Hit Me With Some Knowledge, Yo!

J got himself a new phone and for a thousand yen a month (less than ten bucks) he gets to use all the internet he wants. the new cell phones in Japan are amazing. Docomo just came out with one that has a bunch of games that you can play on it Wii style. and Softbank has a new Aquos (a super expensive plasma TV screen company) phone. and when you look at the internet on these things, it's just like looking at a for real tiny computer screen. it's cool. so anyways, J looks up all this info on the net and tells me about it every nite. he did a big research on religious cults and we got into a discussion about different sects and practices. he was telling me all about the Children of God cult that Joaquin Phoenix and his whole family used to be a part of and apparently they can have sex with minors? and then J was telling me about Scientology and how it's not just for crazy celebrities but they have booths set up in malls and stuff they don't say they're Scientology booths but you go in there and it screens your stress levels and stuff and then records it. apparently they have miles and miles of underground computers like in Ohio and Area 51 that stores all this info about people, especially those crazy enough to join. creepy, hun? But we were trying to figure out if there are any FORMER celebrity scientologists. they seem to get sucked in but they never come out? it's like an abyss of insanity! if you know of any, please please please let me know as he and i are itching to find out.

In other knowledge news, i decided to take a day out to increase my cultural knowledge. 2 art exhibitions that i really wanted to see are closing on the 1st of July so today was my only chance to see them. i first went out to Meguro to see Taisho Chic: Japanese Modernity, Nostalgia and Deco. The pieces were on loan from the Honolulu Academy of Arts and it was all stuff from 1900 - 1930s Japan. It was such an interesting mixture of Western and Eastern art. many pieces were wood block prints and the areas where the paper was raised and pushed down gave the work a lot of depth that was really interesting to see. most of the depictions were women but there were a few with men and a couple with kids. there was one particularly inertesting woodblock print of two schools girls sharing a book, one in western clothes and another wearing a kimono. It was held at the Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum which used to house the imperial family. it was a beautiful home with sleepy little old docents in each corner. The home itself had a very much east meets west kind of look; even in the massive yard they had a Japanese garden with a koi pond and a tea house and a western garden laden with rose bushes and lawn chairs. How interesting it must have been to live back then! here are a couple pix of a postcard that i got from the museum shop:

here! you can read all about it!: http://www2.hawaii.edu/~nahl/students/Taisho%20Chic.htm


after the museum, i did a bit of shopping in meguro and found that i really like the area. i went out to Ebisu about a week ago to watch The Bridge and that was quite nice as well. i really like the area! and i had the tastiest hot sandwich at Kobeya which is a yummy bread shop near the station. after my brief rest, i went over to Hatsudai which is one stop from Shinjuku on the New Keio Line. There, at the Tokyo Opera City building, i went to see the Architecture of Terunobu Fujimori and ROJO. Apparently they had an exhibition in Venice which brought them some fame. This guy makes the coolest houses. and yes, they are fully functional. He makes treehouses for adults with a fire pit in them so they are known as "tea houses," making them conducive to performing Japanese tea ceremonies. He's a very environmentally conscious architect and he uses natural materials which haven't been processed and he often employs old school building techniques such as snug fitting wood beams that do not require any nails. he chars planks of wood on one side to create a black finish for some of his houses. They really are beautiful. it makes me want a treehouse for my office one day. check it out!


his stuff is really amazing. for more, check out http://www.jpf.go.jp/venezia-biennale/arc/e/10/04.html

Who says culture and edumacation ain't fun!