So yeah, the Japanese countryside and the Echigo-Tsumari Triennale was an absolute treat. I was very happy I made it out in time to join the rest of the office for the trip as it was a truly unique experience. The whole thing is basically a few week long art festival spread out in various installations across a good deal of land. You can ready up about the project here but essentially it is an effort to bring life back to a town that has lost the majority of its population and economy due its citizens moving on to larger cities. This has left a lot of abandoned spaces, ripe for artists to come in and pay ohmage and engage these spaces with life and creativity once again. It’s been going on since 2000, every 3 years, and apparently this year the attendance doubled bringing the total above 1 million. We’re actually helping promote a similar even that will start next year for the first time, it looks to be absolutely gorgeous, so if you’re planning a time on coming out, consider it. Setouchi International Art Festival.

For the trip itself, we left Tokyo early by Shinkansen by 8am. It’s funny traveling in Japan, I’m so used to the Western concept of time and scheduling, knowing if I want to make a train, plane or bus I must arrive quite early as they are far more likely to be late than on time, and in some cases early (still screwing you). Shinkansen are fairly expensive to ride on, basically like buying a plane ticket in most cases, so in America you’d wind up with people showing up 30 minutes or more early to make it. My ticket said 8:04 departure and I’d say 90% of the people don’t show up until the 10 minute countdown, which is when the actual doors open. It’s just guaranteed to leave on the time in the ticket so you need not worry or rush or clog up the terminal being there 2 hours early. It’s so refreshing and pretty much occurs in every aspect of Japanese travel. Being late in America puts me in a terrible mood, I feel doomed and helplessly at the wims of inefficient transport. If I’m late here, you just step on the old pedestrian gas between stations and with a little gumption you will make your destination, albeit a little damp.

I’ve mentioned this to others when speaking about my last visit to Japan, but you will really be amazed how quickly you’re transported from one of the biggest metropolises in the world to a beautiful village-dotted countryside. I’m sure it’s partly because you’re traveling 200+mph on land, which most Westerners aren’t used to, but you don’t get the sprawling and depressing suburb affect here in Japan. You’re in another world in just a couple minutes flat.

About an hour or so later we arrived at our destination and ended up milling around a bit. Our trip timeline was pretty short, we were only there until the next evening, taking the last train out. The following day we were taking an 8 hour planned tour, so the first day was our own exploration. There was 7 of us so our plans to taxi around didn’t make much sense, so with some negotiation from Eiko we managed to get ourselves a bigass bus to ourselves. It seemed ridiculous at first but ended up being quite a treat, the driver was very nice as we plotted out our desired route on the map for him.

I won’t go into all the work we saw, there’s just too much to go into. We all took our own photos though and have uploaded various sets to flickr, including my own which can be found here. Chris, my boss, set is located here. Tomomi, who also works at AQ as project manager, has a set here and Naoki who works for Tokyo Art Beat has one here. A digested version that Chris put up on our work blog can be found here.

One of the most interesting things about the trip was our place of rest on the first evening, which was a hallowed out school. I know what you’re thinking, super creepy right? I can think of a lot of very scary looking abandoned schools in the US, but this was completely opposite. Very beautiful and thought building with a beautiful view. It served as a budget place to stay for visitors of the triennale, food was great and it was quite tidy and comfortable for the large group that resided there.

The next day was a tour whirlwind, a spunky young university student was the host and she could be often seen tapping her foot near the bus door as we were always the last ones to board back up for the next stop. Despite our enthrallment, we saw a lot of stuff and tasted many of the local treats/cuisines. The Japanese are snackers, they’re like always buying something small and sharing it in small portions with others. It’s often something I don’t think about and makes me feel a little guilty, hopefully I will adapt to the custom and share my snacks!

Be sure to check out the flickr links, I often don’t pass off my camera to others so they can take pictures of me, so 99% of the images of me being out-of-place are probably in others sets. Next update will likely be more boring as I’ve just settled into my new and temporary space.

I arrived rather well in Tokyo last Tuesday evening, having left Chicago on Monday morning at 5am. The plane from Chicago to Houston and my transfer from Houston to Tokyo was filled with a rather large group of Southern-comforted individuals which I later deduced to be a group of engineers headed to Seoul for some project. It made for an interesting wait, taxi and flight to be on several planes with mostly small asian people and rather large thickly-accented fellows, NASCAR hats were abound (I seriously counted 5, not just being a stereotypical jerk). We all behaved ourselves for the most part, some were on the larger side of their seats so when we started to leave for Tokyo there was a mad rush for empty seats that left them a bit more elbow and butt room. This left me a free seat thankfully, as I had been in the middle and could now snag the aisle seat – leaving the window for small woman who literally left her seat once on a 14 hour plane ride. When she did finally leave her seat we were 7 hours in and she apologized profusely. I decided I would try to find more excuses to get up at random times in case her lack of movement was a sign that she didn’t want to bother me. I’m big enough in those seats I don’t think a small child could even fit past me, but I never saw her move again.

Landing somewhere after a good 20 hours of daylight is strange, if you’ve never experienced it. It’s easy to gauge how your body must feel, or how it will automatically feel, based on the activity around you. I hardly sleep at all on planes, so arriving at 2:30pm during the hustle and bustle of Tokyo Narita airport took an immediate toll on my body. It tried to snap back into shape, I had a few simple missions to complete before I could even think of starting to shut down; retrieve my massive amount of baggage, communicate to the luggage delivery service where it needed to go, find the most convenient train out of eastern Japan and into Tokyo proper, somewhere I could transfer to the Yurakucho line where my work is and where I’m staying currently. I made the mistake of choosing a transfer-convenient train over a more time-convenient train so I got to sit in the station for a good hour. My brain was definitely in quick decision mode, which gave me a chance to wind down a bit on the bench and think to myself, “Oh yeah, I live in Japan now”. I’ve been considering, planning, deciding not to, considering again, planning, breaking my shoulder and delaying, replanning and finally getting back to Japan in the last year so it’s not like the realization hit me like a ton of bricks. More like a polite nod to myself, and a warm feeling towards the folks that helped me get back.

A couple hours later, sweatily dragging luggage up the mini-mountain my work resides on I had finally completed my journey. I say journey but that sounds way too epic, when you’re that tired and you’re wearing the same clothes from literally 2 days ago you feel far too pitiful to have “completed a journey”. I walked up the 3 flights of stairs, buzzed in and was reunited with the creative forces of AQ and TAB (Tokyo Art Beat) alike. Very friendly faces for a weary traveler.

It’s actually Sunday now, and I’m amidst a list of things to do and errands to run. My next post will be very soon, complete with a documentary amount of pictures, about my trip out to the countryside.