Weekend Project # 5

My style has always been very casual. Until I finished my PhD, I wore jeans & t-shirts practically exclusively. Being body-conscious and even called ugly to my face, this was the perfect uniform to hide in for years.

However, once I moved to Asia, I understood that I needed to upgrade my style to be taken seriously in my male-dominated profession. While male professors always could and still can get away looking mildly unkempt (“he must be a genius!”), female professors who don’t look the part are a no-go (even in the West, I might add).

In Hong Kong, I splurged on a professional stylist who taught me about colors that suit me best and what looks good given my body shape. And while I still prefer a casual sweater to a frilly shirt, I’ve been trying to dress according to the advice I’ve been given ever since, mostly at least. Only the makeup I haven’t fully embraced, but that one’s on my Project 50 by 50 list and I’m making slow progress on that front.

One of the easiest way for a woman to change her style is with accessories. For me, that means: jewellery, even though I don’t own anything that has true monetary value beyond the sentimental. I especially like necklaces with bold pendants, and they make wonderful souvenirs no matter how short or local the trip. I always try to buy handmade pieces from local artisans, but one of my favourite pieces is still this one:

It’s just some cheap, mass-produced plastic-on-metal necklace that I bought mostly for the color some 20 years ago at Utrecht station in the Netherlands. As you can see, the strings were very much worn out, so I didn’t use it for a long time.

However, I finally found some time and the right parts to replace the strings, and I chose some with a little more pizazz to it. The difficult part was to fit the strings into the end pieces, my tools were too big and not quite up to the task. I’m glad that I’ve cultivated my patience quite a bit since I came to Japan, and while it doesn’t look perfect, I prevailed in the end. On to the next 20 years!

Golden Week DIY 2024

Hi, it’s me – I’m back!
Yes, I took Golden Week off(line) and I’m glad I did. When you’re self-employed and there’s something you can be doing every day, well, that’s what you end up doing… So taking the entire week off and with but two appointments – one to see a friend, the other to see BATI-HOLIC – and lots of reading and sleeping, it was very relaxing and soothing to my mind.

And I got a lot of not-work-related things done. House and garden are now significantly cleaner, and my paperwork is more organized as well. I did several loads of laundry and put away some of the heaviest winter clothes and blankets. Three of my favourite pyjamas now have new elastics (the blessings of losing weight) and there are no more buttons missing (that I’m aware of).

Unfortunately, this all didn’t go off without accident: I hurt myself during ironing and I’ll have to wear a bandage on the third degree burn on my right lower arm for a few more days . Yes, I’m not made for housework. Moving on…

.. to a more successful project. All I wanted to do is to tidy my bathroom counter (small as it is) and hang one more shelf. The plan was to get this done with the other two shelves that are already there when I renovated the bathroom. However, at the time there were some issues with drilling through the tiles so I let it be (instead of just putting the third shelf on top of the other two, don’t ask…)

Since then, I have experimented with several types of hooks which didn’t have enough grip on the tiles to last long. Finally, I struck on the idea to glue some hooks not to the center of the tiles but into the grout at the edges, and it seems to work – for now.

Then, I decided to tidy the top drawer of the cabinet – simply a matter of finding a suitable box – when I noticed that for some reason or other I never painted that drawer white like the rest. This took a bit longer to fix, but it’s done now as well and I think that’s as far as my bathroom renovations go until I tackle the whole first floor.

Wait: there’s still the ceiling to be painted… Oh my, in a house, there’s always something to do, right?

End of a Landmark

Breaking news today in Kyoto: A tree has fallen!

Not in the woods surrounding the city (who would be there to know it happened or hear it fall?) but at Ninenzaka, one of the main approaches to Kiyomizudera Temple. This in turn is one of the main tourist attractions of Kyoto.

Judging from the moss growing on the trunk, it must have been very old, and the fact that it was a cherry tree makes its loss so much worse – in the eyes of the Japanese.

However, the old sakura will live on forever thanks to having been part of Kyoto’s most scenic spots. And who knows, somebody might just plant another sakura in its place soon.

So. Many. Museums.

As you may have guessed from the missing posts, I’ve been busy the last week, and things will stay this way for a while. This year the pace is picking up, I am receiving more and more invitations to press previews for upcoming exhibitions.

Last Friday was the preview for “The Legend of Sesshu”, a 15th century Japanese painter whose style has influenced many other painters through the Edo period and beyond. One of his paintings of Mt. Fuji was so groundbreaking that it served as a model after which many other painters created their own views of Fuji. No fewer than six of his paintings are National Treasures, more than of any other painter in Japan – and they are all in Kyoto right now for the exhibition at the Kyoto National Museum.

My personal favourite of the entire exhibition was this ink painting titled “Winter Landscape” from 1470. It’s hard to describe what I feel when I see it, and while I’m not a painter myself, I do understand on a very visceral level that it’s a masterpiece.

As I said, things are picking up; tomorrow I will go to a preview for Bijinga (paintings of beautiful women) and next week there will be Japanese combs and hair ornaments. I love my job!

Yozakura 2024

It appears that last Wednesday I spoke too early about hanami being over. The rain did not appear in the force expected, indeed, we’ve had some fairly nice days. Nice enough for me to go out on Friday evening for some yozakura – illuminated cherry trees – in the Botanical Gardens.

Here are some photos I took (without a tripod). My favourite sakura this time around are those that have pink and white blossoms on one tree. Who’d have thought!

End of Hanami?

After a short cold spell in the middle of March, temperatures rose quite dramatically last week. And while I could adapt practically instantly – I moved my futon back to the big room in the north of the house and packed away my “deep winter” clothes over the weekend – the cherry blossoms couldn’t catch up quite that quickly.

Here and there, some trees were already blooming, but at the same time, there were not even buds to be seen on many others. For that reason, I already predicted a rather spotty hanami experience for this year, it’s only good when all of the trees get to bloom in a big explosive poof at the same time.

And now that it has started raining and will do so until next week, I guess the cherry blossom viewing is over for this year, more or less. Cherry blossoms are very delicate, and a single day of rain will lay the trees bare again. I hope I’ll be wrong, but I’m not holding my breath here.

Death in Midsummer

Death in Midsummer and Other Stories
Yukio Mishima

Nine stories of various lengths are collected here, plus Dojoji, one of Mishima’s modern Noh plays. The stories that stood out to me are:

  • The Priest of Shiga Temple and His Love
    Heian period. And old, saintly priest catches a glimpse of the Great Imperial Concubine of Kyogoku. He immediately becomes infatuated with her and experiences once again feelings he had long thought conquered. He believes that all he needs to cure himself is a single meeting with her…
  • Onnagata
    We delve behind the kabuki stage and see the actor Mangiku through the eyes of his assistant Masuyama. Mangiku is an onnagata who specializes in female roles, and like many a drag queen, he is more attractive than a women. But what does Masuyama see in Mangiku?
  • Patriotism
    Just after the February 26th Incident, a young lieutenant of the Imperial troops is shocked to find that his closes colleagues are implicated in the mutiny. Worried that they might meet on opposite sides on the battlefield, he prepares for his ritual suicide – and his wife of six months with him.

Yukio Mishima is a fantastic writer, and even in translation, he creates images in the reader’s mind that put him directly next to the protagonist of the story. “Next to” is important here, because I feel that Mishima stays on the outside of his characters, a mere observer who doesn’t get emotionally invested. Whether this is by conscious choice or due to his own character, I do not know, it’s definitely not because of a lack of talent.

While Mishima is unequivocally lauded as exceptional author, as a person, he is more controversial, at least in Japan. The story “Patriotism” can be seen as a foreshadowing of Mishima’s own death: The staunch nationalist committed ritual suicide in 1975 after a failed attempt at a coup d’etat.

Discover more Mishima with this book from amazon.

Rediscovered Painting by Jakuchu

Two weeks ago, I had the opportunity – thanks to What’s up in Kyoto – to be among the first people to lay eyes on a recently discovered painting by Jakuchu. It was a press-only-reveal of a colorful scroll and it was done with all the ceremony that such an event required.

You can read all about this important discovery, and a little bit about Jakuchu, on the Japonica Medium page in my article
Rediscovered Painting by Kyoto Master Returns Home – Jakuchu scroll found in Europe causes stir in Japanese art scene.

It was a nice diversion from the things I usually do, and a friend of mine even recorded evidence of me trying to be a serious photographer. (She calls the photo “kakkoi” – cool.)

I love my job.