Artpara Fukagawa 2021

This summer, the TOKYO 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games were held without spectators. Although our Koto City had 10 Tokyo 2020 venues, it was a shame we had to watch everything on TV like any other Olympics and Paralympics held overseas.

Have you had a chance to watch the Paralympic Games? What is your favorite Paralympic sport? This time I really enjoyed the wheelchair basketball. The Japanese men's wheelchair basketball team won the silver medal!

Now autumn is here, and it is known as the best season to enjoy art in Japan. I would like to introduce an event called Artpara Fukagawa 2021, which is an exhibition of art created by persons with special needs. This event is very unique because the whole Fukagawa area is turned into an art museum. As you can see in the photos from last year, art is blended in the landscape of Fukagawa.
    

Kiyosumi Garden

Sumida River Terrace

Basho-an Historical Site Observation Garden

Mannen-bashi Bridge

Artpara Fukagawa provides you with various kinds of experiences such as discovering limitless imagination and gaining understanding about diversity. But you don’t need to think hard. Just feel free to visit and enjoy walking around in Fukagawa.

The details of Artpara Fukagawa 2021 are as follows:
 Date: Friday, October 22 to Sunday, October 31
 Place: Monzen- nakacho, Kiyosumi-shirakawa and Morishita in Koto City, Tokyo
    Station numbers of the nearby subway stations
    1. Monzen-nakacho station (E15)
    2. Kiyosumi Shirakawa station (E14)(Z11)
    3. Morishita(E13)(S11)

Please see here for the maps of the venues: Artpara Fukagawa Map

Introduction to Haiku after COVID

HAIKU is a simple and compact verse of 17 syllables in a 5-7-5 pattern in Japanese,typically . People or Haiku poets elabolately select and arrange each word including season ones,along with sophisticated sounds to meet themes leading to share feelings, motive or even humor. It may be true that history and tradition of Haiku is emanated from cultural background and language inherent to Japan. But we can share the concept of HAIKU If we select proper words. For example , we know several types of rain with different inspiration and sound like heavy rain ,light rain, sunset rain, passing rain , or rain to allow me wet. To endorse the mentioned above, some Haiku are translated into English:

       Time will solve
       Some problems
       will await the spring
                           Haiku poet : Kyoshi Takahama
  

English Haiku contest is even held several times:

       Only oceans in-between us,
       The more afar we come from,
       The tougher we two feel bonded.
                           quoted from 5th Japan EU English HAIKU Contest 

Although COVID pandemic has given us much tragedy, we may enrich the insight from tangible value to intangible one even in sightseeing. In Koto ward , we can follow the track of great HAIKU poet , Basho Matsuo.