#753 Carpentry Tools Museum

My dad was a carpenter and he taught me about the tools of his trade.

I've put those tools to work in every house where I've lived. So the carpentry tools museum in Kobe, Japan is a must visit.

The "wow" entrance makes it clear this is part carpentry museum and part Japanese garden, all mindfully organized.

The English language brochure and unusual tickets made a good first impression.

This full set of carpentry tools consumes an entire wall.

Some tools, like this wooden 'open-air' chalk line are new to me.

Some tools, like this massive 'smoothing plane' and its resultant perfectly peeled translucent shaving are almost beyond belief.

Carpenters use these tools to create impressive joinery.

Carpenters care about matching the best wood species to a project, so the museum displays the real trees and encourages touching and smelling their shavings.

The scale model tea house (I'm not really a giant) shows off the craftsmanship involved in joining round framing members.

If my dad were still with us, I'd buy him a ticket to Kobe today.

Yours in appreciating carpenters and their tools,
Kelly

#752 Wright's Imperial Hotel

Frank Lloyd Wright's Imperial Hotel in Tokyo famously survived an earthquake when brand new and welcomed customers for more than fifty years but it couldn't survive a developer's bulldozer in the 1960s when a new high rise hotel took its place.

Wright's Imperial Hotel on its original site in Tokyo

But not all was lost. The hotel entrance and lobby were spared, then disassembled and moved over 200 miles to be restored and reassembled on the grounds of Meiji-Mura, an outdoor museum with 59 other rescued structures.

As part of the reconstruction, some of the weathered original Oya stone was replaced with newly quarried Oya stone to match the original.

On the day of our Meiji-Mura visit, light flooded the multi-story lobby.

The Imperial Hotel is among Wright's more ornamented and visually complex work.

But the stained glass (Wright's "light screens") is relatively simple.

The one-person window seat follows the rectilinear theme.

But if you look closely you'll find curved elements in the design as well.

Thank you, Frank Lloyd Wright. Thank you, Meiji-Mura.  Well done!

Yours in Japan's "Architectural Disneyland,"
Kelly   

#751 Tea House Concert

Every Monday afternoon on the top floor of perhaps the most famous tea house in China, musicians gather to play traditional Chinese music. We joined them, thanks to Michael and Sheila.

We drank tea and ate exotic food.

For two delightful hours, we listened, enjoyed, and applauded their dedication and skill.

Yours in music appreciation,
Kelly

#750 The Friends Cafe

If you're a fan of the TV show 'Friends', then you know the coffee shop called Central Perk. We found this Central Perk duplicate in Shanghai.

It's called The Friends Cafe.

Ross and Rachel could walk through the door any minute and plop down on that big orange couch, it seemed.

We drank our coffee and reminisced about old Friends story lines. The Chinese baristas were intently focused on the endless Friends loop playing on the TV. They laughed at all the jokes. So did we!

As we were leaving, we found Monica's apartment door too.

Yours in remembering Friends,
Kelly

#749 Visiting a Chinese Slaughterhouse

Everywhere we go we find architecture. In Shanghai, we found slaughterhouse architecture.

In 1933, the Shanghai Municipal Council built the largest slaughterhouse in Shanghai.

A brutalist concrete building with Art Deco elements, the design included 26 "air bridges" connecting a rectangular outer building with a circular inner building.

The gap between outer and inner is open to the sky.

The bridges were designed with varying angles and widths to ease the movement of livestock.

Once the slaughterhouse closed, the building was abandoned, but has now been renovated for mixed use including among others a Starbucks, dance studio, doggie day care, drone store, restaurant, furniture store, and a rooftop garden shop.

The raw concrete, stark lighting, and Escher-like quality make the renovated building a magnet for architecture buffs and photographers. But the vision to see these possibilities beyond the filth and stench of an abandoned slaughterhouse is a miracle.

Yours in appreciating an architectural lemon turned into lemonade,
Kelly

#748 Finding Pho

In Ho Chi Minh City, we searched for Pho.

We found it served outdoors.

We found it served in bistros.

We even found it served in a rooftop not-so-Secret Garden.

Yours in finding Pho,

Kelly

#747 Exploring Yangon by Train

We love train trips! So we decided to explore Yangon, Myanmar by rail.

We met our train at the Yangon Central Railway Station, the largest station in Myanmar.

Using the ticket booth map, our excellent guide described the Yangon Circular Railway. It's the local commuter line, a 28-mile loop with 39 stations.

At 200 Kyats each, our tickets cost about 13 cents.

We rode in one of the newer train cars from China.

The rules: No smoking, littering, or public displays of affection.

We rode the west side of the loop from the central station and jumped off at a stop near a local fruit market where bananas were unloaded and young Buddhist monks stepped gingerly across the tracks.

Yours in riding the rails,
Kelly