Today was a really nice day. As previously mentioned, I had the day off because of some kind of Japanese holiday and as a result, I took advantage.
Although the weather has been really nice (cool and breezy) and perfect for an outdoorsy day, I slept in until 11:30. Obviously, that's not TOO late. After all, I was known to sleep till 4 or 5 pm (and sometimes 9 pm) at times in college. But now that I'm older, I feel like I don't have the capacity or the time to sleep in. I usually just wake up at 9 am no matter how determined I am to sleep in! For some reason, I just kept going until 11:30 this morning. It felt really nice. There's nothing like a nice long sleep. You wake up feeling refreshed and in a new state of mind, ready to brave the day.
One of the cool things about Kurashiki (where Natalie lives), is that it's filled with tons of museums. For a small town, that's surprising (well, it's not that small actually). Today, we went checked out Kurashiki's famous O'Hara Museum. I'll spare you the long and detailed history so here is a brief history: some Japanese dude about a 100 years ago thought it would be cool to collect a bunch of art and put it in a museum. Haha, now that I think about it, that's how most private art museums probably get started. Either way, it's a pretty nice (and big) museum.
It really has a wide variety of art pieces. You can find anything from Japanese or European Impressionist paintings to ancient Buddhist art to Porcelain vases to modern abstract paintings. The collection is surprisingly filled with big hitters such as Picasso, Monet, Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol and Gauguin. Obviously, those are classics but it's not necessarily the type of art that I tend to enjoy the most. I usually lean towards the more modern pieces. I like the cleaner, more defined style of modern art (although the meaning is usually way out there). For example, my favorite piece today was a mural by someone whose name I've already forgotten and that was built in 2007. The Mural was probably about 10 feet wide and I would describe it as a collage of painted images of different towns and people (in hues of neutrals, with splashes of color here and there). It was really detailed and filled with different scenes. I thought it was beautiful and powerful but my description of the piece does no justice to it. I guess being an Art critic is something I probably wouldn't be very good at. You have to be way descriptive and you have to analyze the meaning behind things (something I'm probably not too great it). In short, it was good piece. Art museums are great, but I think overall, I prefer photography (I love a good picture).
Although I really enjoyed the art (and the conversations on art with Natalie), I particularly enjoyed the museum itself. Being built over a century ago, the architecture was decidedly European (probably Gothic) but it was huge. There were other buildings on the premises. Some of the gallery was inside ancient Japanese merchant's homes and there was even a really quaint Japanese garden for us to enjoy. It was fun to walk through.
To top off the enjoyable stroll through this really nice museum, we discovered another Nepalese restaurant (this time even closer). It was delicious! So a good day. I feel good but I have to go back to work tomorrow! Good thing it's only one day.
No comments:
Post a Comment