Cultural Island Hopping

Naoshima

On Saturday morning we took the Marine Liner across the Seto-O-Hashi (Hashi means bridge) which, at 13.1km, is the longest 2 tiered bridge in the world. The bridge connects Honshu and Shikoku via 5 smaller islands, and is quite amazing to watch go by from the train. We arrived at Uno and caught a quick ferry to Naoshima Island, a small island just between Shikoku and Okayama. Naoshima is known as an island occupied by art galleries and landscape sculptures; an artists heaven!

Seto Bridge, Just can't justify how long it is stretching over 5 islands

The ferry ride to Naoshima Island

The surrounding waters had these jelly by the million!!!!

Pumpkin #1

First stop – The Chichu gallery (Chichu in Japanese means underground) and this place was amazing. The remarkable architect, Tadeo Ando , created five gallery spaces altogether, featuring works of three artists - Claude Monet, Walter de Maria and James Turrell. The design is extreme minimalism and is made of concrete, steel, glass and wood.

Check out the website as it definitely is one of the most commendable exhibits Sophi has ever seen. Sophi honestly recommends anyone to go there!!!!

http://www.naoshima-is.co.jp/english/index.html

Combined translation

When you think of underground you think a dark, dim space with no natural light. The amazing architecture is quite the contrary. Although the front lobby and some walkways are extremely dark, the main exhibition space prides itself on the beauty of the changing natural light. This further enhances the impact of the artworks. The entire exhibition space is an artwork within itself working together with the exhibits creating one massive artwork all in harmony with each other. The distinction between architecture and the artworks is indistinct, therefore it can be hard to differentiate where the art works start and architecture ends. Amazing.

The underground entrance

Further in deeper

Massive effective architecture

We entered into the concrete tunnels that took us underground to a huge white room filled only with natural light and displaying 4 Monet paintings from his Waterlilies series. The paintings were illuminated entirely by natural light coming in from the four edges of the ceiling. The floor itself was incredible and gave an amazing touch, as you weren’t allowed to wear shoes, you could feel the purity and beauty of the tiny white mosaic marble stones all through the place.

After we had taken in the artworks and Cam had pondered the logistics of getting the paintings to this location we made our way to the James Turrell exhibit. Turrell makes artworks focusing on light and he presents light as an art itself. The spaces in which the works stand enable the unique experience.

One piece ‘Skyspace’ was a square room underground which the whole ceiling as an open space allowing natural light to flow in. There is a white camouflaged bench around the edges of the room where you sit and watch the sky go by. The walls are strategically angle outwards so when you sit you naturally look up at the sky. It may not sound great, but when we entered the room, we were blown away by the feeling of it. It was so peaceful and calming, we could have stayed in there all day. The ceilings edge is cut to a fine angle so it looks like you are looking at a screen, but you are actually looking outside.

His other piece, ‘Open Field’ was a white room with a sloping floor, and open at one end. When you reached a certain point a beeper would buzz cause if you continued to walk you would walk off the edge! The installation is too hard to explain, the light effects combined with the smoke creates the illusion that from the outside looking in, it’s all electro blue and the people inside look like they’re on the other side of a TV screen! Wen you are inside the room, looking out everything is orange and looks like you’re looking into another world, with the smoke inside it creates the feeling of an endless white space. Again the edges of the entrance are cut to a fine angle so it looks as though you are looking into a screen.

Walter de Maria had a huge installation which consisted of a massive room inclining with steps, containing strategically placed with dark marble spheres (2.2 m in diameter) and 27 wooden sculptures covered in gold leaf. The space is aligned East to West, again to work with the natural light streaming in from various places of the room, therefore the appearance of the work changes constantly from sunrise to sunset.

Blown away by the entire gallery and coming out back to reality, we started our way to the Bennesse House (this entire sector consists of a hotel, gallery, library) which is where the famous landscape sculptures are placed on the beaches.

Stone sculpture surrounded by high concrete walls

A quarter sculpture made into a whole with mirrors

Sculpture on the salt beach

Another sculpture... is it really buried?

Along our way to this area we stopped at the ‘Seaside Gallery’. Which was literally a small underground concrete space that encased another of Walter de Maria artworks – with the same spheres and wooden sculpture on a much smaller scale.

Sculpture on the hillside. On hinges to move with the wind

Seaside gallery. Echoes the inside display on a much smaller scale

Still the spheres are 2.2 metres

We headed towards the hotel area to see more works and the famed ‘Pumpkin’ So amazing, who would ever see the beauty of a giant pumpkin on the beach landscape?

Some kooky cats

Pumpkin #2 - On a wharf on the beach

A kooky pot plant camel

Bubba under a tree. Beach in the background

There were lots of landscape artworks all over this area…..

After exhausting ourselves from all the amazing art we headed to the other side of the island where we could see another artwork of reconstructed traditional island housing. This was a little of a let down as well as strange. The appreciation for the beauty of the traditional architecture was there, however as the day was ending we started to dwindle. So we headed back to the port, had some tucker then jumped back onto the ferry.


Naruto, Skikoku

Originally we were going to go down to Shikoku from Okayama and go to Iya Valley, Naruto whirlpools, and Takamatsu city all in one day. This proved to be far too much to achieve so we split it up and chose Takamatsu and Naruto whirlpools for the first day.

We arrived in Takamatsu to find a Sunday Festival going on. There were some down syndrome kids signing and playing music on stage and there were lots of stalls selling second hand stuff, and loads of food. The locals got a kick of seeing Cam, the only white guy around all day.

Special needs concert. They were having the times of their lives!

Takashima architecture

Traditional thongs being made at the fair

Sexy boy

Sexier girl

Japanese cheerleaders. Their name Smiles. Pronounced: smile-es!!

As time was very limited today, we only managed to spend about 40 minutes at Ritsuen Garden; one of the biggest and most beautiful gardens in Japan. They recommend more than 3 hours to walk around the park so we missed quite a bit of it, but what we saw was beautiful.

Ritsuen bamboo fencing. So Japanese ne

The typical Japanese garden scene...

... stepping stones....

....more bridges

The picturesque Japanese tree in the mountainside

Big and beautiful

To get to Naruto we had to get a train all the way to the end of the line in the middle of nowhere. It was so different from Tokyo out here. The trains come about once an hour, and life is slow.

Middle of bloody no where. It all merges into 1 track!!!!???

So countryside, this is how often the trains came

Naruto Straight is located between Shikoku and Honshu. It is the narrowest straight in the world, and the currents during high and low tides cause huge whirlpools to occur. You can get a tourist boat out into the water but we decided to walk along the bridge and see it from directly above. We saw some average sized whirlpools, but nothing really to get excited about. That said, it was a really fun day, and definitely a cool thing to do in Japan.

The bridge we viewed the whirlpools from

Now that's a whirlpool

Look! We're on the bridge

For a country that loves koalas. They need to get their facts right

Shikoku Sunset. Country Island

It’s a long way back to Okayama, and by the time we made it back we were well spent and starving. We stopped at a local ramen place, and had some of the tastiest ramen we have ever had. You could pay a bit extra and get a second serving of noodles. Cam was so hungry that he ate 3 servings. Needless to say the staff thought it was quite amusing.

The best ramen restaurant ever!!

Shinkansen time again!

The following day we had planned to go to Iya Valley in Shikoku. There isn’t a lot of public transport to Iya, and we had some confusion trying to get the bus information from the guy at hotel. Our plan to get to the station early and put our suitcase in a locker for the day backfired when we got to the station and most of the lockers were full, and the other ones were very well hidden with no signs as to where they are. We found them eventually but by then it was too late and we missed the train. We were sadly told that the next train wouldn’t get us there in time to catch the bus to Iya. We were really disappointed, as we had really been looking forward to going.

There was one final thing on our list so we just scrapped Iya and took the train to Kotohira. In Kotohira, there is a shrine with 1368 steps, Konpirasan. We started climbing, and climbing, and climbing. We noticed some very strange things about Japanese people. There were men doing it in business suits, and women dressed like they were on their way to a cocktail party; huge high heels and lace skirts! Crazy!

Clearly a great hiking outfit

About as 'hiking' as Sophi will get

These were all the way up

Cam decided to run up the last 250 steps and surprisingly wasn’t really puffed at all once he reached the top. This is one of those cases where the prize is nowhere near as good as the chase. Although there was no real chase, once at the top there really isn’t anything there!

Dr Fish. The little fish eat away your dead skin!

For the lazy ones

It's gonna be along day for those guys

He stood there the entire day in the exact same spot and pose

Just barely at the half way mark!

What a view

This went on for the entire 1368 stairs

Pooped

For some reason there was a giant propeller at the half way mark

Winners....

......Victory!

Japanese people only know about other cities in Japan by what food is famous from that area. We had been told by EVERYONE that we had to try udon in Shikoku, so we felt that we should. By the time we found an ATM that would accept our Tokyo bank cards, we found a restaurant that was basically closed (it was about 5pm, and most others were closed) and ordered some udon. I’m not sure what we were expecting but it tasted exactly the same as any udon we had tasted anywhere else.

Why is there an anime statue on the way up to the shrine?

Sophi being Asian

Cam being a piglet

Awesome statue

Shikoku - the land of Anpanman (an old beloved cartoon character)

Make toys out of everything again! Udon noodles!

It was a beautiful day, and the disappointment of not going to Iya was suppressed by the wonderful walk in the open air in the middle of nowhere.

After making it back to Okayama to get our bags we loaded onto the Shinkansen, headed for Osaka.

Okayama - the home town of Momotaro!
A childhood tale of a boy born from a peach
(remember Sal?)

Some things shouldn't be translated from Japanese to English!

Interesting. A bank for your tomatoes

We checked into our hotel; we had 12 nights booked there, but realised as soon as entering the room, that we would only be spending one night there. The train track was about 10 metres from the window, and there were heaps of homeless people wondering around outside. That combined with shared, dirty bathrooms didn’t make for a pleasant experience.