Ukiyo-e Woodblock Printmaking and walking the Omotesando Hills Shopping Area

HI EVERYBODY!

We thought you might enjoy seeing what we saw yesterday as we went to see some beautiful woodblock prints in a museum where a collection of Ukiyo-e woodblock prints is displayed.  At this time of year they display some great ones as Japan loves Halloween and so the prints were on this scary theme.  Every print had either an ugly frog, skeleton, ghoul, slug, witch-like character, or something that was scary.  Many depicted Japanese stories. Most of them were from the mid-1800's and the dyes were from flowers, vegetables, barks, etc.  Unfortunately, photos were not allowed.

Below is a website where they are showing this art and how it is done on a simple picture.  The ones we saw were much more detailed but you can get an idea about how difficult it is to make each pictures using different woodblocks for each color.

   Click on the link below to see Ukiyo-e woodblock printmaking:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8uF3PZ3KGQ

You can also click on the link below to see the museum and many of the pictures that we saw there:  (To see the pictures better, click on one of the pictures and then click on the arrow for it to go to each picture.)

https://www.google.co.jp/search?q=ukiyo-e+museum+tokyo&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=EuYCVITEMdfp8AXyioKAAw&ved=0CH4QsAQ&biw=1272&bih=771

After this we decided to walk home through the Omotesando Hlls shopping area. This area has many name brand shops, a few of which you can see as you walk along with us:

Here is a man with his four dogs,  We stopped and asked him if we could take their photos.  At least one of the dogs had some rouge on it's cheeks which you can't see in the photos. You see lots and lots of people out with their dogs and many of these dogs are in strollers.

We stopped at this shop, the Oriental Bazaar, which had some interesting items.  Most of the items were very expensive but fun to look at and which you will see in the next couple of pictures.

So beautiful but so expensive!

Then it was time to move on.

A glass piano!  I think the sound of a Kawai piano is so beautiful. Kawaii actually means "cute" in Japanese.  Be careful, though, as Kowai means "creepy or scary".  One of the senior couple missionary sisters made the mistake of stopping a woman on the street and told her that her daughter was Kowai instead of saying Kawaii. She wondered why the woman gave her a not so nice look until later when she found out what she had told her!

I guess all good things have to come to an 'end' (get it?) as we walked through a cemetery on the way home, too.

That was all yesterday.  Today we had the wonderful sister missionaries over with a sweet family. The mother in the family is a member who has been away from the Church for fourteen years.  The mother, Rebekah, is from Uruguay so Elder Chandler has enjoyed speaking with her in Spanish but she really doesn't know much about the gospel.  The last few weeks she has been bringing her children to Church with her, though.  Today her husband came with the family to our apartment for dinner.  He is very nice and he is from Germany.  They just moved to a really nice apartment and they asked Elder Chandler to please come and dedicate their home.  So later this afternoon we went to their apartment and he was able to to do that for them.  Their was such a beautiful sweet Spirit there and I'm sure that the husband was able to feel that, too.  This family have been having the sister missionaries come to their home and the sisters have been teaching them, and Rebekah and Igor and their children are continuing to listen and study more about the gospel.  This will be a great blessing in their lives and will bring them much joy and happiness to them as they study and learn more about the gospel of Jesus Christ.

HAVE A GREAT WEEK EVERYBODY!!!