Umeda Sky Building

 

Umeda Sky Buildings is one of the iconic modern buuldings of Osaka.

It is located between the Yodo River and Osaka Station and Umeda Station.

Though the area around it continues to be edevloped, there are no other high-rise structures around it.

It was designed by Hara Hiyoshi and opened in 1993.

It is 173 meters tall and has 40 floors.

It consisites of two towers connected at the upper floor.

The design is said to have been partly inspired by La Grande Arche de la Drfense in Paris

These two shots are taken looking up from inside some of the modern sculptures outside the building.

It is a multi-use building with many companies having offices in it.

many festivals and markets take place under it and in front of it.

The most popular feature of the building is the rooftop observation deck known as the Floating Garden Observatory accessible via the glass-enclosed escalators that cross the open central space.

I will post photos of the observatory, escalators, and views from later....

These last two shots are off the building immediately next door.

Meteor Plaza

 

Meteor Plaza is located in the port of Shichirui on the Shimane Peninsuka. Now part ofMihonoseki which itself is now part of nMatsue City.

Its primary function is as a ferry terminal operating car ferries and high-speed ferries to the Oki Islands.

Meteor Plaza was designed by Shimane-born architect Shin Takamatsu and opened in 1995

As well as the ferry terminal the complex also houses a saltwater swimming pool and a museum and performance space, although I am unsure how often the pool opens nowadays.

The museum is devoted to the meteor that struck the earth a few kilometers away in 1992.

The cone of the structure represents the meteor's trajectory, and the weird curved shape is the shape of the meteor itself.

The meteor crashed  through a local house and embedded itself in the earth. The inhabitants, who were home at the time, didn't notice it until next morning as the night was very noisy with a thunderstorm

Inside the big space is a kind of auditorium that puts on a light show and a short movie about the meteor.

When we visited we were the only people there so it was kind of eerie.

The meteor itself is on display inside the cone structure. It weighs 6.8 kilos and is just over 25 cms long.

The architecture appeals to me and I have posted on many other Shin Takamatsu buildings, like his ferry terminal in Nagasaki, his public onsen in Tamatsukuri, a Buddhist Hall on a mountain, and of course, his Sand Museum in his hometown.

The curved interior of the performance space offered me plenty of opportunity for the kind of geometric abstract photos I am partial to...

Nariwa Art Museum by Ando Tadao

 

Sometimes known as Takahashi City Nariwa Art Museum as the town of Nariwa was incorporated into Takahashi in 2004

Nariwa lie to the east of the old part of Takahashi, along the Nariwa River before it enters the takahashi River.

The Nariwa Art Museum was established in 1953, but the current building was opened in 1994.

It was designed by the renowned Japanese architect Ando Tadao.

One of the intriguing aspects of Japan, for me, is finding huge, modern, public buildings like museums or auditoriums in small rural towns.

many of these were funded by a program born in the pre-bubble era when, in many senses,  Japan had more mone than it knew what to do with.

What it did was give every single municipality a massive chunk of money which mostly got spent on such projects as this.

By now many of these establishments have gone bust, but this one is still going.

The main focus of the museum is a local-born artist, Kojima Torajiro (1881-1929) generally considered to be primarily an Impressionist.

Also exhibited are a collection of Egyptian artifacts collected by Kojima, and fossils from the Nariwa area.

The museum also stages temporary exhibitions throughout the year. It has a shop and a cafe.

For those without a particular interest in the exhibitions will find the architecture interesting enough by itself.

It is classic Ando, with huge expanses of plain, vertical; concrete. When freshly constructed and almost white it is quite powerful, but I wonder how Ando's buildings will look in another twenty years of built-up grime?

There is also plentiful use of water to bring in the natural environment by reflection.

There is also an inner pool faced by the cafe.

As with many of Ando's structures they are quite labyrinthic leading the visitor in and out of spaces.

The previous post in this series on Takahashi was on the old town architecture.

Other buildings by Ando I have posted on include the Inamori Auditorium in Kagoshima, Komyoji Temple on Shikoku, and the Decorative Tumulus Museum in Kumamoto.

Takahashi Old Town

 

Takahashi, the castle town on the Takahashi River in the mountains of Okayama was often referred to as Bitchu Takahashi to distinguish it from the other towns of the same name in other parts of Japan.

Honmachi, the oldest part of the town, is located in the northern part of what is now the modern town, close to the mountain which is home to Bitchu Matsuyama Castle, known as the highest castle in Japan.

Along the higher part of the old town are numerous temples and shrines, notably Raikyuji Temple with its magnificent garden.

Closest to the castle was the samurai district that now has some of the former samurai residences open to the public like the neighboring Orii Residence and Haibara Residence.

Lower down the slope is the former merchant district, closer to the river which made Takahashi and important transportation hub in historical times.

One of the richest merchant families were the Ikegami, and yesterday I posted on their property which is open to the public.

There was a disastrous fire in the town in 1843, so while there is little very old architecture, there is plenty of late 19th century architecture to make a wander interesting.

However, not enough for the honmachi area to be awarded the status of a Preservation District , or Dentoteki Kenzobutsu-gun as it is known in Japanese.

Fukiya, a small mining town to the north, now within the limits of Takahashi City does have a Preservation District though, and I will cover it in a later post.

Takahashi is known as a "Little Kyoto". I thought that this was just a nickname given to various places around Japan that have retained traditions, but I recently learned that you have to pay to join an organization of Little Kyotos.

Not such a well known tourist site, but with the castle, temple garden, and historic districts, well worth a visit to avoid crowds.

There are a couple of local museums housed in Meiji Period buildings that are interesting, with the local history museum certainly worth a visit.

The previous post in this series on day 6 of my walk along the Chugoku Kannon Pilgrimage was on the Ikegami Merchant Museum.