28 April 2009

I decided to sleep in this morning, and it was one of the best things I could’ve done. Traveling during this week-long trip has been really great, but it has also been really tiresome since we are constantly moving. Today, after sleeping in, Shae, Jeff, Derrick, and I took the local train to Kurashiki. The weather was really weird; it was raining, then sunny, then windy, then hot. Good thing I took my umbrella and jacket! Our first stop was the City Art Museum by Kenzo Tange. It was a large concrete structure, but it was poorly executed. The lack of quality in construction directed the attention away from the good features of the building and instead created focus around the less favorable ones. So far, I definitely haven’t been impressed by any of Kenzo Tange’s projects, but hopefully I will see better pieces of work in the future. The next place we visited in Kurashiki was the Oyama Memorial Museum. It was raining, so we didn’t spend long looking at that building. Next, on our way to the Ivy Academic Hall, we stopped to enjoy the atmosphere of the Historic Avenue of Kurashiki. It was really small and very historic, which created a really interesting area. The Ivy Academic Hall, which was just a few blocks away, was very strange. It consisted of a huge red brick wall on three sides, with only one arched opening on one side. Once inside the courtyard, the feeling of the space changed completely and was actually very pleasant. It wasn’t the most interesting space, but the use of ivy growing on the brick walls was really beautiful with the contrast of colors. The weather began to clear up, so we decided to continue to explore Kurashiki. We walked back across the small river running through the city and walked by the Ohara Museum of Art and Museum of Architecture and Found Objects. The buildings were nice, but we didn’t have time to explore the inside. There was just too much to see in such a little amount of time. Right across the street from the museums was the Ohara House. This, too, was a historic building with very nice wood detailing that I wish we would’ve had more time to look at on the inside. Lastly, we visited Achi Shrine and Honeiji Temple. Achi Shrine reminded me a lot of Ise Shrine, and it was at the top of a very steep hill. We were already sore from the long hike yesterday at Mount Misen, so doing more stairs was nice to help get blood flowing to all of my muscles.
After finishing up at Kurashiki, we jumped back on the same local train we took to get there and rode it back to Okayama. Once we got back to Okayama, we walked for 30 minutes to Korakuen Garden. It was a huge garden that was alongside the river, and it cost 550 yen to get in. It was one of the largest garden I’ve been in so far, and it was absolutely lovely. When we first got there, it was raining pretty hard, but after about 10 minutes, it cleared up to be bright and sunny. The garden was really peaceful, and there were lots of areas with different types of greenery and plants. From within the garden, we were additionally able to see the top of Okayamajo Castle. We had no idea that it was even nearby, so we ventured over to the castle after we were done exploring Korakuen Garden. Since it was almost 6pm, we figured that we wouldn’t be able to get within the castle grounds in order to even photograph it. Luckily, we were wrong, and the castle grounds were completely open. We obviously couldn’t get within the castle itself, but being able to walk up to the castle exterior was impressive enough (and free)! By the end of walking around Okayamajo Castle, we were all completely done for the day. We walked for 30 minutes to get back to our hotel and got ramen in Okayama Station before retiring to our hotel for the night.
Tomorrow, we will move again, and this time, it will be to Naoshima. Naoshima is another one of Japan’s islands, so we will have two train rides and a ferry ride to get there. We will leave at 9:30am in order to get to the island somewhat early. We will be staying at the Benesse House, which was designed by Tadao Ando. I had no idea what to expect, but I am really excited to finally have the opportunity to stay in one of Ando’s projects!