A few weeks ago Bristol saw another fantastic Upfest street art festival take place. Upfest is Europe’s largest free street art and graffiti festival, and the event sees artists travelling from all over the world to take part. There was lots of great artwork there, but today I’d like to highlight a few Japan-inspired pieces … Continue reading
Whilst I was in London recently I popped in to see my old colleagues at the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation and was invited in to see the latest exhibition: Unexpected Stories by Umi Kumano (熊野海). Umi Kumano is a Japanese artist from Fukui, who currently lives in Berlin as a guest student at the Berlin University of … Continue reading
Can I just start this post by saying I adore Kurashiki (倉敷)! Kurashiki is somewhere I had wanted to go for quite a long time, and I was so please to have the chance to squeeze it in to my holiday last year. I visited as a day trip between a night in Okayama and … Continue reading
With Smiling Sushi Roll lunch can resemble great works of art, like Munch’s “The Scream,” and Rodin’s “The Thinker.” In this unique and humorous sushi book, illustrator and maki artist Tama-chan (Takayo Kiyota) shows how basic ingredients like rice, seaweed, pickles, and cucumber can be used like paint and ink to create maki that is … Continue reading
I recently had the pleasure of receiving some sample copies of one of Seigensha Art Publishing‘s latest offerings: 360° BOOK. These two books, Mount Fuji (富士山) and Snow White (白雪姫), are really fun, beautiful books, and they would make great gifts. Seigensha say of this series: The 360° BOOK is a new revolutionary format that enables the … Continue reading
Wednesday 9th December was to be one of the absolute highlights of my trip to Japan. Naoshima (直島), the ‘art island’ in the Seto Inland Sea (瀬戸内海) is now one of my favourite places in Japan, without a doubt. It’s gorgeous. I arrived on the island fairly early having taken the ferry from Takamatsu, and took … Continue reading
How do you follow a visit to the Kawaii Monster Cafe? Difficult, but we decided to head to the Mori Art Museum to see the latest exhibition by slightly bonkers contemporary artist Takashi Murakami (村上 隆). I had hoped to post this before the exhibition ended, but unfortunately I just wasn’t fast enough – the … Continue reading
I knew it was going to take me ages to write up my 2015 Japan adventures! Hopefully you’re enjoying the almost weekly instalments… Today I bring you Sunday 29th November (12 weeks ago!) when I took a trip to Nijo Castle in Kyoto to see a rather interesting exhibition: Art Aquarium Castle (アートアクアリウム城). I came across the … Continue reading
Here I am with another postcard from Japan! As before, there’s way more going on over on Instagram (@ali_haikugirl) at the moment than there is here, as it’s hard to find the time to sit down and post. However, over Christmas I will start to go through all my photos (4,700 ish so far…) and will … Continue reading
If there’s one thing you learn quickly about Japanese culture, it’s that amazing and wonderful things often come in small packages. Sometimes the most beautiful and intricate of artworks can be held in the palm of your hand, and today I’d like to introduce to you just such a thing. It would be easy to dismiss … Continue reading
Haikugirl's Japan 