At the Japanese garden

Youngest son wanted to take his brother on a tour of our local Japanese garden.

 From the outside ds(14) was not overly impressed. "It's such a small space I can't imagine it can be all that great." he said before we entered.

And "It's amazing how different it is inside. You get a sense of space and calm. Like every bit of it is used but its used to effect so that you feel while you are walking through it that you are in a much larger area and that it just goes on and on." he said as we were leaving.

We all marveled at how the rows of sand were raked and what persistance of patience must go into preparing the sea of sand.
We noted some unusually growing trees, were they clipped or do they just grow this way.

We saw how lines and curves were repeated purposefully.

 So the curve on a bridge is repeated beneath it in the curve of the water and in the distance in the grey/green curve of a conifer. Perspectives were important as was texture and colour.

Altogether it was only thirty minutes but thirty minutes spent in purposeful peace.

Pagoda Magic

Ds has been working over  a very long time to complete his Japanese pagoda. It is still a work in progress and will remain that until he is totally convinced he has done enough. At our recent Education Department Review he was commended once more on his skill and dedication to detail.It is always good to have praise from people outside your family. I will add more pictures to this post so please come back to check progress!

Here are some updated images as promised:

We were fortunate to view an exhibition of the artist Tomono Tadakuma Wynn at the Migration museum recently.In the 1970s Tomono Tadakuma left her traditional, patriarchal Japanese family and came  to Adelaide to study print-making and painting.This was not an easy choice for her to make. Her art and the exhibition encapsulates her   life. The exhibition includes samples of her art, including her beautiful calligraphy but it also has some of her kimonos and some belonging to her mother as well as beautiful dolls her mother makes.

Tomono’s first impression of Australia dated from when she was a child in Tokyo.  She saw an image of a remote desert Aboriginal man lighting a fire.  To Tomono, as she grew up within the strict conventions expected of a young Japanese woman of samurai ancestry, Australia came to symbolise freedom.







Tomono also asked some of her friends to come along and perform the traditional tea ceremony. She challenged us in our busy lives to find something to do, such as making our own cup of tea(western style) and really think about the elements involved in the activity. To slow down and consider the pouring of the water into the jug, the waiting time for it to heat the pouring of the water into the cup over the tea and waiting for it to steep and finally drinking slowly and really focusing on what we are tasting. A useful exercise I think.

The Japanese tea ceremony takes many years to perfect. One of the ladies said she had only been learning for 6 years. Another said that they all had children at home, families to look after and work to do and it may seem strange for us to consider why they would take time out to practice an activity that is not going to achieve anything visible.

But she said "this is for us, pointing to the women doing the ceremony, this is time for us...and we take it back when we go on with our lives"











 Finally Tomono asked for volunteers to be dressed in traditional Japanese dress. My oldest son was chosen because he was the tallest male there but  you can see he was a little too tall for the costume.









The morning was a lot of fun.

I'm not sure how T. felt about having all these people to dress him!

                      Don't they all look wonderful!

Below is a wedding komono. Apparently there are 40 layers of clothing needed to dress for your wedding.As it was the ladies said their own dress for this morning had taken well over an hour to get ready!

A castle or pagoda?

As part of our study of Japan ds has been reading historical books about Japan. He has particularly enjoyed looking and comparing medieval Japan with Europe in the same time period.





Some of the books he has read are: "The boy and the Samurai" by Erik Christian Haugaard. "Te Samurai's Tale"(by same author. "The Ghost in the Tokaido Inn" by Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler , "Castles of the Samurai" by Jennifer Mitchelhill and "Commodore perry in the land of the shogun" by Rhoda Blumberg

He thinks Japanese castles look way more cool and so decided to construct his own interpretation of part of one. It has involved a lot of  design and maths, even protractors were brought out to assess angles. We haven't been able to find a similar project online so the ideas are all his own.The small cardboard tiles on the roof were a real test of time and patience and they are yet to be painted.

Kamishibai Man

Today ds read The Kamishibai man by Allan Say. This is what he wrote from the story.

 

Kamishibai began in the 1930’s. 

 The theatre is a small wooden box transported by bicycle.

 It contains drawers of paper figures,different pictures that tell a story or are shown as a story is being told.

 The story is unending always ending in a cliffhanger. 











As well as telling the story the Kamishibai man also sold delicious homemade sweets. The story was a drawcard for people to come and buy the brightly coloured assorted sweets

Sumi-e

As part of our study on Japan we have been looking at examples of Japanese brush painting.

We have attempted some of our own.

We don't have traditional supplies so had to "adapt" what we already have.

"If we study Japanese Art, we see a man who is undoubtedly wise, philosophic and intelligent, who spends his time doing what? In studying the distance between the earth and moon? No. In studying Bismark's policy? No. He studies a single blade of grass."
  -- Vincent Van Gogh