Yasukuni Shrine to Design Festa Galleries

I woke up at 9:30 today to go see wat was supposed to be a traditional japanese horseback archery competition. unfortunately it was not on horseback and there was so much ceremony that only 1 shot per 5 minuties was fired while some woman talked inbtwn. But the shrine was cool. Its basically a shrine for Japan's war heros. This is a controversial place, it is the shrine that is visited by Japanese leaders and then upsets the governments of China and Korea because its looked at like if the German Chancellor paid his respects to Hitler and the bunch every year with a visit to their war shrine. It was interesting to see how the Japanese present their history of WWII. I mean of course any country that was defeated or did bad things would gloss over it, which they def did here. I heard some Chinese people talking trash about the place.

I have seen these in NY but finally tried one. so high tech.

huge Torri at the entrance of the shrine

the minister of war or something like that. they say basically everywhere that Japan is always forced into war and they are a peaceful nation

wonder wat these big gold medallions i keep seeing at shrines are for, everything at this shrine was + sized

interesting architecture different from Chinese style

the competition. it would have been bad@$s if this was a competition on horseback like they said it would be. probably would be dangerous too, but it would have been welcome over some lady giving commentary in the background as it took each guy 5 minutes to go through all the ceremony steps to fire a shot.

didn't use sharp tipped arrows either, instead tipped in rubber. the target was this little deer body

this guy hit the deer but not any of the white spots and was then kicked off

a Japanese Zero. these were not the kamazazi planes. they caused lots of trouble for the allied forces. anyway i thought this shrine was way cool and interesting because i love WWII stuff and most of it was that.

machine gun that the zeros used

something milimeter cannon, got its arse kicked at okinawa hence the major bullet damage.

1 room of oldschool war stuff, samurai armor. i drew a similar head piece in one of my illos but so cool to see it in person. the guy had real looking glass eyeballs even!

cool jacket, could see modern japanese people rockin' this

there is def a feeling you get when you look at the walls filled of men who died, who knows if it was all for their country but there is def a feeling. maybe i've seen too many WWII movies

this is the Kamakazi plane. a late model in the war

this was a kamakazi plane that was attatched to a bigger plane and then released in the air, it only had 9 seconds of boost in its rockets, so they had 9 seconds to crash themselves into a plane.

left is a torpedo that was superior cuz it left no wake. right is a kamakazi mini sub that uses the same motor. a guy actually goes inside the thing and crashes it into a ship!

this weather vain was cool cuz it had north south east and west in chinese characters.

the Nippon Budokan, the beatles were the first band to play here. Dylan played here. lots of Live at the Budokan albums made here. now its used for martial arts events and big rock concerts.

interesting to see the lunch box recycling bin in the middle. they mean the plastic containers that lots of sushi and "bento box" lunches come in. I have since learned that those are made from a different type of plastic hence the need for this other bin i guess.

walked through a part of yoyogi park i have'nt been to yet, on the other side of the Meiji Jingu Shrine, was lovely weather, i took a little nap. saw this blimp emerge from the foliage, its like a Miyazaki movie. In Kiki's delivery service a huge zepplin docks in town at some tower, the shot below looks like that. and in howl's moving castle zepplin like airships float around the pristine countryside. maybe its a stretch but i keep seeing Miyazaki's influences around, which is cool

tons of crows

a seriously small wierd shapped truck. its as if they took the ghostbusters car (which was actually an old hearse) and stretched it a little bit on photoshop and then scaled it down by 40%

the design festa gallery east or west cant remember which. it looks crazy. artists can pay to rent space here and do watever they want and paint all over the walls. i might do this. well i should do it. but later after i am settled in here cuz its like $300 something for a week. a lot of the artists were just hanging out in their rooms, so it would be cool to hang out for a week in there and meet people and get sick from paint fumes.

the design festa cafe in btwn the east and west galleries that are connected by a walkway

girl setting up her room

this girl was funny. she just had some post its on a wall saying that you should choose your favorite little tiny cut out shape of paper, put it in a tiny envelope, give it a name, and then its your lucky charm. i was like WTF this girl paid money to do this? nice girl though.

walk way to the other gallery

the east gallery had a different feel and a lot of it was empty