Join me, Anne Alene, Japan specialist and art enthusiast, on a once-in-a-lifetime adventure of Japan.  My aim is bring alive Japan's artistic culture, people and beauty for you on a 12-night 13-day travel adventure. 

Art Encounters: THE JAPAN TOUR

SATURDAY OCTOBER 9

to

THURSDAY OCTOBER 21 2010

please go to www.artencounterswithanne.blogspot.com 

to read the full itinerary

I am a specialist in designing and leading customized trips to Japan and Asia for groups and individuals, museum benefactors, art collectors and cultural organizations. I command near-native fluency in Japanese, having studied, lived in Japan, and worked between Japan and the US for over twenty years. For over twelve of twenty years I have been leading specialized trips to Japan. I hold degrees, training and certifications in Asian Studies, Japanese language, Psychology, Japanese and Western art history and contemporary art; and is also a practitioner of Omotesenke Tea Ceremony

The tour will commence in Tokyo on the evening of Saturday 9 October at the Mitsui Garden Hotel Premier Ginza, situated near to Ginza and Tokyo Stations. 

I am organizing special visits which will make the Tokyo portion of the tour a particularly rich encounter with the city’s artists and personalities.  We will have exclusive access to private museums, exhibitions and collections, including an opportunity to discover Japan's expansive visions for promoting the Japanese and international contemporary art scenes. 

Together we will explore the recent developments of the city, including Japan's ingenious collaboration of star architecture and international shopping , and its most convincing illustration known as Omotesando Boulevard,  Tokyo's Champs Elysées, featuring works by Herzog & de Meuron, Toyo Ito, SANAA's Ryue Nishizawa and Kazuyo Sejima, Tadao Ando, Jun Aoki and Kengo Kuma, who have created a showcase of retail and residential development in collaboration with major designers Prada, Tod's, Dior, Louis Vuitton to name a few.   

In addition, a handful of new museum complexes and galleries which debuted between 2004 and 2007 are worth exploring in the fashionable districts of Roppongi Hills, collector and arts patron Minoru Mori's vast development, and Mid-Town including the National Art Centre, Suntory Museum of Art and Tadao Ando's 21_21 Design Center, Mori Tower and Mori Art Museum.  

Visiting the Tokyo National Museum of Art to delve into art history of Japan will also be heightened by the most perfect expression of the architecture, the adjacent Gallery of Horyu-ji Treasures, a sublime pavilion seeming to float on a sheet of water, and designed by the New York MoMA's star architect Yoshio Taniguchi. The Gallery is storage for precious Buddha statues and other ancient objects of historic significance belonging once to Nara’s Horyu-ji Temple. 

Gauging the artist scene of Tokyo will be crucial to the program, including visits to contemporary artists, and hope to include artists such as Tabaimo, Takashi Murakami, and others who have burst out onto the international scene in recent years.

In no other valid contemporary art destination is a country’s historic culture and traditions as relevant as it is in Japan.  I shall offer a variety of attractions at the beginning or end of the day, for example, in Tokyo, attractions will include visits to a kabuki theatre performance, a neighborhood Japanese bath house and "otaku" neighborhoods, home of Japanese pop culture of anime film, and manga comics.  Also, I will offer a dawn visit to Tsukiji Wholesale Market, where daily tuna auction is one of the most extraordinary spectacles and involves a bidding frenzy matched only by the current contemporary art market. 

We will have brunch at the Park Hyatt Hotel, famed for its views across the Kanto Plain to Mount Fuji and the famous bar where Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson puzzled the incomprehension of an unfamiliar culture in “Lost in Translation”, before boarding the Shinkansen bullet train for the next chapters of the tour, including to Izu Peninsula, Ise Peninsula, Kyoto, and the Inland Sea for the Setouchi International Art Festival. 

please go to http://www.artencounterswithanne.blogspot.com  to read the full itinerary

please go to the link below to register with a deposit