Greetings from Japan!

Hello everyone. I have arrived in Japan for the IMHC in Kyoto. My first time to Japan. I had the great fortune to be sitting across the isle from April Vollmer all the way from Seattle to Osaka. Also with us was Susan Rostow, the inventor of Akua Kolor!
Japan is gorgeous and you should all come! I am in a ryokan (bead and breakfast type inn) in the hills of Kyoto surrounded by a bamboo forest above and Maruyama Park below. I have a futon I lay out on the floor to sleep which for me is rather like how we camp anyway. And I have wi-fi! Yeah!
At breakfast I met a family who were in town from Kochi, Shikoku. He is a paper maker and was here to learn how to make his tools - the screens. He said that it is a dying art and harder to find so he has to learn it. He is not a generational family of paper makers. When I asked him why he decided to make paper then, he said he saw it made he felt inside that he must make paper. I understand that feeling - it is why I do moku hanga.
Yesterday I met Annie Bissett for the first time. She and her friend from Tokyo came and met me for a tour of several temples. We walked on the famous "nightingale" floors which really do sound like birds singing! It was amazing.
It is very humid and hot - reminded me of our Michigan summer.
I will post pictures later.

1 comment: