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

in Osaka, we took a quick look at the Open-Air Farmhouse Museum, another excellent collection off vernacular architecture from around Japan. visiting this museum/park, it's easy to see how the refined minimalism of traditional Japanese arc extrude developed. in one farmhouse, straw mats covered... View full entry

Though it was a significant detour (on the way from Yokohama to Nagoya) there was no way we could pass up visiting Ise Shrine. Ise shrine is widely lauded as the best extant example of Shinto architecture, free of the influence of Buddhism. Given the syncretic nature of Japan's traditional... 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

  Students at the KSA are putting the final touches on the guidebook before sending the files to print. Compiled over the past three months by our team of ~30 students, this could well be the most comprehensive book of its kind ever prepared for a study-abroad tour at the Knowlton School... 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

  ::tap:: ::tap:: is this thing on? It's been nearly five years since I graduated from OSU with my M.Arch, and though I moved away - to Rome, and then to Shanghai, then Seattle - I'm still very much connected to the school. Professor Jackie Gargus has been kind enough to invite me - again... View full entry