If you haven’t visited yet, now’s a great time to visit my Etsy store: http://osarusan.etsy.com
Signed and beautifully matted prints are available now. I just added two new prints of Fukuiraptor. Also available are prints from A-Yokai-A-Day, Oh my Kami!, and Chickens of the World series!
Get them while they’re hot!
Fukuiraptor at Nishitakefu Station
Next in my series of Fukuiraptor riding the local Fukutetsu train line, our friend visits Nishitakefu Station, the 2nd station on the line.
I compressed this file at a higher resolution for the web, so the detail is a little cleaner than the previously posted one. Scanners can pick up a lot of detail, but computer displays aren’t so good at viewing very fine detail without zooming in, so again it’s a little less pretty than it is in person.
I have done back and re-uploaded a higher res version of the previous Fukuiraptor painting as well, so go back and take another look. It should be a little more impressive this time.
As you may have noticed, I’ve set up a new site design!
Last December, one of my favorite blogs (Jon Schindehette, Wizards of the Coast’s art director) posted an interesting article about website design from the art director’s perspective. In any case, he makes some really great points about how most artist sites are structured: Home, Blog, About, Shop, Portfolio. It pretty much described my site to a T, and every other art site that I’ve seen. Now, that’s not a bad choice by itself. It’s simple, effective, and pretty easy to navigate; but it is a little mundane, and as Jon points out not absolutely ideal for reaching out to different groups of viewers.
He suggests organizing a site around basic “portals” depending on each person’s level of interest in your site. So as you can see I have a “fans” portal, which is basically my blog containing both my art and my irregular updates about other things. Next there is a “collectors” portal, which is basically the old Store link. Followed by a portal for Art Directors, which is basically like the portfolio section. Also, I’ve increased the width of the blog quite a bit, so I can upload larger images of my paintings.
So far I’ve been focusing on the main look of the site layout and design, trying to make it simpler, cleaner, and more multipurpose. My old design was very bloggish, but hopefully this design will look bloggish on the blog page, and more professional and readable in the other sections. If you explore around right now, you’ll see I haven’t really redesigned the content of those sections just yet, but I intend to get to that next.
Anyway, that’s the theory behind the new layout.
Recently one of our good friends had to return to the US (one of the downsides of living in Japan is having to leave at some point), so we had a final farewell game night.
To make it official and ceremonial they decided to crack out their bottle of habushu, a kind of sake made by fermenting a deadly Okinawan pitviper (the habu) in awamori. Apparently the locals will fill a bathtub with moonshine and lure live snakes into it, where the alcohol will kill it and preserve it, innards and all. This particular habu had been fermenting for over 30-something years, and as it reeks to high heaven they kept it in a sealed bottle, in a trash bag, in a vinyl sack, in a closet by the front door.
As I haven’t found many Japanese foods I didn’t like, and as I’m not one to pass up a new experience, I decided to give it a try.
Presenting the habu
A closeup
3, 2, 1...
Aaaaargh!!!
Rinsing does nothing!
Gargling does nothing!
Ready for game night...
Needless to say, it was the foulest thing I’d drank in a long time (the absolute foulest being a bottle of long-expired Arizona iced tea which I unknowingly half-chugged only to find it had congealed into a sweet, gelatinous state). The worst part was that after we had re-sealed it and washed our mouths, hands, cups, and everything else it had touched, the smell kept creeping back into the room and making us queasy.
As a going away present, they bequeathed the habushu onto us. Most likely because there’s no way that thing would have cleared customs… It now sits in its jar in its sack in its vinyl bag in the space next to our front door.
Continuing from the last dinosaur-in-a-strain-station painting I did, here’s a fukuiraptor on the platform of the local line with some schoolgirls. Pretty self-explanatory.
Fukuiraptor on Takefu-shin Station's Platform
This one was done in oils rather than digital like the last one. Unfortunately I really couldn’t do a decent scan of it no matter how I tried and how I adjusted the file afterwards, so the image above looks kind of washed out and strangely colored. The actual piece is a bit more vivid. I’m trying to decide whether to continue the piece in oils or digitally… looking at the physical painting I want to continue the series in oils, but when I look at them on the screen, the digital one looks far crisper.
Update: I’ve reuploaded a higher resolution image. The detail of the oil painting is a bit clearer now.
The first week in Japan is Golden Week, and you may remember my posts from the previous years’ Golden Weeks. It’s a great time to be in Japan — the cherry blossoms have fallen and the green leaves are just popping out, plenty of flowers are everywhere, and the weather has become warm and pleasant, while the days have become long enough to enjoy. It’s also one of the few big holidays that virtually everyone in Japan gets off, and thus it’s packed full of festivals.
This year, being just after our first anniversary, my wife and I finally got to go on our honeymoon (or when-we-have-money-moon). We took a short but awesome 3 days/2 nights trip to neighboring Gifu and Toyama prefectures. Although it was a bit more expensive, we took the train for comfort (and it’s a good thing we did because trying to find parking in the places we went would have almost ruined the whole trip. And happily the weather was absolutely perfect for the whole of Golden Week.
Our first stop was Gero onsen in Gifu. It’s a big hot spring resort town, and the city is full of gift shops, restaurants, and foot baths. Our hotel was located a little ways from the main hot springs area, so it was less crowded, and we also had a great view of the whole city.
The view from our hotel window
Another view from our room
Gero also has an interesting legend: back in the 1200′s, a great earthquake struck and the town’s hot spring stopped. The townsfolk were distraught because the whole industry of the town relies on the spring. For days, the townspeople fretted, and then they noticed that a particular white heron had been flying around the same spot for a while. The townspeople followed the heron and they discovered that the hot spring’s location had moved; the heron had found it and “taught” them its new location. A temple dedicated to the hot spring was built, and now the white heron is the symbol of the city.
A stream near the hotel
A shrine in Gero
Climbing up to Hot Spring Temple
The next day we visited the town area in the morning (and went to Hot Spring Temple), and around noon we left to our 2nd destination: Unazuki in Toyama.
Unazuki is another famous hot spring site. Located well in the mountains along the Kurobe river (and accessible by local train only), Unazuki is hardly describable as a hamlet. The town is 75% hotels, 20% shops, and 5 % residents. It’s a little bizarre, but very charming. We arrived late in the afternoon after a serious train trek, and although it was still bright, the sun had long set below the very high mountain tops.
The whole trip looked like this!
Cafe Mozart in Unazuki
Our "Special Room" in Unazuki
The view from our room
Another view from our room
Another view from our room
Our futons
Our hotel was absolute luxury. Hitomi’s mom had splurged for us and payed for the “special room,” a pretty big Japanese style room with an incredible view of the Kurobe river, away from the other rooms. I love Japanese style houses, so the room alone was enough for me, but the overlook was breathtaking. We slept with the windows open (and the paper windows closed to keep the bugs out) and could hear the river all night long. The hot spring here was also a very nice outdoor spring, nearly scalding hot, but very relaxing. Dinner was good, ryokan style, and the only thing that gave me a little trouble was the plate of raw squid, which we had to dip into boiling water briefly before eating. By briefly I mean 2 or 3 seconds. Any longer and the internal organs expand and spill out of the animal’s orifices, making it far less appetizing. I have a thing about eating eyes, and these ones turned white before me as I boiled them. So I only ate half the plate and gave the rest to my wife.
"Onsen Tamago," boiling eggs in the hot spring
Appetizing, no?
The outdoor hot spring
The lobby had a sculpture of a chicken...
The next day we took a small train deep into the mountains. There are a series of dams there along the Kurobe river, and this train line was built in order to construct the dams. Now it’s all for tourist purposes, and for good reason. We took about a 1 hour train ride on the canyon walls of snow-covered mountains, with a bright turquoise river running beneath us. Wild monkeys were jumping around the walls, and though we didn’t see any, there are also red deer here (like the ones you see in Princess Mononoke). Unfortunately because the snows haven’t thawed yet, we didn’t get to travel much at the end of the train track (there are a number of hiking trails), but the ride itself was the main attraction. Plus I saw wild monkeys!!!
Someone wore this shirt on the train!
Riding the train
Look at that water!
Someone built a Norman castle at this dam... Zombie-safe, I guess?
It's like real-life D&D!
Another dam
A pile of unmelted snow -- at first we thought it was rocks and dirt
It's like 70 degrees and the snow won't melt!
In the winter the tracks snow over so the workers have to take this tunnel to get to the dams. It's like 6 miles long...
Snowy!
We made it to the last station, but there are more dams further upstream.
This is called "hitokuiiwa" -- the rock that eats humans!
Monkeys!
Monkeys crossing the bridge!
A monkey eating leaves!
We got took the train home the next day, and 3 days felt like a whole week. We got home with still some of Golden Week left, and we got to see the big festival on Children’s Day at Otaki-jinja, where we were married. Like in previous years, the locals from Hitomi’s hometown fought over the local goddess’s shrine, and at the end of the night, rode her up the mountain. We hadn’t traveled up in previous years, but this year we took the hike up to the top, well into the night, in the pitch black, guided only by our red paper lanterns and the sound of people singing. It was hot and tiring, and so much fun. Hitomi also felt really happy to be able to thank the goddess who we were wed before, one year after our wedding.
At the shrine fight, Iwamoto-jinja
Tired out after climbing the mountain
It’s been a long time coming, but finally the paint is dry and I was able to scan this huge painting. It took about two weeks to paint, and I’m sending it to Nagoya for a gallery tomorrow, so I was able to scan it just in time. It took 9 separate scans and a lot of stitching to put this image together, so the color isn’t entirely uniform in this scan. Other than that, I hope this picture speaks for itself. And I hope it’s been worth the long wait with no new artwork. You can click the painting for a larger version.
Mutiny (The Swashbucklers)
And here are a few details of the individual chickens:
