blog

Tokyo 2005

Dave Brill and I set off at 9:30 on Wednesday but due to the time difference and a transfer in Paris we didn't arrive in Tokyo until 8 o'clock the next day. The first thing that hit us as we left the plane was the amazing heat - it was just like entering a sauna bath. We took the train into the centre of Tokyo (an hours journey) then took a taxi to the JOAS gallery House where we met Yamaguchi and his staff. The room was full of beautiful Origami and made by folders from all around the world. We were both very tired and had a couple of hours' sleep before going out for a meal and of course a couple of beers!

The convention was held in the University of Tokyo and started on the Friday afternoon with General introductions and joy of joys, a 45 minute speech from yours truly! This was based round a power point presentation translated by Hatori Koshiro in which I explained about my origami philosophy, folders that I admired and a little bit of personal history. My fellow guest Jason Ku, gave a short speech then we sat down to enjoy a presentation by Matt from Folding Australia. This was about an amazing exhibition they had organised where a life-size origami house was constructed using special modular bricks designed by Steven Casey.

The next presentation was by ?? who has developed special software for use in origami. He showed how this software had developed to become quite a sophisticated system capable of producing patterns which, when we cut out, could be assembled into almost any shape required. As an example he showed us some beautiful female forms, a dinosaur and comic duck.

I sleep the sleep of the dead until around 9.30 when a phone call reminds me I should have a) had breakfast at 8 and b) should have been at the Origami Gallery House by 9.30. The splendid Sakamoto woman calls for me and we catch up with the others as the white paper shop. This is an extraordinary place, as far removed from a conventional shop as you can imagine. It is a plain white room, with all the walls formed from thin drawers containing paper. In the centre of the room are many display cases containing thousands of sheets of paper of every hue and texture. The idea is to choose the paper type, then hand them in at the counter and specify how large a sheet we require. 45 minutes slips happily by until the schedule obliges us to make our minds up and place orders. Since we are all asking for large sheets, we arrange a time later in the week to collect them. Back to the Origami Gallery House for a quick break from the sweltering humidity, then off to the convention, a 10 minute walk away.

Most of the JOAS board are present, each busy with several tasks at once. They include; Yamaguchi Makoto, Nishikawa Seiji, Maekawa Jun, Hatori Koshiro, Hojyo Takashi, Kamiya Satoshi, Kimura Yoshihisa and Komatsu Hideo, Tateishi Koichi & Miyuki Kawamura. The room is a large lecture theatre with three display screens showing videos and the weekends schedule. Many, many people are in attendance!.

Matt Gardiner (www.airstrip.com) gives a highly animated presentation about a project his Folding Australia group have completed, the construction of a life-size origami house. The talk is partially in Japanese and highly entertaining. Their group are still in their infancy, but seem to have a team capable of great things. They have managed to get some of the "veteran" folders on board, included the talented Steven Casey, who designed the "brick" from which the house was built. (www.papercrane.org)

In the evening, we go to a Chinese restaurant where I encounter the first of many blank looks as I try to explain the concept of vegetarianism to the waiters. Veggies are an unknown quantity in Japan, especially "proper" ones who don't eat fish. The difficulty seems to be that whilst I'm more than happy with rice, noodles, a few vegetables and some tofu, the restaurants don't consider that a proper dish and feel they would be short-changing me. Yamaguchi works his wonders and everyone is happy. The Japanese are delighted to notice that my names sounds very like "niku", the word for meat. The concept of a "vegetarian called meat" prompts them to come up with a variety of puns that are way above my head. It's wonderful to see the Japanese on their home ground where they can relax and stretch out a little - I begin to understand why they seem so baffled/reserved when attending a British convention - it really is a different world here.

I rose early next morning and sampled my first Japanese breakfast which consisted of rice and soup, quite a change from my normal peanut butter and cheese on toast! We arrived early so I could fold examples of models I'm going to teach. The JOAS way is for people to see all the models on offer, then queue up to book the sessions they would like to attend. Once the tickets for that session are gone, that's it for that class, so it's a good idea to have "standby" classes chosen, just in case. Several people are available to keep law and order during booking, one of them looking suspiciously like a night-club bouncer! It seems like hard work to someone raised on the informality of BOS conventions, but with over 200 people in attendance, a system like this is essential, even if it does take most of the morning! I'm due to teach two sessions at 1 and 4pm, so select other classes in my free periods.

My first class is a couple of dishes. June Sakamoto has the privilege of translating and does her best to communicate my vague English humour. I like my classes to be part workshop where people can chip in with their thoughts or suggestions for improvements, alternative ways of folding etc. but the class is unfailingly polite to me and hang on my every word - quite unsettling! They all complete the designs with little difficulty and throughout the weekend, I'm very impressed with the high level of technical ability the attendees have. Clearly they are members of JOAS due to their serious interest in folding and they are a pleasure to teach.

I join Jun Maekawa's "dolphin" class next and take pleasure in seeing the man, clearly capable of technical marvels, is equally happy with a relatively simple, stylised design. The class is conducted in Japanese, but I have no difficulty with the clear demonstration. I take the next session "off" and chat to some of the small group of English speakers who are gathered in the lower-left corner of the room. Those in attendance during the weekend included Martin Lui, Matt Gardiner and the delightful My Trinh Ha from Australia, June Sakamoto, Elsa Cheng, Anne LaVin and Jason Ku from America. Three folders from Singapore were also there, Chan Yew-Meng, Benjamin Tan Yeow-Yong and Tuck-Wai Choy. We are constantly approached by old and new friends from Japan, who shower us with gifts and compliments.

My second class is based around wet-folding. Yamaguchi kindly organises a number of large buckets(!) and cloths. I pass around squares of canson paper that I brought, but we also use suitable home-grown paper. Hatori Koshiro translates for me and once again does a fine job with what is probably sub-standard and rambling English! We fold my "baby bird" and something else that escapes my mind. The trip is such an awesome experience, I'm hard pressed to talk about any of it even a week later in any kind of detail without my collection of digi-camera shots! There's no time for jet-lag to kick in as we race back to the hotel for a shower (pretty pointless as we're hot and bothered again with 5 minutes of leaving the air-conditioned hotel!) then head back to the top floor of the University for the evenings entertainments.

The room has a truly spectacular view of central Tokyo and we can even make out Mount Fuji in the far distance. We eat and drink our fill until it's time for Jason and I to be presented with our Issei Yoshino awards. Without these considerable sums of money, neither of us would have been able to attend and we give humble thanks to JOAS and the Issei family for their generosity. Shinji Nishikawa (younger brother of Seiji) had kindly arranged for an amplifier and guitar to be available, so I could do a short set using my ambient looping technology. I've always felt my music would suit a Japanese audience and it appears to be so. Next comes a novelty competition where we are encouraged to make a 2 piece modular star using a knife and fork. Despite winning my heat, I somehow seem to miss out on the final, where fellow Brit Brill fails to uphold the honour of the BOS and is the last to complete. Shinji then gives a display of virtuoso harmonica playing before we duet on a rousing version of "Stand by me".

More fun and games follow, including a fireworks display on the other side of Tokyo (perhaps not entirely for our benefit) and several rounds of Jan Ken Pon (known as scissors-paper-stone to me) where I delight in beating Yamaguchi-san to win two bottles of wine. Afterwards, a small group of us try out a genuine Karaoke bar, where we delight the locals (and vice versa) with our renditions of classic songs. There is a battered old acoustic guitar, so I get away without doing much vocalising). A wonderful experience and so far away in mood from the drunken excuses for karaoke that we have in England.

Sunday came all too soon. It attended a class my Myuki Kawamura where six sheets of a deceptively simple crease pattern should have yielded a beautiful polyhedron, but my flagging brain and fingers couldn't manage it. I also sat in on Martin Lu's "Jackstone" class, where I was amazed to see just how quickly people figured out what was going on, including a highly gifted young girl who looked about 8 years old! My classes went well, with more dishes, a dissection puzzle and a pecking pteranodon on offer. I had yet another wonderful translator.I even did a bit of book signing, always a pleasure.

The exhibition tables were upstairs and each model had a choice of 3 possible stickers to be added to the display area - no touching, no photographs and no publishing on the internet. The latter two were new to me and slightly saddening - I can't imagine wanting to prevent people taking photos of my models, indeed, I'm always delighted that they might want to, providing it is for their own personal use. The "no publishing" is clearly in response to the scant consideration for copyright and "good origami manners" that has seen places like e-bay offer a constant stream of e-books of stolen material. What a shame that the facility for sharing origami over the internet is abused so blatantly. However, the standard of the exhibits was very high, as you might expect with such talented folders. It is the first time I've had chance to study the works of Hojyo-san and they combine advanced technique with the highest artistic interpretation - in a word, stunning.

My last class was the final session, so we gathered back in the main hall for closing speeches, lost property announcements and to see the winners of the auction items. There was a wonderful episode where a very young boy took on all comers to bid for a rare book, clearly working the crowd and using every advantage his youth gave him to win. So, the end came to a tiring but fascinating weekend. For some of us, the fun was only just beginning as Yamaguchi-san took some of us for a 3 day tour of the country, but this isn't the place for such revelatory news, check my website for the gory details and photographic evidence.

Finally, a word on cicadas. These extraordinary creatures were completely new to me and I was enthralled. They live underground as beetles for around 17 years, then emerge in huge numbers at a given time. No sooner have they emerged, they shin up a tree and the body splits to allow the adult flying form to emerge. Now the fun really starts, because each of them has their own (loud) sound and Tokyo was literally crawling with them, in every tree and many other places besides. The sound was extraordinary and it took me a long while to realise it was electrical hum or some other mechanical sound. A student presented me with a dead one as a gift (my wife was delighted) and I managed to find an empty shell still attached to a leaf. Kamiya-san proved adept at leaping up tree-trunks and catching them in his hand - I have a video to prove it! For more info, videos, sound etc, see www.cicadamania.com