Today I met with Kawaguti Norimitsu (川口智慎) to go see a public art project that he just completed at a new grade school in Nagakute. The sculpture titled, 水の記憶 (Water Recollection), is meant to move in the rain and it rained the entire time that I rode my bicycle to the university to meet […]

America is the land of liberty right? “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” Maybe it should have read “yearning to shop” or […]

The school year in Japan ends in February and March and starts up again in April. Therefore graduation exhibitions typically occur in March. Tani Kaoru (谷かおる), a former graduate student, exhibited his final thesis sculpture on the grounds of the university. I went to go see the installation which consisted of a […]

Kjell Hahn, longtime friend and colleague, has been working with John Dix, a ceramicist who fires of wood fired noborigama kiln. There is a firing coming up at the end of April and I went to Sasayama to help with the preparations which included chopping up a lot of wood. John recently received […]

On the way to the kiln in Sasayama, Kjell and I stopped at an exhibition of Nakajima Yoshsio (中島由夫) in Kobe. A ceramicist in Seto named Minoru Terada invited Kjell and I to an exhibition of him and Nakajima at the Maruei Department store in Nagoya. Kjell could not attend but I did […]

Kjell Hahn and I graduated together from Truman State University in 2001 and about six months later we both came to Japan under different mechanisms, but coincidentally landed in the city of Himeji in western Japan. I taught English in southern Himeji at a conversation school and Kjell taught at a local high school. […]

I took a trip to Okazaki (岡崎) to visit a friend and the castle grounds there. As I explored the area around the moat, I came upon an interesting sign. The caption in English read, “The monument to the memory of the Alamo.” Plaques similar to this are not uncommon but I […]