Some thoughts on the Okayama Orient Museum, one of the trip's unexpected surprises. (Originally posted at the author's blog, evanchakroff.com)As previously noted, I spent most of last December in Japan, leading a group of students and professors (from Ohio State University) on a tour from Tokyo... View full entry
Over the past few weeks, I've been slowly going through my photos from the Japan trip, and posting, bit by bit, to my Flickr account.Today I edited photos from the Ise Shrine, where I took a few matched shots of the new and old shrines, for comparison. The new shrine is constructed (and... View full entry
Day 15: Kanazawa to Takayama Rainy and miserable, we trudged through Kenroku-en, one of "japan's top three landscape gardens" - it may have been the weather, it may have been garden fatigue, but few of us could really appreciate the garden's charms at this point. Too bad (and maybe worth... View full entry
Day 12: Kyoto First stop: Ryoan-Ji, a Zen Buddhist temple most famous for its dry (rock) garden: a mysterious arrangements of rocks that's been the subject of speculation for centuries. It's been said the rocks represent a family of tigers swimming across a river, or mountain peaks piercing the... View full entry
Day 4-5 Tokyo to Yokohama to Nagoya From Tokyo, we drove to the Yokohama Port Terminal, which is looking even better than it did when I visited in 2010, as the wood decking continues to age to an ash grey. While still impressive in concept and execution, the building does now seem a bit a... View full entry
In December, several OSU professors and I will be leading a group of 30 students on a two-week architecture tour of Japan. With over 400 buildings on our "master list" and over 150 assigned as student research, we would obviously need some maps. On similar tours in previous years, we've used... View full entry
Thoughts on the M.Arch I program at the Ohio State University, 2005-2009, plus additional work with OSU as a critic and lecturer.
