Kumamoto

Baby, it’s cold outside.

It’s getting colder and colder here in Tokyo. The autumn leaves have all long gone by now. Yet, I still have a lot to write about my first Autumn in Japan. My last entry was all about Autumn leaves, viewing Momiji, the maple leaves, and Koyou, Ginko leaves, changed their colours are quite impressive.

When Autumn was about to be gone in the end of November, I was lucky enough to be invited to join the Kumamoto Artpolis event in Kumamoto with my earlier college professor and 5th year students from Bangkok. While in Kumamoto, I visited places, saw things, and captured some photos, as usual.

Let’s start with the first day, we walked to Kumamoto castle, so the city isn’t so big in my opinion, the weather was nice, sunny and chilled. Actually all the original buildings were demolished during the war or something in the past. The leftovers were only some foundations and some drawings of the castle for the government to re-build it all over. What I interested here are the stone wall around the castle, they were cut and put up in a very unique angled, I read some information but already forgotten the name of the method. The stone wall’s slope is getting very slope at the top, to protect the castle from any intruders. Inside the main hall, which has been re-build in whole, there is an exhibition showing the construction of the building and also the recreation of the building purpose’s atmosphere.

I personally think that Kumamoto is a nice place to visit, as for the architectures’ admirer, there were some splendid things to see. Kumamoto station Shiragawa (East) gate, stood Ryue Nishizawa-san’s Public arcade shed which is now only 1 phase constructed, and at the West gate, Sato Mitsuhiko-san’s Public bus stop shelter. In the city, Kazuo Shinohara-san’s Police station also stood very elegantly both during day and night time. I only had a chance to see the building in the night because our schedule there was kind of busy and I couldn’t get up in the early morning to go. Shame on me. In the night time, you can see the structure of it very obviously, but during daytime, according to the search engine’s photo, the facade glass are all reflective kind that you can’t see anything inside it.

The Artpolis held the architectural tour another city in the area of Kumamoto prefecture by bus. We visited Yatsushiro, Toyo Ito-san’s earlier works; Yatsushiro Fire station, Yatsushiro Municipal Museum. These two architecture were completed more than 20 years ago, yet we can still feel how contemporary they are now.

Mostly iPhone5s and lots of filters :P