Last December we journeyed to Fukushima from Gifu to meet relatives and stayed with the for the New Year. Here are the sketches I made along during that trip.
At the Shizuoka City, Okitsu station while waiting for the train at Christmas day, I spotted this sakura tree a few minutes before the train arrived. We were heading for Tokyo and a few stations before this we saw Mt. Fuji as our train passed by and the mountain was beautiful. I wonder what it would feel like if you had that view of the mountain outside your home window.
For this trip I purposely left my watercolours, cameras, tripods and other notebooks and just brought one notebook for pen and ink drawings. But we ended up buying watercolour brushes and postcards to draw on in Tokyo.
This is my first watercolour pen brush drawing. I really wanted to draw Tokyo station since I first saw it last March. This day I only had enough time to draw one tower as we had to take the train to Fukushima on that day.
On our way to Fukushima, the train had a brief stop at Takahama Station. In the train I saw this view of the countryside and was admiring it until I thought I wanted draw it. And so I did but there was only a few minutes to go before the train left. I finished the sketch as the train moved away from the station.
Focus on the Drawing
Focus on the View
In December 31, 2015 we decided to climb Mt. Futatsuyama and had a short time to sketch these houses and the trees at the foot of the mountain where we started our trek.
Focus on the Castle and the sky
Focus on the drawing
When we came back in the afternoon I also had a few minutes to draw the castle overlooking the foot of the mountain during sunset.
January 1 2016, I walked around the area of our relative's house and found this beautiful view and sketched it by the withered patch of tall grass where it shielded me from strong winds.
The next day we journeyed back to Gifu. We stopped by Tokyo, Shinjuku Station and had two bowls of Soy Bean Soup that had Pork Intestines and Pork Tongue, It was spicy and savoury and it was great with beer. On that day we lost our green neck pillow as it fell from my back pack.
The green neck pillow fell from my backpack the first time when we arrived in Tokyo Nakano Station on our way to a cheap ramen house on Christmas Day. Then We left it again in a train at Niporri station and went back to retrieve it at Ueno Station. And we finally lost if for good in Tokyo probably around Shinjuku Station on January 2 2016.