Lucinda is on vacation this week, and today we went to see the amazing Picasso exhibit at the gorgeous National Art Center, Tokyo.
The "Picasso: His Life, His Creation" show, plus a second show at the nearby Suntory Museum in Tokyo Midtown, presents more than 200 paintings, drawings and sculpture on loan from my favorite museum, the Musee National Picasso in Paris.
At the National Art Center, the works are laid out by period - blue period, Cubism, and so on - with famous paintings of Dora Maar and one I'd never seen, "Massacre in Korea."
In a parenting inspiration, I brought pads of paper for Lucinda and 3 other first graders who came with us (and another mom), and the museum provided perfectly sharpened, high-quality pencils when they saw us take out pens.
The girls seemed overwhelmed by the museum experience at first, but settled down when they started to copy some of the paintings and to, as I suggested, "move the furniture around" on drawings of other girls' faces.
This exhibit, which will close on Dec 14, is super-fantastic. Adults: 1500 yen; elem school kids: Free! I hope to take Blaine back, sans enfants, for a second look.
Showing posts with label Museum. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Museum. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Trailing spouse: Philippines edition
Blaine has been in the Philippines for 10 days and 3 stories, so I've had lots of time with the kids! (He's on his way home tonight.)
This weekend on Sunday, I took the kids to what's known in Tokyo as the "Science Museum," or Kagaku Gijutsukan. It's in Kitanomaru Koen (park) near the Imperial Palace.
We took the subway to Kudanshita station to the boundary of the park...
The "Must Love Japan" website tells me that the parkland used to be part of Edo Castle and is now "part of The Imperial Palace Outer Garden." So we walked over a bridge and gazed down at the massive moat that protected the old castle...
...and then walked thru these two massive gates.
We walked through the park and past the Nippon Budokan, a famous architectural structure that was built for the judo competition in the 1960 Olympics. Wikipedia tells me that it's now used for rock concerts, and that the Beatles played their first Japanese concert here in 1966.
Then we came to the museum.
Tickets are cheap, 600 yen/adult and 250 yen/child over 4. On the whole, I'd give the museum a B-, but it did have some cool stuff related to physical science: magnetics, levers and gears, robotics, light and electricity.
Here are some photos of what we did and saw there.
Among the robots was this "secretary," who was sitting in a glass booth. If you said something to her - like, say, "konnichiwa"- she responded with a stream of Japanese that I couldn't understand beyond "my name is..."
The museum also had this small restaurant on the 4th floor, run by two older ladies who dished up soba and udon noodles in cold or hot broth - and corn dogs for the kids.
It wasn't the best day trip we'd ever had, but I would take the kids back there when they're a little older.
This weekend on Sunday, I took the kids to what's known in Tokyo as the "Science Museum," or Kagaku Gijutsukan. It's in Kitanomaru Koen (park) near the Imperial Palace.
We took the subway to Kudanshita station to the boundary of the park...
The "Must Love Japan" website tells me that the parkland used to be part of Edo Castle and is now "part of The Imperial Palace Outer Garden." So we walked over a bridge and gazed down at the massive moat that protected the old castle...
...and then walked thru these two massive gates.
We walked through the park and past the Nippon Budokan, a famous architectural structure that was built for the judo competition in the 1960 Olympics. Wikipedia tells me that it's now used for rock concerts, and that the Beatles played their first Japanese concert here in 1966.
Then we came to the museum.
Tickets are cheap, 600 yen/adult and 250 yen/child over 4. On the whole, I'd give the museum a B-, but it did have some cool stuff related to physical science: magnetics, levers and gears, robotics, light and electricity.
Here are some photos of what we did and saw there.
Among the robots was this "secretary," who was sitting in a glass booth. If you said something to her - like, say, "konnichiwa"- she responded with a stream of Japanese that I couldn't understand beyond "my name is..."
The museum also had this small restaurant on the 4th floor, run by two older ladies who dished up soba and udon noodles in cold or hot broth - and corn dogs for the kids.
It wasn't the best day trip we'd ever had, but I would take the kids back there when they're a little older.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Old Edo
On a recent day off from school, Lucinda and I went with our friends Laurie and Sylvan Lebrun to a museum that recreates scenes from "old Edo," as Tokyo was called from 1457 to 1868.
The Fukagawa Edo Museum, which is an old-style neighborhood, is very modern on the outside - a typically enormous concrete structure.
But inside there's a reconstructed, 19th-century riverside neighborhood. Here's a drawing of the concept and what you find after paying an entrance fee of 300 yen ($3) for adults and 50 yen (50 cents) for children.
There were a few elderly Japanese who worked, or volunteered, in the museum, sort of like greeters at Wal-Mart. One woman silently followed us around - like a "minder" in a Communist country - to make sure that Lucinda and Sylvan (two very responsible kindergarteners) didn't wreck anything. But an elderly man, who spoke very good English, more generously explained what we were looking at. (Forgive the dim pix; the light in the museum changed day-to-night-to-day, etc., also somewhat annoying.)
Edo neighborhoods like this one were mainly occupied by young, single laborers or married men whose wives were in the country. The names of the inhabitants are listed on a board above the gate leading to a small boarding house and other dwellings, as a security measure to keep strangers out.
In the boarding house, each laborer lived in a single room that was smaller than our current kitchen. The floors are tatami mats, the sleeping futons are folded in the corner (back left in the photo) during the day. Each has a tiny kitchen and a small portable table or tray to serve and eat on.
Sometimes there were rice-straw "raincoats" and hats hanging inside the door, and tiny sandals by the door.
There was a produce store (top) and a rice store (bottom), with big foot-levers to smash the rice into paste, or "mochi."
Also available for viewing: a water taxi to take laborers elsewhere to have a little fun, and a "fire tower" where residents would check for smoke every hour, because a moderate fire would wipe out the whole place in minutes. And a public square with a shack to sell "yakitori" or grilled seafood and veggies.
It was fun and interesting - if restrained. After our visit, we found a local restaurant for noodles, rice and tempura, and sat at traditional low-to-ground Japanese tables, very in-tune with our museum visit.
The Fukagawa Edo Museum, which is an old-style neighborhood, is very modern on the outside - a typically enormous concrete structure.
But inside there's a reconstructed, 19th-century riverside neighborhood. Here's a drawing of the concept and what you find after paying an entrance fee of 300 yen ($3) for adults and 50 yen (50 cents) for children.
There were a few elderly Japanese who worked, or volunteered, in the museum, sort of like greeters at Wal-Mart. One woman silently followed us around - like a "minder" in a Communist country - to make sure that Lucinda and Sylvan (two very responsible kindergarteners) didn't wreck anything. But an elderly man, who spoke very good English, more generously explained what we were looking at. (Forgive the dim pix; the light in the museum changed day-to-night-to-day, etc., also somewhat annoying.)
Edo neighborhoods like this one were mainly occupied by young, single laborers or married men whose wives were in the country. The names of the inhabitants are listed on a board above the gate leading to a small boarding house and other dwellings, as a security measure to keep strangers out.
In the boarding house, each laborer lived in a single room that was smaller than our current kitchen. The floors are tatami mats, the sleeping futons are folded in the corner (back left in the photo) during the day. Each has a tiny kitchen and a small portable table or tray to serve and eat on.
Sometimes there were rice-straw "raincoats" and hats hanging inside the door, and tiny sandals by the door.
There was a produce store (top) and a rice store (bottom), with big foot-levers to smash the rice into paste, or "mochi."
Also available for viewing: a water taxi to take laborers elsewhere to have a little fun, and a "fire tower" where residents would check for smoke every hour, because a moderate fire would wipe out the whole place in minutes. And a public square with a shack to sell "yakitori" or grilled seafood and veggies.
It was fun and interesting - if restrained. After our visit, we found a local restaurant for noodles, rice and tempura, and sat at traditional low-to-ground Japanese tables, very in-tune with our museum visit.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Drumming
The same Saturday, we went to the Drum Museum near Asakusa.
The Drum Museum is small but so much fun - easily one of my favorite places to take young children. Lots of instruments to play, no one else there, and the room must be decently soundproofed because we did not leave with headaches.
The museum is on the 4th floor of this brick building; the ground floor is, reasonably, a percussion shop.
The museum is a medium-sized room filled with a few hundred percussion instruments.
We tried most of the instruments in about an hour. There were drums and shakers and jigglers made of wood and skins and horns and a turtle shell. A big hollow stick filled with rice (or something similarly small) sounds like falling rain when you flip it upside down.
Short videos seem like the best way to show and tell.
Here's Arno with an instrument from Indonesia:
Lucinda with this neat jiggling thing, maybe also from Indonesia?
Blaine with a Korean drum:
Lucinda plays a steel drum from Jamaica.
Drumming by our friends, Rena Singer (her husband, John Murphy, works for the Wall St. Journal) and her two children, Benjamin and Eden:
And finally, these pleasant Tinkerbell bells:
The Drum Museum is small but so much fun - easily one of my favorite places to take young children. Lots of instruments to play, no one else there, and the room must be decently soundproofed because we did not leave with headaches.
The museum is on the 4th floor of this brick building; the ground floor is, reasonably, a percussion shop.
The museum is a medium-sized room filled with a few hundred percussion instruments.
We tried most of the instruments in about an hour. There were drums and shakers and jigglers made of wood and skins and horns and a turtle shell. A big hollow stick filled with rice (or something similarly small) sounds like falling rain when you flip it upside down.
Short videos seem like the best way to show and tell.
Here's Arno with an instrument from Indonesia:
Lucinda with this neat jiggling thing, maybe also from Indonesia?
Blaine with a Korean drum:
Lucinda plays a steel drum from Jamaica.
Drumming by our friends, Rena Singer (her husband, John Murphy, works for the Wall St. Journal) and her two children, Benjamin and Eden:
And finally, these pleasant Tinkerbell bells:
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Dinosaur bones
Now in Week 3 of our Endless Winter Vacation, I took the kids to a very cool museum Thursday, the National Science and Nature Museum in Ueno Park in northeast Tokyo.
It's a huge, lovely park with several national museums and a zoo, and it reminds me of Riverside Park with long straight paths bordered by trees. I think it's a cherry blossom hotspot in March or April.
The museum's coolest thing was an entire building devoted to biodiversity, with a decent collection of dinosaurs...
...and a massive, fascinating exhibit on prehistoric land and sea mammals, many of which I didn't know existed. A mammoth, sure...
But this upside-down, sort-of rhino? And this other thing (photo by Arno)?
Lucinda was fascinated by three skeletons and dummies showing human evolution from Lucy to Neanderthal man to what looked more like Homo sapiens. "Lucy" was Lucinda's height; Arno liked the spear carried by Mr. Sapiens. (Sorry, forgot to take photo.)
There was a huge room displaying tree-of-life stuff: from amoebas to 100 types of modern spiders and 30 dragonflies to a few dozen crabs and lobsters, and on up to birds and some mammals.
Added bonus: cheap, excellent tourist stop. 600 yen for me (about $5) and free for kids under 12. We bought Ritz crackers for lunch because the restaurant had a 1 hr wait, and chilled vending-machine lattes for Lucinda and me.
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