the Yokohama Museum of Art

I went to check out the Yokohama Museum of Art for the first time for the Nihonga exhibit - Japanese style painting by modern artists.

The museum is located pretty close to Sakuragicho station as well as Minato Mirai, and is in a pleasant walking area. Inside, there's a refreshing generosity of space that is often lacking in Japan, especially in the smaller specialty museums and galleries - but a large open entrance hall was welcoming.

The exhibit was really neat - all of the artist were interesting in their way, and included a pretty eclectic mix: a famous comic strip artist, someone who worked with big abstract blocks of color, a woman who painted beautiful screen-style nature paintins with a twist.

My favorite was Fujii Rai, an artist who draws Japanese scroll-style paintings, but does so on the back of standard letter-sized envelopes. He has mailed more than 500 to the museum, each part of a continuous series, each envelope connected to the last.