Today a couple of friends and I went to the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography in Ebisu and saw a great exhibit called My Grandmothers by Miwa Yanagi.  From their website:

This series features young women depicted as they believe they will be in fifty years time, the backgrounds, clothing and even facial expressions all being determined after repeated discussion with her subjects, to create works in which time is condensed through the intermeshing of reality and imagination.

You can see most of the pictures here.  I really enjoyed it–each photo has a story or conversation posted next to it, explaining where the character is coming from.  One grandmother is a seer in a world put underwater by global warming.  Another is the president of a television network.  Yet another writes that all joy is contained in the current moment–tonight’s tea, the smell of these incense.  The whole thing was very, very cool.

One friend is a photography nut so we went to another exhibit as well.  Combined admission for both was 1400 yen, or a little over $14 at the current exchange rate.  A little steep but what are you doing to do.

In other news classes have been going pretty well.  Last week I went to my favorite schools and this week I go to… my more challenging schools.  Let’s put it that way.  I only go to Monday’s school twice a month, and I didn’t get a chance to go over lesson plans with Tuesday’s school so I’ll be armed with handouts but essentially blind.  Wednesday is a national holiday (woo!) and Thursday will hopefully be my last round of self-introductions, three weeks in.

I can’t let another pictureless post go by so here’s a mind blowing thing:

That’s regular tv on my cell phone, with subtitles and a data feed.  There’s sound too, of course, I just wanted to show off all the bells and whistles.  -_^