Yayoi Kusama's Yellow Pumpkin - indeed, her pumpkins in general - have perhaps become something of a cliché. Or so I thought - seeing this in situ, in Naoshima, with a misty evening over the Seto Inland Sea, it has a presence completely due to being here. And it's a pumpkin that I'm sure looks different, and photographs differently, with every shift of cloud and light. I'll be back down there in the morning - it'll be raining, I think, but that won't hurt my argument.
The day started in Kurashiki, and then a couple of trains to Takamatsu (it's a trip in which I've been very glad to be so confident in navigating trains, local buses, boats, from decades of experience in strange places) - and to Famous Garden # 2, the Ritsurin Garden. It was luminous even under grey skies: a garden designed to walk around in and be surprised by something round every corner.
(including this posing heron);
all that topiary means constant care;
and there's always something in season: late May, that proved to be water lilies
and irises - wonderful swathes of them.
And then by boat across the Inland Sea to Naoshima: mist-filled, it looked like every preconception of maritime Japan you might carry with you: Sugimoto with an island (and at dinner, I was facing a whole wall displaying Sugimoto's Time Exposed, which almost makes this qualify as a research trip ...).
And this is the view from my room ...
Oh, and - I was careful. Cherry-blossom dango make for a tasty lunch (rice dumplings grilled over charcoal, and smeared with adzuki bean paste).
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