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Published: August 11th 2017
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Poster for Kawamura Memorial Art Musem
If you can zoom in, you might be able to read the names... Another good night's sleep. After an exhausting morning of showering, breakfasting and reading, we were both ready for a nap before heading out. There were no time constraints today, although we were expecting today's trip to take at least an hour one way. We thought we'd break the trip somewhere along the way for lunch, since we had two changes of train and therefore we had no reason to leave until close to a lunch-like time.
Two days ago in Tokyo Station, we saw a poster advertising an Art Museum in Chiba with some names of some artists we like (Monet, Chagall, Renoir). We looked it up and found it wasn't too far, and that it would be open today (we checked because it's a holiday, one of several new ones instituted by the government a couple of years ago for no other reason than to prevent people working too hard). When we saw the poster again yesterday, we also noticed the museum had a free shuttle bus from the nearest station, so that made it even easier.
So, we were up and out at the crack of 11.15, taking one train to the end of the line, thinking
that being a terminal station it would have some lunch facilities, but no. Nothing appealing at all. The next train was to Chiba Station, where we went on Tuesday, I think, and where we thought we might eat at the department store food court. But that wasn't quite straightforward. The food hall was one of those big busy ones that sell everything you need to go home and pretend to your family that you've been preparing dinner all day, as well as some prepacked meals, and just a little loose fresh fruit and veg. Very little in the way of sit-down-and-order-a-meal food. There was one sushi bar that seated about 8 people, and even that had curtains around it as if it was trying not to be noticed.
The department store maps said there were restaurants on the 10th floor, and we thought that was more like it, but again, no. These were quite fancy places, not hugely expensive for Japan but not cheap, and they all had queues outside. Also they were all very traditional Japanese, and we both felt we needed salads, (Since we changed our diets to relatively-low carb, we have a salad for lunch most weekdays - with plenty of meat tho: we're still carnivores - and with that a lot of the aches and pains that we had assumed were old age have disappeared. But the meals we've been having for the last few days are mostly noodles and rice, and the lack of fresh veg has been telling, and the aches are coming back. So, no thank you, not ultra-traditional today.) We went back down floor by floor, because the store was advertising a Snoopy Carnival, and I was interested, but the Snoopy merchandising included nothing I wanted. Nothing else was tempting, so we got back down to B1, where Stephen thought he'd get some interesting crowd + food footage for his video collection. While he was doing that, I found a place with tables where you were allowed to sit and eat the stuff you bought at the Food Hall. So in the end we got some salads and some extras, and sat in a kind of garden area for lunch. It was now about 2.30.
The next train was to a place called Sakura, and it took us through the countryside. Summer in Japan is rainy, so here summer means green and winter means brown (because it's too cold and dry for the grass to grow - I always find that weird and difficult to get my Antipodean head around). The rice fields are much tidier and more regular than the VNese one. They're squarer, for a start, but also in VN, the fields are all in different stages of growth. Any time you travel around, it seems as though some paddy fields have shoots in, some are just water (maybe planted, maybe not; can't tell), others are dry and others are almost ready to harvest. I assume the climate has less seasonable variation, and so there is less rigidity in the planting calendar, but anyway, here, all the rice fields for miles around currently have the same yellow heads waving above the same green leaves.
At Sakura, we had about 15 minutes to wait for the shuttle bus to the DIC Kawamura Memorial Art Museum (DIC is a big, old Japanese firm; I think the woman we asked said it produced ink.) The bus trip was 20 minutes through the town, then into the countryside, past villages and farmhouses. It seems quite a prosperous region: there were very few houses that were in the least bit rundown, and quite a few new, almost western in their space and style.
The Art Museum is set in beautiful grounds, with lawn (not to be walked upon, of course) and a lake with white swans. The art was pretty impressive, too. I had privately thought, "Oh, they'll've bought one each of a famous name and put them all on a poster to show what a wide range they have." And Stephen admitted feeling the same cynicism. But no, I was wrong again. Not even all the famous names had made it on to the poster: they hadn't mentioned Lichtenstein or Rothko, and there were several of their works, and there were several Picassos and a couple of Chagalls. I rather liked some of the Lichtensteins - round ones, embossed, called 'Mirror' (#2, #3, and #4). Finally we exited through the gift shop, and I bought a lovely little piece of glass that that photos of bare trees somehow printed onto it. I like art as a travel souvenir, but I don't know where we'll display it - we don't have a mantelpiece.
Same route home again. Sakura didn't have much around the station that looked worthy of our dinner custom, so it was back to Chiba. We had expected to have to leave the station, but a thorough exploration within the station brought us to a cafe that provided a bit of greenery on the plate - along with a meal, of course. It was quite tasty, whatever it was. Pork and rice, that's right. A quick donut to round it off, because we'd eaten so well we were allowed dessert, and then only a monorail ride for two stops and a final train for one stop, a mere 700m walk home, a lift up to the 4th floor and a flight of stairs the rest of the way (the lift only stops at 1, 4, and 7; we're on the 5th), and finally, a chance to pee. (To be fair, there were plenty of chances along the way, it just didn't become necessary until after we'd passed them all.)
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