Naoshima, In Pictures

Naoshima was a total dream. The ferry took us to the island, and as I mentioned before, it conjures images of secret, evil lairs because of its remoteness. In actuality, it's pretty developed from the seaside fishing village up to the hotels at the top of the island.

On the terrace at the museum (Sean, Jeremy, and me)

When we first arrived, we went straight to the Chichu Art Museum by Tadao Ando, and then we went to our hotel/museum also by the same architect. As you can see in the pictures, the views out over the inland sea were gorgeous. We spent the first night grilling all sorts of sea creatures on a fire pit on the beach. Octopus, squid, clams, fish, etc.

Beach o' grilling

Let me not diminish how awesome our hotel was. To get to the most exclusive rooms (called "The Oval" because they're situated around an oval-shaped reflecting pool), you had to take a jungle monorail for 5 minutes. It screamed Dr. No or Jurassic Park or something, but it was so cool. And we really were living among the art for a few days in a swanky, swanky hotel with balconies facing the inland sea. I would be willing to go back if you ever need a tour guide.The monorail coming to get me (unmanned) and take me to the top

The second day was a free day, and because the island is being developed to have different art sites, I wandered around looking at those. Randomly, there will be an art piece in the middle of the beach. That night we had classic Japanese-style cuisine called Kaiseki (or known to us as "little portions of jelly things"). I'll do a whole post on that next.

Art!

We spent Tuesday morning looking at the different art installations down in the village. They've contracted a whole bunch of different architects/artists to renovate old buildings and put in pieces of art. So, there were 7 different buildings total. I guess it was sort of like Marfa and Donald Judd's work there. What was neat was to see these old buildings (like the dentist's office below) repurposed for art installations with super modern art. I like that juxtaposition.

Recognize anyone in that window? There was a two-story replica of Lady Liberty in this building.