Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Japan Trip // Awaji Day 7: The Worst and The Good of Tadao Ando

Took a bus from Kobe to Awaji Island for some more Ando fun! Except it turned out not to be that fun because, well, Ando has had better ideas. I'm definitely over him after this trip. No more concrete buildings please!

Bye bye Kobe!

The Westin Awaji Island Resort

Probably Ando's most large scale work, this place was seriously humongous. It stretched the whole side of the mountain, yet it was like a ghost town. Uninhabited and depressing. Not really sure why people would have a fancy island vacation resort here (I would choose Okinawa), but most are probably here for the conference center.



Like I said, the grounds that this project covered were massive.

Except there were probably only like 20 people making use of it the day we went.



I wonder if architects like Ando ever reminisce about a past project and think, "yeah...I don't know what I was thinking then. Oops"


The redeeming quality of this place was the view of the ocean and the sky gardens, which it is also famous for. Pity that many of the plots were empty, but that's probably because we came during the wrong season.


Don't these flowers remind you of brains or pictures of microscopic cells? Something like that...I'm not much of a science girl.




Awaji is known for onions, so I thought I'd order this onion with meat sauce and cheese dish thinking the onion would be stuffed with meat or cheese or something.


But nope, it was literally a baked onion in a sea of salty meat sauce and cheese. Can't fault them though because it turned out exactly as pictured on the menu.

Water Temple

Another Ando work. This one was loads better. But please, no more concrete! I can't handle it anymore.





It's been raining consecutively for the past few days and we're supposed to hike Mount Fuji tomorrow. Though the forecast says 100% chance of rain, I'm hoping that it'll be a fluke or that Fuji is high enough so that we'll surpass the clouds and then have no rain?

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