Toge - Tokyo

Seems from the communal blog entries from the "Seven Samurai" we were all a bit tired and emotional on leaving Toge for Tokyo. On the way here in the car with Jamie, Aiko and Tim I commented on how grey weather usually makes me feel homesick, but here in Japan I have found something strangely familiar and comforting about it. Once after traveling in Brazil for two weeks, it began to rain for the first time as I was sat in a coach station waiting to make a long journey. I was so over whelmed with homesickness at the sight of rain that I began to sob irrationally. Everyone else in the Toge car thought this was mad, as I’m sure my fellow Brazilian travelers did at the time.

I haven’t to date been homesick here (unusually) but I am quite daunted at the thought of the next two weeks, when Karen and I will return to the village without the rest of the Samurai for company.
More generally on this trip for the first time in my life I have felt a little sad at growing older. Usually I can never understand people who get up tight about birthdays or ‘getting on’, as to date I have enjoyed life more and more as I’ve grown older. Being around Ben, Barney, Jamie and Aiko though I felt a little envious of the 10 years they have on me. Karen and I have only recently ‘found’ ourselves as documentary film makers (of a kind) and whilst I wouldn’t wish away the 10 years we’ve had working as artists I feel quite scared that approaching 40 I might have only just found the thing I could be good at. Being a late-developer is fine but actually not having enough physical energy to carry through what you want to do is not!
Sitting painting with them in Toge, I felt rather envious of their apparent easy conviction with their work, and being with the Juneaus here in Tokyo has made me a little nostalgic for Karen and I’s early collaborative art days … sometimes I wish I could still get worked up about making art in the way I now do about making films.

Lots of our past work has been made during or about journeys and despite being a reluctant traveler I have to acknowledge there is no better way to think about work/life - ideally whilst being driven through an unfamiliar landscape and on a grey day.

Supermarket Pets

I’m in Japan taking part in Grizedale Arts project Seven Samurai. We’re north of Tokyo in the remote village of Toge – a picturesque rice growing location with idyllic slopes of tiny paddy fields – which we’ve actually managed to see today as it’s stopped raining for the first time since we arrived 5 days ago.
Yesterday under the thin disguise of some project research I joined the group trip to the Tokamatchi Mega Mall in search of a pet shop. The Japanese evidently have a different attitude to the UK in relation to live pet sales … in the middle of Mushasi (the massive hardware/in fact ‘anything you really might want’ emporium) are live pets for sale. Their large price tags are somewhat at odds with their casual distribution amongst the aisles of make-up And bar-b-que equipment.


The brown dog was in a small open pen, literally in amongst the rows of pet food, behind him sat rows of cats, rabbits, ferrets, stag beetles, mice etc etc.
Behind all of these sat a glass-fronted salon where the local pet elite were being washed and blow-dried!
What I really liked was the above aisle pictorial signage - where you’d normally expect to see DIY, food, toiletries & gardening pictures here you could also see pets.