{"id":18113,"date":"2011-03-21T04:44:52","date_gmt":"2011-03-21T08:44:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/?p=18113"},"modified":"2011-03-21T08:21:31","modified_gmt":"2011-03-21T12:21:31","slug":"wit-life-157-bye-bye-kitty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2011\/03\/21\/wit-life-157-bye-bye-kitty\/","title":{"rendered":"WIT Life #157: Bye Bye Kitty!!!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/category\/wit-life\/\"><em><strong>WITLife<\/strong><\/em><\/a><em><strong> is a periodic series written<\/strong><\/em><em><strong> by professional Writer\/Interpreter\/Translator <\/strong><\/em><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stacysmith.webs.com\/\"><strong>Stacy Smith<\/strong><\/a> <\/em><em><strong>(Kumamo<\/strong><\/em><em><strong>to-ken CIR, 2000-03). She starts<\/strong><\/em><em><strong> her day by watching Fujisankei\u2019s newscast in Japanese, and here she shar<\/strong><\/em><em><strong>es s<\/strong><\/em><em><strong>ome of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations.<\/strong><\/em><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/www.byebyekittyart.org\/images\/artist_nara_01.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"217\" height=\"168\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Last week I had the opportunity to attend the opening for the Japan Society&#8217;s newest exhibit, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.byebyekittyart.org\/\">Bye Bye Kitty!!!<\/a> The title refers to opposition towards the domination of Japan&#8217;s <em>kawaii<\/em>-ness, the idea of cuteness that has become Japan&#8217;s major export as represented by Hello Kitty.\u00a0 It features 16 artists, many of them quite young and not household names, and their interpretation of this concept.\u00a0 I was particularly drawn in by the intricacy of the works of 38-year old Manabu Ikeda, whose pen and ink masterpieces were incredibly detailed and required several minutes of close examination to take in all of their elements.<\/p>\n<p>Equally interesting was the large-scale <!--more-->installation from 39-year old Chiharu Shiota, which depicted a wedding dress with blood literally being sucked from it.\u00a0 Other thought-provoking works were 39-year old Motohiko Odani&#8217;s distorted Zen masks and 36-year old Kohei Nawa&#8217;s actual deer covered with plastic bubbles allowing you to see inside some of them.\u00a0 The only appearance of the eponymous Kitty was in the exhibit&#8217;s final work, the photo shown here from the most famous of the group, 52-year old Yoshitomo Nara who was the focus of <a href=\"http:\/\/sites.asiasociety.org\/yoshitomonara\/\">Asia Society Nobody&#8217;s Fool exhibit<\/a> last year.<\/p>\n<p>In work news, <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/cdn2-b.examiner.com\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/large\/hash\/fb\/d1\/fbd1dc82ddd0e48c51a8bc2b3d8630c3.JPG\" alt=\"\" width=\"210\" height=\"170\" \/>this weekend I had the opportunity to interpret for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.yogmata.org\/siddha-master\/yogmata-keiko-aikawa\">Yogamata Keiko Aikawa<\/a>, who was in town for the NEWLIFE Expo.\u00a0 During the course of the event she gave two lectures, which culminated in a two-hour meditation workshop held on the last day.\u00a0 Participants came away with a greater sense of peace and a deep sense of respect for this spiritual legend, the first non-Indian woman to realize the ultimate state of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Samadhi\">samadhi<\/a> (a spiritual state of consciousness).\u00a0 I learned a lot and it was truly an honor to be able to work with her!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WITLife is a periodic series written by professional Writer\/Interpreter\/Translator Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei\u2019s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations. Last week I had the opportunity to attend the opening for the Japan Society&#8217;s newest [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[75,53,18,1,36,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-events","category-translatinginterpreting","category-uncategorized","category-wit-life","category-writers"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkZ7m-4I9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18113"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18196,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18113\/revisions\/18196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}