Arjan, Swanica, Adriaan, Roland and Maarten.



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And now back to work and returning to Japan to prepare for my exhibition at the Toko Gallery in Mashiko, Japan, from November 27 – December 9, 2010!

This is my grandfather Rudolphus Arens playing his cello, painted by his brother Albert Arens.

In this church he crafted the pulpit. Incredible!





This Art Deco style beautiful owl is standing on the corner of the pulpit.









Kind of interesting how I come back to my family via the research of Kamakura Bori all the way in Japan: life makes a full circle!







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We had breakfast in this restaurant, a typical old style house.



We had a nice time together for one day and then I returned to Holland to return the next day to Japan.

And it was snowing!

What a beautiful way to start the Holiday Season!

Zaimokuza was a thriving port. In 1232, the port of Wakaejima, Zaimokuza’s old name, was constructed to cope with the expanding commerce. Following expansion, the area became a trading center for lumber, and many lumber merchants settled here. It has been declared a national Historical Landmark in 1924, because it’s the sole surviving example of artificial harbor of the Kamakura Period.

The Gosho Jinja Shrine was built in 1908 to combine 8 shrines in this neighborhood. This shrine is the tutelary deity of Zaimokuza.

There is a lively festival on the second Sunday of each June. The festival is attended by many local people and starts with a service at the Gosho Jinja Shrine and requests for blessings and good trade. The “Mikoshi”, a portable heavy shrine , is carried by the faithful on Zaimokuza’s streets and into the sea at Zaimokuza beach. This takes more than 3 hours. The Mikoshi is thought to be very old, because the repository contains a plaque marked and corresponding to 1642. A small structure next to the repository holds a neatly preserved stone tablet, inscribed with an era name corresponding to 1262 and has been designated a National Important Work of Art.

Many laborers hauled carts loaded with lumber from Wakaejima Port, loudly chanting kiyariondo,a lumber-carriers’ chant on their way to Tsurugaoka Hachimangu Shrine, the new shrine for Minamoto no Yoritomo, the first shogun of Japan (1147-99). This chant has been handed down as tenno’uta in the Zaimokuza area. And so, it is still loudly chanted by all the carriers in a rythmic movement, swaying from one side to the other side of the street.(See the movie)

It is carried by men as well as women.

Also, children have their own mikoshi (on wheels) and learn it already at a young age.

On top of the shrine is a phoenix bird: the symbol of fire and divinity, immortality and invincibility.

Arriving on the beach.

And into the water!!

Watch the YouTube movie of the carriers coming out of the water and with their chants: Zaimokuza Festival: carrying the Mikoshi

I got a very bad cold the day after I arrived and I start coughing now, but I don’t have a fever. So, I don’t think it is the Swine flu.
Entering Japan was not easy. The first time from the USA the health checkers came into the airplane, retrieving the filled out papers about in what countries you had visited and in the meantime checking us with a temperature instrument to see if someone had a fever. The second time, June 9, the rules were more relaxed and we could leave the plane and give the papers at a check point before entering the airport. Now, I will stay here for a while and for sure I will be healthy by then.

The weather is still quite bearable, especially here in Zaimokuza, the neighborhood in which I live, and where there is most of the time a breeze from the sea. June is rainy season and the humidity increases. There was a big storm the first day I arrived and probably it will rain again tomorrow, but for today luckily it stayed dry with all the clouds in the sky.

It is still Sunday today, but evening. There were lots of people out enjoying the beach. People walking along the beach,                     children digging in the sand and jumping in the waves,

and special group gatherings on the beach like the Hawaii Club. Japanese people like anything from Hawaii: food, cloths and especially the music and dance.

The band is playing and the people are playing along on their Ukuleles.

Also, the summer season is almost upon us and they build again the summer recreation houses and restaurants on the beach for the vacationers and summer guests until the beginning of September.

And then there was the Zaimokuza neighborhood festival today.

Many women celebrate this day by wearing a “furisode”:a style of kimono with long sleeves that drape down. Since most are unable to put on a kimono by themselves due to the intricacies involved in putting one on, many choose to visit a beauty salon to dress and to set their hair. A full set of formal clothing is expensive, so it is usually either inherited or rented rather than being bought specially for the occasion. Men sometimes also wear traditional dress: dark kimono with hakama.

So, on Sunday we went to the Hachimangu Shrine and saw some beautifully dressed women. They go there to ask for blessings. But because still of the New Year a lot of people visited Kamakura that day.

A nice sunny cold day for this Coming-of-Age day.

The back with the sash “Obi” and the front of the dress.

Three beautiful women/girls with their handbags and “Zori” slippers.

Odawara Castle had very strong defenses, because it was situated on a hill, surrounded by moats with water on the low side, and dry ditches on the hill side, with banks, walls and cliffs located all around the castle, enabled the defenders to repel attacks by the great warriors Uesugi Kenshin and Takeda Shingen. However, Toyotomi Hideyoshi took the castle in 1590, and awarded the holdings of the Hojo to Tokugawa Ieyasu, who in turn installed the Okubo clan at Odawara.

During the Edo period, Odawara’s strategic location on the Tokaido,  between mountainous Hakone and Sagami Bay, gave it great strategic importance.

Eventually, Odawara Castle was destroyed by Meiji government. However, present Odawara Castle was rebuilt in 1960. It serves as a museum and is designated as an important historical monument. Today,  a reproduction of the castle stands high on a hill above Odawara.

The moat around the castle is filled with koi fish.

My boys, Arjan and Roland, and Katie had fun being dressed up as Samurai and Lady.

On the picture, where you see the yellow boat underneath the bridge, is the fish market.

The auctions usually end around 7:00 a.m. Afterwards, the purchased fish is either loaded onto trucks to be shipped to the next destination, or on small carts and moved to the many shops located inside of the market. There the shop owners cut and prepare the products for retail. In case of large fish, for example tuna and swordfish, cutting and preparation is elaborate. Frozen tuna and swordfish are often cut with large band saws, and fresh tuna is carved with extremely long knives (some well over a meter in length) called Oroshi hocho, maguro-bocho, or Hancho hocho.

There are two distinct sections of the market as a whole. The “inner market” (jonai shijo) is the licensed wholesale market, where the auctions and most of the processing of the fish take place, and where licensed wholesale dealers (approximately 900 of them) operate small stalls.

The “outer market” (jogai shijo) is a mixture of wholesale and retail shops that sell Japanese kitchen tools, restaurant supplies, groceries, and seafood, and many restaurants, especially sushi restaurants. Most of the shops in the outer market close by the early afternoon, and in the inner market even earlier.

And of course we had a delicious brunch in a Sushi bar with the freshest fish ever!

The first market in Tokyo was established by Tokugawa Ieyasu (the shogun who established Edo as capital and united the whole of Japan) during the Edo period to provide food for Edo castle (as Tokyo was known until the 1870s). Tokugawa Ieyasu invited fishermen from Osaka to Edo in order to provide fish for the castle. Fish not bought by the castle was sold near the Nihonbashi bridge, at a market called uogashi (literally, “fish quay”) which was one of many specialized wholesale markets that lined the canals of Edo.