Kyoto (and Kundai), Japan

Going to scientific conferences has taken me all over the world, except for this year since we are not allowed to travel and all the conferences were cancelled. In 2006 I went to the neuro-immunology conference in Nagoya Japan, and spent a week in Kyoto afterwards. This scene was painted in Kyoto- it was a great place to paint landscapes because of the wide, well organized streets and incredibly clean and safe feel to the city. I don't know which mountain this is, but its not Fuji since I was like hundreds of kilometers from Tokyo. There is a lot of cool detail here, I wonder if the Japanese symbols are accurate? 5x7" cold press, watercolour, 2006    (No. 1204)

I was surprised to find palm trees in Japan, they were reminiscent of a trip I did in California. There was something about the telephone poles and wires that inspired me, it had to do with how dense the cities were and the feeling you get. There are pastel tones in this painting it must have been near sundown. 5x8.5" cold press, watercolour, 2006  (No. 1207)

North of Kyoto was a small town called Kundai nestled in the mountains. There were having a fire festival that night, which involved the locals hauling giant torches down these narrow streets with hundreds of tourists looking on. I tried to depict one of the unlit torches on the right sidewalk. The goal of the festival was to draw the evil spirits down from the mountains and banish them. It was quite the experience. This painting is one of my personal favorites, not sure why I waited so long to post it on the blog. I had an old blog before 2008 so it may have been lost in the shuffle. 5x7" cold press, watercolour, 2006  (No. 1206)