Japanorama

Japan in my panorama shots. All shot with my phone so sometimes there is a ghastly mist in them or people are missing their heads..
Click the photos for a larger view!

My favorite Kyoto

It has been a while since I wrote a blog about life in Japan outside of my university. I have been so busy that I didn't do any big adventurous stuff, except for my solo trip to Kurashiki and the Seto inland sea islands which I will write a separate blog post for.
I want to share here some pictures that I took while out and about in and around Kyoto, places of which I took snapshots, some because they just looked nice, other because I don't want to ever forget them. My favorite places in and around Kyoto.

Seika classes: making an Uchiwa (nihonga)

In my last post about my Nihonga class which you can read here <click I wrote that we made a fan.
Or at least I thought that the piece of paper we worked on would be made into a fan with the wood and all later.
But no! It was a try-out for the actually thing this last week.

Seika classes EXTRA: Paper making saturdays

 A month or 2 ago I learned about the amazing opportunity to follow extra, specialized classes on the Saturdays and as Seika student you payed way less than outsiders, who can also follow these classes making them a pleasant mix of old and young, student and non-student.
I really wanted to take some extra class to learn a new technique, so I picked up the "Assembly hour & garden" brochure. I have no clue why it has such a strange name, we are not in a garden and the classes take about 4 hours for 5 Saturdays.
Anyway, going through their brochure there were options such a making your own bento box out of glass, Japanese scroll making, rap music class, machine sewing and, my personal pick, paper making!
I have always wanted to know how to make my own paper as my main way of making work is print making and sometimes finding the right paper for pressing my prints on and for what you envision is horrible, especially in NL (Japan is paper heaven!)

Seika classes: Etching

As one of my optional classes I picked etching class for the friday.
I got to choose between Visual Media and Etching, but chose etching in the end because I love making prints and because I had never done copper plate printing before and it is something I can do back in NL too.
At the beginning of my first class I got a sheet with the semester overview, painstakingly translated by my etching teacher who I found out is very keen on learning English.

Every 3 weeks we got to learn a new etching technique and after that for each technique 2 weeks to experiment with it. I total I will be learning 4 new techniques. As I am writing this I have learned 3 already and this coming friday will be the fourth and final technique.

Seika Open Campus.

Yesterday, on sunday June 8th, Seika held an open campus for future students.
Most people visiting were highschool students with their parents. Surprisingly enough most of the highschool students were girls.
There were alot of festivities and every faculty showed their best works.
Workshops were also given for free throughout the whole campus like textile dying, screenprinting and etching.

Seika classes: Illustration, making a picturebook

The final assignment given to us for the end of the semester was to make a 14 page picture book with a dust jacket around it. The theme for the picturebook was Little Red Riding Hood, the theme we worked on last assignment. But seeing we had the freedom to do anything with the story made me decide to turn it into a new story with the only relation being the color red.
I wrote a new story based on Japanese traditional culture and folklore.