MatthewMeyer.net

front alley view of my studio

I promised photos some time ago… Forgive me for being a little overdue, but it’s taken a while to clean the place up to a presentable condition.

This is my new painting studio. My town of Echizen is very remote and rural, so it has a real rustic feeling to it. It was never firebombed during WW2 like its neighbor to the north, Fukui, was. Its pretty rural so it hasn’t seen a big building boom like most cities have during the post-war years. And its so remote that globalization/Westernization hasn’t taken place nearly so much here as it has in other places.

A lot of people might consider these bad points, but I think most of the foreigners who come here see those as very positive points. And the town seems to see that as a good thing too, because they spend a lot of money promoting this as a “time capsule” town, with placards and signs all over displaying historic photos. The town has seen a lot of history, and to be honest, it’s the only town I’ve seen in Japan that is putting real effort into preserving what little history it has left (sadly, none of the 4+ castles that were built here over the centuries remain).

a traditional antique stove

But I digress. My point is that there are lots of very very old houses here — ancient houses from the pre-electricity days, from back before the Japanese customarily tore down houses every few years to rebuild a fresh new plastic cookie-cutter monstrosity in its place. Through the magic of 6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon, my English student who used to be my Japanese teacher has a friend who knows somebody who works for the local radio station whose owner also happens to like these ancient style houses and happened to have some rooms to rent. So after a long string of contacts, I was able to rent one of these houses for pretty cheap.

It would be my dream to live in one of these and do a big fixer-upper project, but that’s for another time.

So I’ll tell you a little more about the building. It’s built in a very old style of traditional townhouse (machiya) which originated in the ancient capital of Kyoto and spread to other urban areas (ancient Echizen was a huge urban center). If you’ve visited Kyoto or Kanazawa, you’ve no doubt seen tons of these gorgeous traditional buildings. Here is Echizen there is less money to use to preserve these houses, so they’re in varying stages of decay, but I would say there are almost more old buildings per capita than in Kyoto (of course Kyoto is huge and Echizen is tiny). The houses typically have a storefront area and a residential area, and are fairly cool in the summer (cool is a relative term, since these are pre-air conditioning houses). The building I’m using is shared between me and a radio station. Its in an area filled with old houses, alleys, no big streets, old shops, temples, and traditional crafts. A neighboring house has also been rented by an artist and is being used as a gallery. It’s a really nice area, with a slightly old and dirty look, but I tend to think of it as the patina of centuries of culture.

And now for a very brief photo tour:

inside the front door, with the staircase to the 2nd floor on the left

view of the radio studio on the 1st floor

the 6'x6' backyard space, currently overgrown, but you can see the remains of an old stone lantern

one of my painting rooms on the 2nd floor; the other is still pretty messy and not fit for showing

rear view from the machiya from a back alley -- the window opens to my painting room above

neighboring art gallery (look closely and you can see some of my chickens on the window poster)

another neighbor, Natsukashiya, connected to the gallery above

You may remember my Habushu post a few months back where I discussed the finer points of this local delicacy… well for a number of reasons I find it hard to get rid of this big jar of preserved pit viper (namely being that I refuse to open it up due to the stench) and so it accompanied us on the move back to Takefu.

However, I have found a use for it as a drawing tool. I am starting some drawing classes here this fall, and I’m also teaching a few irregular classes on “Art as Therapy” at a medical university up here, trying to impart some drawing techniques to nurses and care workers who want to use art therapy to help their patients. The first time I taught the class I gathered up some flowers and vegetables and put together a basic still life. My second class was on August 19, and as it’s past the big flower season, I had to find a new subject.

Well, it was just sitting there, staring me in the face. Literally.

The class went quite well. We were prepared for 20 students, so we set up 10 chairs around the habu and 10 chairs around a pile of vegetables (I figured not everyone would want to get up close and personal to the snake, if nothing else for the smell). We only had 12 people in the end, but it was pretty funny to watch the 10 seats around the vegetables fill up immediately, and the remaining students hover around as if they were hoping a new seat would pop up by the pumpkin by itself. Eventually though they warmed up to his little face and the class split up half and half between the two still lifes.

I did a little 2-hour watercolor demo of the habu to show the students how to do a layered watercolor painting.

Won't you *habu* some? (Ok, I'm sorry about that...)

I’m back from Michigan — got in late last night, and was very pleased to find the internet was still working. Yes I know it sounds stupid, but most of August went by in a blur due to me having no net access, and coming back from a different time zone and a 24+ hour transit I was really in need of some kind of temporal anchor to keep my mind from floating away completely.

Fortunately coming to Japan from the US doesn’t result in jet lag as much as it gives you a time boost. So thanks to my confused circadian rhythms I woke up at 5:30 am, bright and early, ready to work. (Keep in mind that unlike Michigan, where the sun rises around 7 am this time of year, in Japan it’s already as bright as mid-day by 5:30.) I was able to finish up some work that had been lagging begind — two event posters and some translations — by 9 am and suddenly found myself with a bit of time to write a blog post. This is only my second post this month and my traffic is starting to take a serious dive due to my silence — which is pretty close to suicide for an artist who lives primarily on web-based sales.

Because of the move, I’ve really been lagging behind of life drawing recently. So I was determined to do some sketching in Michigan. One interesting thing about Japan is that beverages often carry little presents on them, like the prizes in the bottom of the cereal box in the US; recently I picked up a great pocket-sized sketchbook from a 6-pack of beer (actually I bought it for the sketchbook more than for the beer — I don’t like that brand). It was the perfect size to carry with me, and it felt great to be outdoors in that wonderfully cool, fresh lake breeze sketching in the afternoons. We had a sailboat and a pontoon boat, and the water was warm for swimming. The air was cool and the sun was warm, and it had been so long since I’ve been in the wide open US that I forgot how great it can be to just have a wide open space to play around in.

Since it was sort of a family reunion, relaxation and socializing got in the way of sketching (not complaining here), but I was still able to get a few pages done. The sketchbook has a soft cover so it was quite difficult to do any sketches on the boat — or rather, I did some sketches on the boat, but they turned out a little wonky. Here are a few pages of quick 5-10 minute sketches:

My wife writing a goodbye email at Itami Airport

The pain! It should be illegal for airlines to do this on such long flights!

Oh yes, I have to stop here and complain for just a moment. A couple years ago I mentioned how a Japan-US flight on Northwest was the most uncomfortable flight of my life. While that still holds true and I have forsworn ever flying Northwest again, this time around United pulled the same trick!! It wasn’t as bad as Northwest only because the flight (from Narita to Chicago) was shorter than the Northwest flight (from Kansai to Detroit). I wish I could make this clear to the airline; it is practically cruel and unusual punishment to have a trans-Pacific flight (really, any flight over 4 hours) without TV screens. Narita to Chicago was an 11 hour flight, and the only “entertainment” was for me to crane my neck up and to the left at such a sharp angle that I probably would have snapped something if I tried watching the barely-visible projection screen. And the movie selections were awful, but at least if I had a personal TV screen I could have flipped channels instead of having only 1 option.

And the real crime — as awful as that in-flight “entertainment” was — was that, like on Northwest, the seats have been shortened to the point where a human can longer fit. I’m not talking about some morbidly obese person trying to squeeze into the narrow airline seat — that has been discussed at length elsewhere — I’m talking about legroom. Now I’m no giant. I’m a fairly average 6 feet tall, non-lanky guy. I can put up with the painfully narrow seats and aisles that you have to sideways-shuffle through (all the while having to rub your butt and crotch against the faces of the poor fools who chose the aisle seats), but there should be a certain number of inches mandated for legroom. This time and on the previously mentioned Northwest flight, my legs actually did not fit in the space provided! That is to say, my knees were jammed up and my feet were hovering for the entire flight, giving me terrible leg cramps and bruises on my knees. If the lack of TV screens was cruel and unusual punishment, then this was downright torture. They suggest you rotate your feet and try to avoid, you know, deadly blood clots in your legs, but they mockingly don’t even give you the space to do that, so the whole flight I was paranoid I would suddenly drop dead from some embolism.

There needs to be space for a human being to be able to stand fully upright in between the seats. It doesn’t need to be much, just enough to stand up. In this seats, the edge of the seat in front of me was actually past being even with the edge of my seat; the head of the passenger in front of me was closer to me than my own feet.

I get that fuel is really expensive and airlines are struggling, but there has to be a limit to this downsizing. I’m at the point where I’ve come to despise air travel, and I almost never want to fly again in my life. My legs are still quite sore today. Anyway, if you’re reading this, I would strongly advise you to avoid both United and Northwest on anything but the shortest flights.

The view of our backyard, the dock, the lake, and the pontoon boat

The view of the house from the pontoon

The pontoon was great fun, but it had a maximum occupancy of 10 while there were 14 of us. As Coldwater Lake is really shallow and we were running so low in the water we ended up bottoming out on more than one occasion. Even more exciting, twice we experienced the pontoon effect — a sort of spontaneous sinking, although we luckily didn’t completely capsize. The first time it took us by surprise as all of a sudden the front of the boat dipped straight down into the lake without warning and a huge wall of water washed over the front of the boat. The second time it happened I felt like we were angling further and further forward, but I ended up not saying anything (truth be told I kind of wanted to see it happen again), and sure enough after a few more seconds we dipped, a lot deeper this time, and nearly drove straight down to the bottom before my uncle put it in full reverse and pulled us out. Great fun!

My wife on the boat; This is one of the really wonky sketches, as we were boating around Coldwater Lake as I sketched it

My dad reading on the boat

Is there room for one more complaint about flying here? Because on our return flight, we went down to the gate for our flight and noticed that about 75% of the chairs had been roped off and were being sold to customers. I don’t remember the price, but considering they offer to give you an extra 2 inches of legroom (still too short in my opinion) for about $100, it must have been at least $60 — just for the “luxury” of sitting in a chair! Since they ask you to come to the airport 2 hours in advance I can’t help but think that charging you to use a chair should count as some kind of extortion.

A guy using his laptop in O'Hare

A pilot on his lunch break

Those last two sketches were done in the airport — and for anyone who likes drawing and wants opportunities to draw people, I can’t recommend the airport enough. It’s the perfect place for sketching people. There are thousands of people around, and you’re almost guaranteed that they will be around for at least an hour while they wait for their flight. And as there’s not much to do, most of them will be reading, or sleeping, or otherwise sitting still, giving you a solid 10-15 minutes to do a sketch without any interruptions.

Just be careful about being too obvious — the very big fellow on the laptop ended up spotting me and giving me a glare that he wasn’t too happy at being drawn; and later on while I was doing the sideways-shuffle in the plane’s aisle (trying not to brush my crotch or my butt against the faces of the fools who actually chose aisle seats) I stopped in line for the bathroom right in front of his seat! I had to stare at the ceiling and pray for no turbulence lest I ended up giving him a big faceful of groin and signing my own death warrant right there.

Finally our apartment has internet access!  This whole month has gone by without me even feeling the passing of time. I guess I’ve taken for granted how much I rely on the internet for news, communication, work, and so on. Since getting connected on the 18th, I’ve been incredibly busy trying to catch up on emails, Facebook, twitter, and all that as well as going through the heaps of work that have been piling up.

I’m visiting Michigan for one week starting tomorrow, so this blog will remain silent for just a bit longer. In September I’ll post some photos of my painting studio, and some of the work I’ve been doing lately.

Here’s hoping you all have a nice end to your summers!

I just wanted to post and say that no, I’m not dead. I’m just very busy packing boxes and driving them to another city, so I haven’t had much time to post anything lately. This room is pretty empty now — it’s just me and my computer and my parakeet. We’ll finish the move this weekend, and I’m looking forward to getting this done with!

One interesting discovery occurred last weekend when my wife and I were carrying our refrigerator and other heavy things up to the 3rd story of the apartment building (in this crazy heat, too, which wasn’t fun!). There was a huge pile of animal poo on one of the staircases, which I thought must belong to mice or something like that, but it was in a curious location — only on one of the landings. Then I saw what looked like a black, dried up leaf on the stairs. Only on closer inspection did I realize it was a bat, mummified from the heat. (The turds obviously turned out to be bat droppings.) Even weirder, I found another mummified bat on the next flight up! They were basically your average vesper bat, probably Pipistrellus abramus, but since they were so tiny I wonder if they were babies that slipped off the wall and died when they hit the stairs.

Mummified Bat #1

Mummified Bat #2

I had a discussion with a friend about this and she was totally shocked. Not because there were mummified bats on my staircase, mind you, but because there were bats at all. She’s lived here for her whole life and never once knew there were bats in Japan!

Unfortunately, due to the move, I probably won’t be posting any new artwork this week or next, as I will be busy with other things. I am working on a new image for 100 Famous Views of Philadelphia (it’s been a while since I’ve added to that series) and I will do another small chicken painting for a contest shortly after the move is completed.

My post was too late for the 4th… oh well. But at least I celebrate on the 4th here. I bought a beer and some fireworks, and went down to the river with Hitomi, and sang the national anthem until a jogger ran past and told us it was illegal to shoot off fireworks at the river. Oh well, we got a few good ones off beforehand.

I’ve been meaning to do a thorough wedding review, but haven’t found myself with any free time since… well, it’s hard to remember. Today was a big moving day. Hitomi and I packed up about half of all my possessions and took them to her house, and then relaxed for the first time in a thousand years on a beautiful, hot summer day. It was a wonderful weekend. So now, in my fairly barren room (and feeling kind of nostalgic back to when I first moved in here and there was nothing, and it was this hot) I have just a smidgen of free time to post some words.

The wedding was fantastic. Everyone was worried about the weather (and I mean everyone, even shopkeepers who I had mentioned the wedding to), as it was right at the start of the rainy season. But luckily, for the entire week, there was only 1 rainy day. We had hot, sweltering heat, but that’s easily manageable next to torrential rainy-season downpours.

My family arrived as planned the day before the wedding, my aunt and uncle 2 days before. They mainly rested in Osaka, which is good because I was worried about them getting lost or starving to death or something. Hitomi and I woke up around 4 am on Saturday morning to go drive down with her father in a minibus to get them from Osaka. It was a long drive both ways, but it was fun. Everyone was energetic and talkative, and we all had a good long chance to catch up. We ran into Hitomi’s uncle’s family by chance at a highway rest stop on the way back to Echizen, and they were really excited to meet everyone. That night we had a *huge* dinner at Hitomi’s parents’ house, with her whole extended family. I think my family was pretty shocked by it, but everyone on both sides had a wonderful time eating, and drinking, and eating, and talking, and drinking, and eating, and exchanging presents. Gary also played some Japanese tunes on the recorder, and mesmerized all the old men in the house with them.

The wedding day was wonderful. I slept plenty and then went to the salon to have my kimono put on. Erik came and filmed it all. We took taxis to Hitomi’s house, and met her family again. They were all dressed in kimonos, and Hitomi looked so beautiful in her wedding kimono. My family took some photos of the house and area, Hitomi and I posed for photos, and then she prayed to her family butsudan, then we all drove to Otaki shrine for the ceremony.

Everything happened so fast, and it was hard to believe it was happening, so my memory is a bit of a blur. The ceremony went well, but I was given 5 times as much sake as I was expecting to get, and so I fumbled a little bit when I read the (very long) Japanese wedding scroll. Also, my parents were unexpectedly asked to do part of the ceremony too, so I had to hunch behind them and translate what they were supposed to do. It wasn’t any problem, but it was funny. Halfway through the ceremony, Hitomi’s nephew started to snore, but it was so loud I thought maybe my uncle had fallen asleep… I wasn’t able to turn around to see though, so I didn’t know who it was until afterwards.

After the ceremony we split up into groups. Hitomi and I changed out of our kimonos and into our tux and dress, then took some photos, and went to Yumeya. The dinner was wonderful! We had met with the restaurant owner many times, and she was always sweet and helpful, and she told us she had confidence in her cooking… well she was right! It was a busy meal, though; we had lots of speeches to do, lots of presents to give. Gary and Dad did a wonderful recorder performance, and Erik gave a best man speech in Japanese which was really cool. Dad gave a really great speech too, and my friend Hiro translated it, though it was a very difficult speech to translate (Hiro did an amazing job carrying over the non-translatable subtleties into Japanese though). Unfortunately for me, I had forgotten my Japanese speech notes at home, so I couldn’t say exactly what I wanted to say to all of Hitomi’s family and had to do it off the top of my head. I did an ok job, but it was kind of sloppy.

After the wedding, a huge amount of stress had floated away. The next week of touring around Japan with the family was still a bit of a stress load, but nothing compared to the actual wedding.

We had a great time touring. The first day it was rainy (the only rainy day all week), but we were inside mostly, so it was fine. We went to the lacquerware village, the paper-making village, and a soba dojo, then to Fukui city, and while Hitomi had her braces re-put on, I gave a fast tour of Yokokan and the Fukui Castle ruins. Then we had some difficulty withdrawing money from the only international ATMs available… but we maanged ok. Afterwards we went home and my parents treated us and Hitomi’s family to conveyor-belt sushi.

The next day we had beautiful weather, and we went to Tojimbo and Eiheiji. I always love Tojimbo, but it was my first time to go in such gorgeous weather. It was really perfect. And the smell of the sea breeze mixing with the pines was just amazing. Eiheiji was nice, and though it’s not my favorite temple, it was the only really big temple we got to go inside of all trip, so it was a good experience. It was very peaceful and relaxing, and we could hear the monks ringing a huge brass bell, so that was pretty cool. That night we went to yakiniku to celebrate our last night in Fukui.

Then we headed to Kanazawa. It was roasting-hot, and we were all a bit sunburnt, but we had a wonderful walk around Kenrokuen, had tea in a teahouse there, and went inside Kanazawa castle. We took a long walk to Ninja-dera via Mr. Donuts, which everyone loved. Kanazawa still feels like a second home to me, so I was happy to visit again, though I have to say I like Fukui better now. After ninja-dera we drove to Awara city and stayed in one of the onsen hotels. It was my first time, as well as my whole family’s first time in an onsen hotel, and it was just fantastic. We all had private outdoor baths, and in the morning Erik and I went to the public baths again. It was the perfect way to relax after so much walking around.

The next day we went to Kyoto for two days. Again it was very hot, but luckily not rainy. On our first day we exhausted ourselves walking from Sanjuusangendo to Kiyomizu temple, to Maruyama park, to the Yasaka shrine, and finally Gion. By the time we got to Gion everyone was so exhausted that they couldn’t live their heads in time to see the maiko crossing the street. But it was fun anyway.

Our second day in Kyoto my mom was sick, so unfortunately she had to stay in the hotel and rest. The rest of us went to Fushimi Inari Taisha in the morning. We bought a yukata for my mom, and did the first small climb, after which we debated whether or not to continue for the whole mountain. None of us had worn bug spray and everyone but me was wearing shorts (I learned my lesson last time I went there) and had become a delicious meal for the mountain mosquitoes. Had we climbed further I think we’d have had little blood left for the descent. Plus, I really wanted to go on the our next stop, Uzumasa, and everyone relented to me happily. One day I plan to climb all of Fushimi Inari Taisha… just not during mosquito season. So we left there and took a train to Uzumasa Eiga Mura, the Toei Movie Studio amusement park (stopping at Gusto for a corn pizza lunch). I absolutely love Renaissance fairs, Colonial Williamsburg, and the like, so I was really looking forward to this place. It didn’t disappoint me at all! Every minute there was like a dream for me. I think everyone else had fun, but honestly, I didn’t notice because I was enjoying it so much. We saw a ninja show, went to the haunted house, and walked around the Showa- and Edo-period movie sets. We also saw all the super hero costumes (think Power Rangers) and watched a 3-D show which was delightfully cheesey. At the end of the day, Gary really wanted to get a costume photo, and I secretly did too, but thanks to Gary’s decisiveness we all went to the photo studio and shelled out big bucks for novelty photos. But at any price they were worth it! High quality costume shots that you definitely could not get anywhere else! First Gary took one, then Dad decided he wanted one too, then I finally convinced Hitomi to get one with me, and lastly Erik gave in and did one too. Sandra didn’t cave, but maybe next time… Anyway the photos were great, and I consider mine to be our second wedding shot. After going home, we still had a bit of energy. We ate dinner at an “Irish pub” and then Erik, Hitomi, and I went to karaoke. It was Erik’s first time to do Japanese karaoke and he had a lot of fun, and I had a lot of fun singing with him (Hitomi knows I always complain that I don’t have a fun partner to sing with), and Hitomi had fun watching two white men act like total nerds.

The next day we went to Nara. We were all exhausted and Hitomi had a bad fever. We went to Todaiji and were attacked by incredibly smart deer who could actually read hand singles (“Attack HIM! HE has the food!”) and knew when people were just walking around or about to buy food. Seriously, they were smart. And vicious. They must also have learned at some point that biting people holding food makes them give it to them faster, out of fear, and so that’s exactly what happened when we bought the food. And their heads are right at, uh… crotch level, so those were not bites I was willing to test my luck with. When you had no food the deer were as passive as stuffed animals, but once you had a deer senbei, they were bucking and butting, biting and nuzzling like a herd of… animals. Anyway, it was a fun experience. When we got to Todaiji, we were definitely amazed by its size. It is seriously impressive! But we were just worn out. So we went and had lunch at a Japanese cafe with poor food and rude staff. Most of us returned to the hotel and slept all afternoon, but Gary and Sandra, true travelers, went out for more sightseeing. Hitomi and I conked out for a whole 3 hours before it was dinner time. We went to an izakaya and had some yakitori, which my family tolerated fairly well.

Our final full day we went to Himeji. It was a very long trip, but the train ride was easy enough. Himeji was probably the hottest day. Oh man was it hot! But the castle was worth it. I love castles, and I had been wanted to see Himeji Castle ever since coming here — especially since it’s going under reconstruction for 5 years starting this month. It was just so impressive! Huge, commanding, beautiful. Unfortunately pretty crowded too. But I absolutely loved it. And luckily the inside of the castle was quite cool and refreshing. After the castle we went to Kokoen, the gardens next door. They were really really pretty, but we were all just too hot and tired (or at least I was, and Hitomi was still feverish) to enjoy it fully. But it was a great day anyway. We rode back to Osaka this time, carrying our ridiculously heavy baggage (plus mandatory souvenirs for all of our coworkers, as is required by Japanese law) on the cramped local train the whole way back.

In Osaka we went out to our final dinner, Japanese food, and to karaoke one last time (this time everyone went). We said goodbye to Gary and Sandra that night and to my family in the morning. It was a really fun trip and Hitomi and I were both so happy to have 5 of my family members there, and be able to tour around for a week. I couldn’t have hoped for a better week, though it wore us both out.

Last week I caught the fever that Hitomi had in Nara/Himeji. But I only have one week of work at my company left, and nothing could get me down at the thought of that. Even the horrifying prospect of being unemployed with no visible sources of income for perhaps many months can’t damper the joy that thought brings me. Maybe I’ll feel different next week… but for now, even the strain of packing and moving is not enough to tire me out. However, it is bed time.

Courtesy of UNIQLO.