Shakuhachi Player in Mashiko

and some random pottery otaku...

Golden Week

I went to Mashiko Town, one of the most famous pottery towns in the world I think. It was great as usual. I saw a lot of interesting and inspiring stuff. However, it was different for me to see other potters selling their stuff after having done it my self. I think I've got a new perspective.

Just Some Books I'm reading (or rereading)

The Frank Herbert book, I found in an English bar in Omiya, it's pretty good, I'm about half way through, but I'm starting to wonder when it's going to pick up... I still think it's good, but it's kind of slow. It's very interesting, it's about a group of clones that have been sent to deep space to conduct an experiment to create an artificial consciousness, they've been lied to and they have also been pitted against each other. It's all a complex metaphor, but I'll leave it to the reader to decide what it is... Amazing considering it was written in 1965. This is before transistors so the space ship they're in is very retro-futuristic. Kind of makes me think of the Anime Yamato.

The other one is a "minor classic" from an author who is an important figure in theoretical Anthropology. It's also old, 1959. In some ways it's still ahead of it's time and in other ways it presents an America that is all but unknowable. In a word Fascinating.

New studio, new teapot

...been a little busy, I made some more stuff, I'll post more pictures in the future...

Hanami

Aka, cherry blossom viewing parties, from Omiya park in the evening, this is of course a little old, like from the beginning of the month, all the blossoms are now already gone, Haru o! Toiiku haru o!

Good stuff from the garden...

This is about from two weeks ago, it's looking even nicer now, I can already see small unopened buds on the raspberry and current berry plants.

It's been a while....

Sorry to anyone who actually reads this blog. I've been busy last couple of months, like really busy. I think I worked every day during the months of February and March, maybe I had one or two days off during that time, I'm not even sure I was too busy to keep track. While it was good to be able to put a few more curns in the bank, I was too busy to make any pots and I missed the deadline for this really big show that I really wanted to enter in Tokyo. It only happens once a year and it is really big and important. Maybe I'll talk more about it later. Sigh...

Well anyways, I'm back in the studio and getting down to making more pots. It's been fun, I'm in a new studio a few stations away from my house, and the people there are really nice. It's much smaller than my last studio, but it's very quaint and cozy. I think the people there are really cool too, tonight I hung out for about an hour after closing with two of the ladies and we talked about music and movies and stuff. It was very cool and they're really making me feel at home.

I'll post some pictures in the near future...