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Showing posts from August, 2015

Japan

Murakami. Hokusai. Sushi. Samurai. Ghibli. Kurosawa. Japan had always been my dream destination. My fascination in the country and culture started in slightly an unusual way - sifting through my Van Gogh print book aged 11, I saw Vincent's Japanese art work, The Bridge in the Rain (after Hiroshige) and was rather taken by the image. On further inspection, I learnt of the original by Hiroshige and how Vincent had been influenced by the ukiyo-e prints. I had no conscious awareness of the why, but I just knew the style ticked a certain box within my sense of order. As I got older, the more I delved into Japanese culture, the more obsessed I became. I read the Pillow book of Sei Shonagon. I watched all the Kurosawa films I could get on VHS from the library (I've been concocting a whole blog post dedicated to my love affair with Ikuru for months), I bought all the Murakami I could afford (I remember trying to explain to a friend once why I loved his books "He writes what