Saturday 2 November 2013

Old city of Kawagoe

Spontaneous ideas are the best ideas sometimes!
We decided to go to the city of Kawagoe, which still has a remaining 'old' part of town. It's called "Ko-edo" the small Edo of Japan. You can still get a taste of how things were in the Edo times ... that is if you can ignore all the tourists that pour in on the weekends.







For today's style I mixed casual clothes and off-brand Lolita items to give me more freedom of movement, instead of going in Lolita. Perfect for browsing and not too OTT. Also, since I didn't wear a petticoat I avoided cleaning the shelves of the small shops with the frill of my behind. (Lolitas will know what I mean)


A famous landmark  is the "Toki no Kane" the "chime of time" which is a tower, that used to announce what time it was to the citizens. In Europe this was usually done by a church or the town crier.

Upon browsing the streets I met a friendly Cat mascot, and decided to buy some roasted Rice Triangles with fish at his shop.



We were super lucky, because there was also a spontaneous Light up Festival today. Several artists made large sculptures out of empty plastic bottles, filled them with water and added some fairy lights: Voila, art was done! It didn't look fantastic in the daylight, but amazing at night time!

BEFORE

AFTER

I am tempted to try this around Christmas, even though I am skeptical if water + electricity is such a good idea for amateurs like me. I might use a battery powered fairy light chain.

Most impressive was the "Projection mapping" that was shown that night. It's also called 'spatial augmented reality'. It's basically a video, projected onto a building, making it look like it moves etc. The show lasted for about 15 minutes, and it really looked like the house was moving, shifting and changing shape. Very impressive.




I've also been editing bits of the next video for tomorrow, I am quite excited which winner names for the Pokemon give away I will pull out of the hat!
Good night and love from Japan
x
Cathy

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