Hokusai

Today was as close as we can get to Thanksgiving in Japan for two reasons: First, it's the day before Thanksgiving, and Second, it's a national holiday and the theme is something like "Thanks to Workers Day".

So we met up with Akiko and Tetsunori to go see the Hokusai Exhibit at the National Museum. The leaves at Ueno Park have finally turned colors, so today was as good a time as any to go and have a walk. Actually, thousands of other residents thought so too.







We got to the museum around 10:30 or so, and the wait in line was only a half hour long. When we left sometime after noon, the wait had trebled.

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Naturally, photography was prohibited inside the museum, but the trip was well worth the price: over 500 original works were on display, and were shown in order of six stages of Hokusai's life as an artist. We also got to see all the prints from his famous 36 Views of Mt. Fuji series (including #2 above), several samples of his Manga sketches, and many of his paintings (including the one below).



While we were there, we also made sure to visit the statue of Saigo Takamori and his dog. He continues to be very popular with Japanese people, as does his monument. Incidentally, the 2003 movie, The Last Samurai is sort of based on him. Sort of.