The 11th International Poster Triennial 2015 at the Toyama Museum of Modern Art

If you are in Toyama prefecture right now, lucky you, go (or run) and see this special exhibition at the Toyama Museum of Art, it's on until November 23rd. The permanent collection of the museum is also excellent. All this and my head exploded yet again. My head explodes quite frequently these days. I gave my scanner a considerable workout for you, so that your lovely eyes can feast on these beauties.
A few take-outs from the catalogue, enjoy!

Naganeo Yuta
Japan
Life

Miki Ken

Japan

APPLE +

François Caspar

France

The Night, I'm not afraid

K. Domenik Geissbüehler

Switzerland

Palestrina (Oper)

Katarzina Zapart

Poland

Whispering the "alphabet"

Higuchi Yuji

Japan

Amputee Venus show

Koizumi Yumi

Japan

Life of Grape

Chen Jia-Syuan

Taiwan

The children labor

Left: Lin Mei-Xiu

Taiwan

Don't waste food

Right: Cichy Iwona

Poland

Animal abuse, it hurts

Pan Xiao Dong

China

Merge

Lex Drewinski

Germany/Poland

Free Pussy Riot

Elham Hemmat

Iran

My hands just shelter I have

Cheng Zed Cheng

China

Chao Xiaowan Handmade Soap

Nitta Michiko

Japan

twilight window

You Yibin

China

New Lunar Calendar

Ho Wui

China

Memo-missing

Kim Jaehong

Korea

You can recycle!

Ramzani Jamaledin

Iran

Kind thought compassionately of thinking

Chen Hsuan-I

Taiwan

Labeling theory - The true colours

Yamauchi Shunyo

Japan

Alliance

Kawajiri Ryuichi

Japan

Her legs one day. Wait

Saito Hiroshi

Japan

Toyama

Asaba Katsumi

Japan

Asaba's typography

Nagashima Rikako

Japan

Zucca Dayz

and my personal favourite :-))

Fukushima Osamu

Japan

Yamanote Jijosha "Don Juan"

The Maxwell Street Market

The good thing with jet lag is it gets you out there at sunrise and you almost have the city for yourself. I like that. And I like early-weekend-morning-empty-metro-taking-you-to-the-suburbs. 

You won't find anything fancy at the Maxwell Street Market but you'll get a certain sense of oh OK this is where "real" people live and buy their socks, batteries, mattresses, shampoo, Bears merchandise etc..

Sellers and buyers are for a large part latin american and black, which means…. great street food! I HAD to have a quesadilla or two for lunch, followed by a raspberry churro. That was around 9.30am
:-))

On my way back I found an odd couple of shrines somewhere in the back alleys. Some kind of black magic? I don't know. Or maybe just a tribute to the god of pineapples :-)) (the book says "Religion for Dummies").

Mind your manners and cowgirls

The latest "Manners in the Metro" poster. What is she trying to do to those poor rams?  Those Tokyo Metro posters are getting weirder and weirder. Here is the whole series if you are interested:

http://www.metrocf.or.jp/manners/manner-poster.html

Mito Kairakuen - Part 1: Entering the garden

A day trip to the garden of Kairakuen with the girls on Saturday. Kairakuen is one of the three major landscape gardens of Japan and is famous for its plum trees, in full blossom this week up north where it is a bit colder than in Tokyo (expecting cherry blossoms very soon).

It is of course a tourist attraction, and Japan knows very well how to make a place attractive to tourists. All the main elements are there and it never fails. The seasonal festival, the "plum sisters" to take photos with, the themed shrine, the food stands, the bento boxes, the games for kids, the souvenir shops.

Those are the stairs and the gate of the shrine, but we'll get back to that later on...

The place looks deserted but this was around 10am before the crowd. It's always so much better to arrive early before the buses.

More food. And we haven't entered the garden yet!

Photographing the Plum Queen?

Each of the 3000 trees of the garden is labeled and numbered, with its name, age, and sometimes additional information. Some trees of particular interest also have their own special name (e.g. Moon Shadow).

Bao Zhen's delicate hands taking a snapshot with her phone. Lucky the weather was gorgeous and the sky gently blue. 

To be continued….