First steps of the research project

Hey everyone! Time to make a new page in my travel blog.

First month and a half are finished and most of the time I'm in the classroom, around 12 hours a day. A bit of a slow start first in my research project, but I'm making drawings for it full time now. Later this month I will start taking classes kintsugi (golden repair), although only a few of them as a full course is a bit expensive. In an earlier visit this month, I got the basic process down in illustrations. This gave an insight in how the technique changes in plenty of ways to adjust to the character and history of the customer and their broken goods. To create a proper explaination of this and the philosophy of the technique, it became evident that a small study course was needed.

Also, I went with a teacher and assistant to a craftsplace where portable shrines were made. Basically the same woodcraft as in regular shrines - with incredibly complex systems where no screws are used - but in much smaller size. The smallest ones are used in houses for individual use, larger ones besides the road. These shrines are used to pray to gods of course, but are very much part of the daily life of Japanese people and use to wish for a good day for example or good luck with work, school, or family, without religious rules taking part that much. There are also larger models made to be carried by people around town as sort of a festival. (Try googling 'omikoshi', you may have seen pictures before somewhere). The idea is that the god of the shrine is transported within and passes everyone's house to visit, to be returned to the same shrine eventually.
Besides, the technique is really cool, as the detail of the works and amount of tools show incredible craftsmenship. Repairing of portable shrines is the main job there. As they are build from wooden pieces put together without using screws, only the broken piece can easily be taken out from the rest and build again.

What I'm doing right now is turning the information into illustrations with explainations, writing down questions that come up and get all the answers the next time I vist. For 'kintsugi', this will not be a problem as classes are offered within the craftsplace and I was already acquainted with the owner before coming to Japan this year. For the portable shrines craftsplace it's a different story. Traditional craftsplaces are usually on the ground floor of the house of the owner, which means curious visitors are not that welcome, although it depends on the technique. Products of kintsugi are for private use, so plenty of customers come in. Portable shrines are nowadays for festivals and besides the road mostly. Within the house has become a bit of a rarity, which means strangers don't come in that often anymore.

As is looks like I can't become a temporary student over there, I'm trying to write down all the new questions that came up after the first visit and need to be answered to create a proper, illustrated summary of the technique. Hopefully I can get quite a bit of answers out the school library, internet and with help of the traditional crafts teacher here. He told me he could pass forward any questions that he can't answer himself.

If I can actually visit a second time, it would properly be a good idea to bring an 'omiyage', a small Japanese gift in exchange for help, a very important part of the culture here. Kyoto has plenty of foreign tourists, but is actually not very welcome to outsiders for permanent living and becoming a part of the community. Which means it will become interesting how to get close to the craftsmen here, gather as much information as possible and actually be of help to them. Preparing questions and a strategy will become very important and I'm already getting a feeling that problems will occur and get prevented the next time quite often. In other words, a lot of improvent within a short period of time (hopefully) and a nice collection of presentation material afterwards. Long working hours will speed up the process of making the illustratutions of course. But perhaps more importantly, it will become a great help to give a good impression when visiting the next craftsman. Asking the right questions and having a mountain of sketches, drawings and notebooks ready, will likely help to enlarge the amount of information that craftsmen give access to.

Besides the research project I figured out a cool way to mix woodcraft with pencil portraits. Two individual exhibitions and one with two other artists are already confirmed and I can also likely exhibit a few works in the Osaka City Art Museum in July and September. So plenty of changes to develop this technique and show the results of it to the outside world, although I will also exhibit my research project somewhere along February, which is a different collection of works again.

It's not only working though, as I met up with old friends for dinner a few times. Once with the former classmates from when I first came to Japan, another time with the teacher and assistents that I went to Ofunato with (helping out with festival preparations in a village in the north). The second one was really traditional Japanese food, 'All you can eat pizza'... Well, I actually did eat all that was in my might, although that may not have been the best of ideas.
As for trips, I will go to Naoshima this friday for a weekend with the third years students as a class trip. I'm not actually a part of the class, but I'm working in the same classroom as them on my own project. It will probably be a good way to break the ice a bit with the students there, get to know some more names and make it easier to talk and help out each other for the rest of the year.

Besides that, not that much to tell I suppose. During Golden week (a week full of holidays in Japan a few weeks back) the school was closed, unless you handed out a special note to the security of the campus, with permission of the teacher to continue working. Which I did, being at school for the whole week. First I walked up to a cabin at the entrance, greated the security officer there, answered which classroom to open, which was confirmed by looking in a folder, got access, thank him, walked to the bycicle parking and saw him driving on a small motorbike towards the particular schoolbuilding while I was walking in the same direction. At the end of the week when walking upon the entrance gate, one officer drove to the designed school building while the other gave a quick wave and smile, saying the other guy was already going, without even having me to stop on the way to the bicycle parking. A few officers know my name already, although I'm pretty sure I've never introduced myself...

Well, besides that, badminton practice is going smootly and in a few weeks me and the other members will eat dinner together to welcome the new member. Other than, I persistently read and write as well nowadays everything in kanji, (Japanese characters that hold meaning as well) and it seems to pay of! :)

That's it for this time! Probably until a month or so again.
またね！