Yesterday, I was feeling pretty tired after a few long days so I didn't do much other than go out for lunch and wander around the local area for a bit. Nothing big happened (fortunately?) so not much to report. I did come across this hand-drawn Miku in the wild though

Today, I also didn't do much because I forgot to set my alarm before going to sleep so ended up waking up at 1 PM. I guess I did need the sleep though? By the time I finished waking up, doing chores, and getting ready for the day it was already 3 PM! I decided I would head to the Tokyo National Museum since it's pretty close by and I didn't have anything better planned and wanted to stay somewhere walkable since my energy levels were low and I figured that would mean I wouldn't want to stay out until after the trains cleared from rush hour

The main cool thing I saw was the special exhibit, Expressing Prayer, Capturing Form Buddhist Sculptures by UNKEI from the Northern Round Hall of Kohfukuji Temple. No pictures were allowed, but it was basically a single room set up to show off 7 National Treasure statues created by a sculptor from the mid-12th century, Unkei. The main bronze sculpture of Miroku Nyorai and the scholar monks Mujaku and Seshin were cool but I really liked the Four Heavenly Kings wooden statues. Each felt pretty dynamic and pretty realistic. Although they were made out of wood, they had been painted in a way that made them seem almost metallic to me.

Other than the special exhibit, there were other cool things too. I was really drawn to long picture scrolls and shoji screen doors like usual. The National Treasure Gallery (room 2 on the second floor) had a scroll depicting the Heiji Rebellion of 1159.

Actually, even cooler is that the museum actually provides high quality imagery of this work and many others on its site: "The Illustrated Tale of Heiji".

Another favorite from the main exhibition halls was the ukiyo-e section. Out of the ones on display, I think I liked Mochizuki by Hiroshige the most. It's part of his The Sixty-nine Stations of the Kiso Kaidō series and they had multiple woodblock prints from the series.

There was also a cool section of the museum called the "Japanese Culture Plaza" that was a more interactive section. They had an ukiyo-e section where you could try woodblock printmaking yourself. I gave it a shot and was worried it would be really bad but it turned out alright. Definitely I didn't align the paper properly every time (should have been more deliberate), and didn't push the stamps straight down and up, so the colors aren't all in the right places.

You can see in my attempt that colors are spilling over the black inking so my alignment wasn't proper. It really goes to show how talented ukiyo-e carvers and printers are since they do this thousands of times without this kind of error. Just look at the Hiroshige print above! It's way more complex and the colors are all in the proper places. And that's with actual paint, not just stamps like in the exhibit. Wow!

By the time I had seen all of this stuff, the museum was already about to close for the day since it was almost 5 PM. So I didn't even explore all of the rooms in the main building or one of the other wings!