Thursday, May 01, 2003



So yesterday was the first day of my holiday and Li only full day off. So we headed out to Shizuoka to the Prefectural Museum.
This was our first visit there and I was impressed. It is quite a nice place with beautiful gardens. The library is attached on one side and the Shizuoka University is just a few feet down. There are beautifully landscaped walking paths and those close to the museum have outdoor sculptures. This little boy made us very happy because he went running up to this life size chicken sculpture, jumped on and pretended he was riding a horse. The little baby mounted and dismounted like a professional. Had his grandparents all in giggles.

Inside we went through the exhibition that is on right now. It is about 6 rooms full of these giant wall-dividing screens all beautiful painted with stories and what not. Most are dated between 1500 and 1700. Some were very beautiful. Li got a kick out of the Chinese story ones and would explain them to me.

We did make a very strange observation.
When you go to a museum you can not help but notice the guards walking around in each area to make sure that you don’t touch or worse steal. They are always standing and walking though. In this museum it is only women all identically dressed, I swear their makeup and hair were also identical. They were all sitting on chairs – one for each room – and all had identical lap blankets. How they were able to stay awake I have NO idea.

They we headed into the permanent collection area of the museum. They had lots of contemporary art there- European, American and Asian. Some were the ones that you find in coffee table books. This made me quite impressed with little ol’ Shizuoka.

Then we went into the coooooooollllest section of all. The Rodin Wing. WOW!!! You leave the normal museum area and enter the most amazingly sky lit elliptical dome of glass. The area is small yet it feels HUGE The floor is divided into three tiers and all over we have bronze sculptures. But the best was featured in the middle – The Gates of Hell!!!

If I could have taken this piece home I would have. It is huge and amazing. Has anyone seen the movie ‘The Devils Advocate’? It is staring Keanu Reeves and Al Pachino. Amazing movie personally. Anyway at the end of the movie they are in Al Pachino’s apartment and he has the most amazing wall mural depicting Dante’s Inferno. The mural is actually 3-dimentional and it comes to life. Dante would have been impressed. Well I think that the idea came from the Gates of Hell because it looked exactly like it. Amazing.

Unfortunatly we were not allowed to take pictures so I bought postcards for my photo album instead. WOW!

Then we went to Shizuoka City and went shopping for mother’s day gifts. Almost finished, then we have to ship them all.
All and all a good relaxing fulfilling day. Hope you are all fine as well.
Andrea

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