir exhibition up, and I was more interesting in seeing Asian art, so I went to the Municipal Museum. This was something of a disappointment too because their permanent artwork was not on display for some reason, all but the first floor and the show focusing on ceramics was open. I enjoyed this and walked around for awhile, particularly enthralled by some of the surface design I saw. On my way out, I stopped and browsed through collection catalogs they had available for purchase, and this made me even more disappointed, because those were the masterpieces I had wanted to see that day! I guess it will have to happen another time, not like it's hard to get there.

I went west and crossed the river on a little stone walkway. A lot of people were out as it was a nice day, and I saw a youth football team practicing by the river on the smallest field I had ever seen. On I went and arrived at Kyoto Imperial park. This is just like it sounds, an enclosed wooded area containing the Imperial Palace. The houses around it would have housed nobles and court-hangers on, but a lot of them had seen better days. The Palace itself is not open to visitors without special permit, I've heard foreigners can get the processes expedited, but the locals have to wait months and months through a long waiting list. That wasn't why I had gone there, and instead just explored the park. Again, there were a lot of people out playing softball and other sports on the field, cycling through the park, having food on a bench, or just sitting and reading. The roads were very wide and it wasn't hard to imagine big parades and thousands of people marching around. Many of the surrounding trees were old and bent, propped up with supports and marked by signs explaining their history and origin. Eventually I left by the north-eastern gate, turned south, found a little shrine along the way which I stopped at, then kept walking.

My destination was a washi, Japanese paper store. This was in my Lonely Planet book, though I was sure there would be lots around, and I was right! The street I walked down had antique shops, restaurants, little cafes, stores focused on washi, stores focused on calligraphy, a few flower shops, just little places that I enjoyed exploring for a bit. Over winter break I took a book binding class, and seeing the large variety of paper inspired to think along those lines.