The Lake Kawaguchi Artist-in-Residence

Leaving calm of the lotus pond behind us, and the warmth (it was now pouring with rain, requiring g us all to buy umbrellas – the  weather seems to change here  as often as it does in the U.K.) we dashed around Tokyo visiting a print gallery (Yamada shorten) where we saw many fantastic new and old woodblock prints, an art shop Bumpodo, ( not really knowing what we should buy,) and a paper shop, Ozu washi, which was all overwhelming!

Then we managed to get all our cases and ourselves through the busy streets with the help of a taxi, to the bus station and out to Kawaguchiko, which we didn’t see in daylight until the next day….

Having flown from Birmingham to Tokyo via Munich, and having found my way across Tokyo to a meeting point in a hotel in the Ueno area of the city, I was pleased to  set up with some of our group. Two of who live in Japan at the moment met us in Kawaguchiko. We went with Mia, a Tokyo artist, to the MI Lab Tokyo office to register, and met Sato-san. Having made some introductions, we had a wander around the area and enjoyed the warmth of an autumnal day in Ueno park. I was impressed by calm and peace of the temple and the lotus pond which I hadn’t expected to find in the largest city in the world!