the fifth of may is a japanese holiday called ‘kodomo no hi‘ (children’s day). the holiday used to be called ‘boy’s day’, but the government decided to rename it children’s day to celebrate the happiness of all children. we still celebrate boys on this day since there is a girl’s day on the third of march.

for boy’s day, we raise a carp flag (koi nobori) and display dolls in samurai armor. one of the dolls represent ‘kintaro‘. kintaro was raised in the mountains by his mother. kintaro rides a bear instead of a horse. the animals of the forest became his friends due to his gentle nature. eventually kintaro joins up with a Samurai clan and helps to defeat a gang of demons. kintaro is a symbol of a healthy and strong boy.

i don’t have carp flags or the dolls yet, so i made an origami kabuto and jinbei kimono for elijah. i happened to have a kintaro bib. i tried to put a paper origami kabuto on his head, but he ate it. here he is on his rocking moose.

i hope he had fun on his first boy’s day. or maybe he’s sick of being a model…

paul and i found this shirt at nishimatsu-ya, a baby clothes shop in japan. my mom and my sister-in-law, mayumi-chan, kept telling us to go check out this shop — lots of cute baby clothes, with reasonable prices.

so one day we dropped in to do some shopping. we were happy to find that most of the clothes they carry have awesome engrish on them. we had such a great time we ended up going back there again and again.

elijah seems a little skeptical, but that’s his usual face so we don’t worry about it.

rainbow world very wonderful
nice the sky happily
we are all well so special
smile big sky

on the back of the shirt, it says ‘highest’.

(photos:: seven month old elijah)

on our way to see our friends in kyoto, we made a brief stop at kyoto station. paul and i used to go there to take pictures of the new kyoto station.

in the station, there was a small gallery promoting a new drama situated in kyoto. they didn’t forget to make this photo board. i love these thing — so stupid and so good. of course, elijah was the first victim.

we think elijah would make a pretty mr. geisha-san.

sorry, elijah. your papa and mama love these stupid things…

we love you, elijah! don’t forget.

elijah is big in japan.  i mean it literally.  when we went back to japan over the holidays, we stayed in wakayama, kyoto and tokyo. everywhere we went, people said to us, ‘he’s so big! Soooo big!’.

elijah’s also big in canada. he’s now almost 8 months old and weighs almost 10kg.  he’s on the 90th percentile growth curve.  i can feel it in my arms — more and more muscle.

it’s been a crazy couple of weeks since we got back from japan. finally i have some time to organize photos from our trip.

here are some photos from a subway ride in kyoto.  a bunch of high school girls came up to us saying ‘kawaii, kawaii!’ to elijah. they surrounded us in the subway train and took a lot of photos of elijah with their cell phones.

one of the girls gave him a chiroru choco (a popular bite-size chocolate).  her friends teased her saying it’s too soon for a baby to eat chocolate.  she was very sweet.  she put the chocolate back in her pocket, but then she snuck it under elijah’s leg as we were getting ready to get off the train.

of course, paul and i ate the chocolate. it was the sweetest chocolate.

i’m doing a show at cafe pause in ikebukuro, tokyo. i’m showing some prints of my favorite drawings. initially, i was planning to show original drawings, but i realized it would be much easier to bring prints with me, especially since i’m travelling with my baby. we all came to japan at the end of december to spend new year’s with my family in wakayama. then paul, elijah and i went to tokyo to set up this show.

this is my first show in japan, actually. i started my art career in canada, years after i left japan in 2000. my work is pretty well known online, with my website and flickr and many links from different sites around the world. i write my blog in english, so my contacts have been mostly non-japanese. i’ve shown work in many different places, but never before in japan.

jean snow and elijah

the person who contacted me to do this show is jean snow. he’s a canadian living in tokyo who writes a blog about design and pop culture in tokyo. he found me after my drawings were linked from drawn!, even though the link was broken (he searched my name on google). jean asked me if i was interested in doing a show at cafe pause, where he sets up events. we arranged the time so we could also spend new year’s with my family on the same trip.

cafe pause is about a 10 minute walk from ikebukuro station. it stands on a corner lot and the two walls facing the streets have big wall-to-wall windows that create an open-air feeling. there are display areas on the pillars and on the walls (but not much wall space because of all the windows). i put up small prints on the bookshelves on the pillars and along one wall, and some big prints on the open wall space. i filled up the space with images tightly, using 44 prints in total (many of them used twice in different places). i made two prints (’inside of me’ and ‘after all’) so large (18 x 24″) that their heads are bigger than lifesize. someday, i’d like to make huge prints that would swallow our minds and bodies –ultraman size would be nice.

it’s been awhile since i did a show in a cafe gallery - my favorite place to show my drawings. i like my work to be seen as part of daily life. people come to a cafe for a cup of coffee or to meet someone, not specifically to look at art. when they go home that evening to have a bath, if they suddenly remember my drawings and the images come out of the mist of the bath, that would be wonderful.

the show will be on until january 13th. the prints are all for sale, and there are free postcards, too.

cafe pause
2-14-12-1F Minami-Ikebukuro
Toshima-ku, Tokyo
171-0022

Phone: 03-5950-6117
Fax: 03-5950-6180

here are a couple of monkey videos from japan.

pan-kun is a chimpanzee who has many human adventures with the bulldog, james. in this episode, pan-kun and james experience firefighter training and an earthquake simulation.

pan-kun… please stop eating grapes or i can’t stop laughing at you…

pan-kun and james go to an elementary school and do sit-ups. the average 10-year-old japanese boys can do 19 sit-ups and average japanese female adult can do 18 sit-ups in 30 seconds. how many sit-ups can pan-kun and james do?!

okay, i shouldn’t call pan-kun a monkey, he’s a chimpanzee — a kind of ape. i call him a monkey because i have monkey-chimpanzee confusion. in my japanese mind, they are all “saru” to me…

japanese ad for “jersey milk” cookies.
i think beethoven would be proud…

american ad for “milky the marvelous milking cow”, 1978.
don’t drink the milk, kids…

milk, milk, miiiiiiilllllk.
beautiful and hypnotic song from sesame street, 1970s.
teaching kids without talking…

i might be wrong, but i heard it’s going to be PLUS 3 again this afternoon in saskatoon. “PLUS 3″, everyone. i don’t remember the last time i saw a plus sign for saskatoon weather…

clearly, summer is here.

a couple days ago, it was -13 degrees. that’s a jump of 16 degrees. now i’m too hot.

to celebrate the beginning of summer in canada, there’s nothing better than fireworks. this video is from the omagari all-japan fireworks competition, held every year on the last saturday in august in omagari, akita prefecture. the fireworks are synchronized with music, and the timing is amazing. in one part, i can see swans appearing under the dim light of oboro-zuki (hazy moon). it’s just gorgeous, and the ending is spectacular!

also posted to videosift.

tezuka osamu is the japanese animator known as the “father of anime”. i grew up watching his work, including “ribon no kishi” (princess knight), “fushigi na merumo chan” (marvelous melmo), and of course “tetsuwan atomu” (astro boy).

in general, i hate anime. i don’t own any manga comics. i just don’t like the style of japanese animation that’s most famous in the west — what people call “japanimation”, with the superbig eyes and supercute faces. i think it’s creepy, in a bad way. people often assume that i’m an anime fan, maybe because i’m japanese and i draw, but i really never pay attention to it.

tezuka osamu created the style with big eyes and cute faces, but somehow i still like his work. maybe it’s nostalgia, but i think his drawings are more beautiful and gracious than the style of the recent anime i’ve seen. my favorite work of his is a manga, “black jack“, which i read as a high school student.

“memory” is an animated short that uses a mixture of drawn animation and cut-out images. none of it looks like anime. you might be surprised by the style — but it looks really cool. the story is insightful about the psychology of memory of individuals and a culture. i like the idea that futuristic people will have a very different idea about us (our “toilet culture”) than we do.

tifanny was the best. naomi needs more training. nikita should forget her past.

this is simply amazing.

it’s probably filmed in japan.

originally found on videosift.