Cherry Blossoms in Tokyo | March-April 2025
It’s Sakura season in Japan, so here are some cherry blossom shots I took last year throughout Tokyo. Cherry blossoms are a national obsession in Japan. The trees are planted everywhere and the sight of the flowers is ubiquitous, you couldn’t avoid them even if you wanted to (and why would you?). Some places are more famous for cherry blossom viewing than others - Ueno Park and Kitanomaru Park are always packed with crowds - but you don’t have to go very far to get in a good hanami (flower viewing) session. I could walk to the nearby park five minutes from my apartment and there was a lovely cherry tree in full bloom. I would stop to admire the trees while jogging in Yoyogi Park. One day in early April I even visited a path next to my old university lined with cherry trees, reliving the first time I ever went on hanami. That was exactly ten years ago. Time flies, years go by, and yet the cherry blossoms always flower, then fall away, replaced by verdant green.
🚀Saturday, April 4 from 2-5pm at the Main Library💥
Join for our last installment of the series Kintsugi: the Golden Age of Japanese cinema as we watch the 1968 epic kaiju film DESTROY ALL MONSTERS. The original Godzilla team of director Ishiro Honda, special-effects supervisor Eiji Tsuburaya, and composer Akira Ifukube teamed up again for this sci-fi extravaganza. Set in the year 1999 when Earth’s monsters have been captured and safely contained on Monster Island. Chaos erupts when a race of aliens called Kilaaks take control of the creatures and set them on a path of destruction across the world.
⏳Saturday, March 14 from 2-5pm at the Main Library, join for a FREE screening of Hiroshi Teshigahara‘a 1964 film Woman in the Dunes, showing as part of the series Kinsugi: the Golden Age of Japanese Cinema presented by Doug Markowitz.
🪲A man is kidnapped and thrown into a pit with a widowed woman. The two are forced to live in a wooden shack that is constantly beset by waves of sand from the surrounding dunes. They must dig themselves out constantly or the house will be buried.
📖Based on the novel by Kōbō Abe, who also adapted it into a screenplay, this disturbing, atmospheric film is imbued with the dreamlike consistency of surrealism where plot advancement is punctuated with evocative, textural shots of ever-creeping sand.
🎞️This print comes to us all the way from Baltimore (thank you inter-library loan!) so it’s a rare chance to get to see it on 16mm!
Scenes from Kanazawa | 2.20-21.2025
“Is it future or is it past?”
It’s a cliche to say that Japan is especially good at mixing old and new things, and this is very evident in a place like Kanazawa where traditional houses mingle with futuristic architecture and ultramodern art museums. Here are some notes on what we’re looking at:
1. ”Maru” Pavilion, 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art (designed by Kazuki Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA)
3+4. Contemplation Space, D. T. Suzuki Museum (designed by Yoshio Taniguchi) - Suzuki was a leading scholar on Zen Buddhism and was instrumental in introducing the philosophy to the West.
5. James Turrell, “Blue Planet Sky”, 21st Century Museum - probably my favorite Turrell skyspace, watching the snow fall though the opening was magical.
6. Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, “Pulse Room,” 21st Century Museum
7. Makiko Koie, photo from “P” series, 21st Century Museum
8. Katsu curry at Omicho Market. Kanazawa is famous for its dark, rich take on Japanese curry rice.
9-11. A traditional house museum in the Nagamachi neighborhood. The area was once a residential district for samurai and is full of historic architecture from the Edo period.
12. Oyama Shrine’s gate with its unique European influenced architecture. It was built in 1875 just after Japan opened to foreign trade.
13. Octopus tentacle from one of the stalls in Omicho Market. This is the absolute best place to find unique and delicious food in Kanazawa, I ended up having breakfast and lunch there almost daily.
14-20. Misc.
つづく
🛶Saturday, February 21 from 2-5pm at the Main Library
Join for a FREE screening of the 1953 film UGETSU as part of the series Kintsugi: the Golden Age of Japanese Cinema with guest presenter Doug Markowitz.
Scenes from Kanazawa | 2.19.2025
It’s already been a year since I returned to Japan – I must have blinked and missed it. It feels like just yesterday I was trudging through freshly fallen snow in Kanazawa, wandering among the pines in the famous garden of Kenroku-en and amidst the teahouse alleys of Higashichaya. A lovely place to spend a few days and enjoy the majesty of a Snow Country winter. ❄️
つづく
🗡️Saturday, February 7 be at the Main Library from 2-5pm for a FREE screening of Akira Kurosawa’s 1957 film THRONE OF BLOOD
This event is the first in the series Kintsugi: The Golden Age of Japanese Cinema - rising from the ashes after World War II, a newly rebuilt Japan quickly made a name for itself in the world of movies. Featuring films from Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi, and other legendary directors, this series explores a pivotal era in Japanese cinema, exploring how movies repaired a broken country and paved the way for the cultural powerhouse it is today.
Series curated and presented by Doug Markowitz.
A selection of related books and dvds will be available for check out 📚
New York photos from this year🗽be back soon✌️
As 2025 comes to a close I wrote about some of the best movies of the year at Expo, my Substack site. Visit the link in my profile or simply go to expoworld.substack.com 👀🗺️
Happy New Year! 🎆🎊 🥳
First Night in Tokyo | 2025.02.13 | Shinjuku
Last Night in Tokyo | 2025.04.29 | View of Rainbow Bridge from Tokyo Monorail to Haneda Airport
During Miami Art Week this year I reconnected with a lot of locals. I got a lot of the same questions. Where have you been all year? Weren’t you in Japan? When did you get back?
I did spend much of the first quarter of the year in Japan, the first time I’d visited the country since studying abroad in Tokyo nine years ago. Since then I will admit I’ve been a bit reclusive. But I have a good reason for it.
When I came back to the U.S., I felt a strong desire to build and maintain my connection to Japan, and so as an incentive to keep learning the language I gave myself a goal: I decided to take the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. Studying took up most of my free time this year between work and a long-ish trip to NYC for the New York Film Festival. After all that, I finally took the exam two weeks ago at level N4, which measures basic proficiency, and next year I plan on taking the test again at a higher level.
Results come out in January, and despite all the prep I don’t think I did well. Despite the disappointment, I’m not going to stop here. Anything worth doing takes time and effort, especially learning any new language as an adult with a career and bills to worry about. I knew going in that I am not at the end of a journey, but the beginning.
I will be in South Florida for the rest of 2025, and in 2026 I will begin preparing for a more permanent relocation to New York. Happy Holidays and see you next year. ✌️
Snow Country: Scenes from Shirakawa-go | 2.18.2025
It’s been over six months since I went to Japan and I’ve got a phone full of photos to share - better late than never!
This place, the village of Shirakawa-go in rural Gifu Prefecture, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, heavily touristed for a place of its diminutive size and relative remoteness high in the mountains. I had to take a Shinkansen from Tokyo and a bus from Kanazawa to get there. It was worth it - never have I seen so much snow. Winter Wonderland doesn’t even begin to describe it. This is the snowiest region in the world relative to its latitude, the “Snow Country” made famous by Kawabata’s novel. The massive amounts of snow the area gets is the reason why the locals have traditionally built these A-frame houses, called “gassho-zukuri,” and their unique architecture is what earned them the UNESCO listing. Impressive in any season, in the winter amidst the snowdrifts and “kabeyuki” (walls of snow) the houses take on an otherworldly quality. You can see why the place is so heavily touristed, even in the frigid cold. I spent a few hours there, explored among the houses and ate some nice, warm hida beef udon, and caught the bus back. Yet I don’t think I’ll ever forget that afternoon in that realm of endless snow.
つづく
When Wes Anderson began prepping his latest film, The Phoenician Scheme, back in 2023, fans of the beloved auteur got a pleasant surprise: Michael Cera would work with the director for the very first time.
Cera is one of those actors who feels like a perfect fit for Anderson, whose energetic, highly detailed style has made him one of the most famous independent filmmakers in the world. The actor has made a habit of playing charmingly awkward characters throughout his career, going back to his teens: George Michael Bluth on Arrested Development, Evan in Superbad, the titular hero of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, and more recently, the nondescript Allan in the hit blockbuster Barbie.
As a longtime fan of Anderson’s work, which includes beloved contemporary classics like The Royal Tenenbaums and The Grand Budapest Hotel, it doesn’t surprise the actor that fans feel he’s compatible with the filmmaker.
🎥🗞️ Read @dougmarkowitz ’s full interview with Michael Cera ahead of The Phoenician Scheme’s release at miaminewtimes.com.
#miaminewtimes #miamifl #michaelcera #wesanderson #wesandersonstyle #film #moviemaking
It’s nearing a month since I returned from Japan. I was there for ten weeks, I spent most of that time in Tokyo and also traveled to Osaka, Kanazawa, and Nagoya with shorter stops in Kyoto, Kamakura, and Shirakawa-go. I have plenty of photos, and I intend to post quite a lot of them.
I want to start with something very close to my heart, a visit to the late Ryuichi Sakamoto’s exhibition “Seeing Sound, Hearing Time” at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (@mot_museum_art_tokyo ). I reviewed the show for @hyperallergic , and you can read it at the link in my bio. I am very proud of this piece, and very happy I was able to write about Sakamoto. He remains my favorite musician of all time, an artist who was able to transform his work consistently and always create profound, soul-stirring beauty, even as he neared death. His work still haunts me, and as I wrote in my review, his spirit could be felt everywhere in the exhibition. I hope you can feel some of it in these images, and in what I wrote.
つづく。
