Nikko dragon

Paint a dragon in one stroke.

Barry and I visited Nikko Japan north of Tokyo on a Boy Scout camp out to the outer edge of the town. Our tents were set up near a resort located on top of a mineral water spring. Like Indian Hot Springs in Colorado, except classier. The most memorable thing about the campout was our discovery of a nearby peanut farm. The plants were all nearly dead. We learned the mystery of peanuts growing underground connected to the plants roots. So, not really nuts, more like potatoes.

Part of our campout became a traditional public bath for all the boys right before leaving. So we'd all be shined up. 

Paedo pervs. 

They just wanted to see our pee-pees.

Then, the last day after the bath we packed up our equipment to go home before leaving the historic area our bus dropped us off in the town for a few hours of looking around.  It was a cultural thing, to provide the opportunity to see Nikko, a place built around two temples, the location of mausoleums of two famous shoguns, now a tourist center. The place were the 'see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil' monkeys originated in the architecture of a temple. Every shop it seemed sold a version or several versions or several sizes of the same row of monkeys. [nikko monkeys] The monkeys were everywhere in souvenir form.

They also sold carvings of a bear. I have no idea what the story is behind the bear. if there is one. Maybe it is just because there are bears in the area, like Yellowstone.

We came home with one of these dragon paintings, a colorful one, wood carvings of Nikko monkeys and another of a bear. They became part of our parent's household and were carried from there, to there, to there, thereafter, from household to household, until finally languishing in basement of my parent's final home.

The other memorable thing besides all that was the drive up to the site in a bus. The sort of bus used as transportation between bases like a school bus except blue.

The bus wend its way on the road up the mountain switchback curves the whole way up through a fog. Frightening. The road was paved but not a highway. Not congested either. The bus hugged the wall of the mountain then near the top on the opposite side the sky opened up briefly to expose a lake ensconced in a dense heavy mist and for all the world looking as if it were floating in midair upon the clouds.  It seemed magical to drive upward through cloud to a floating lake then beyond it. 

On the way down, at the stop in the town Barry was riveted by a man painting the dragons in a single brush stroke. We watched a man produce them one after another, then Barry bought one and once back at home we marveled close up at the brushwork imitating scales on a dragon that we watched being painted. We knew the scales were not painstaking drawn separately as they appear.  For Barry's dragon the man's easel was upright, the dragon heads already painted and dry. the man had a stack of large sheets of paper with pre-painted dragon heads already on them. Asian dragon heads have a lot of tentacles all over, feelers like catfish, fish whisker type things around their mouths and around their heads.  Pre painted to speed things. The man wielded a very large flat brush. Stiffer than the long floppy calligraphy brushes shown in the videos. He loaded the brush with straight colors squeezed directly from the tube, and I mean loaded. Bright primary colors squished like a rainbow onto the tip brush. A very good amount of paint loaded with each color. Then he proceeded in the manner shown, unloading his brush as he went along, tipping the brush as the paint depleted, creating curves and curving over what he already painted, the paper depleting the brush he continues to tip it off racing  his curves around and across a wet sheet. It honestly looks like the backside and underside of a snake. It struck us as as a remarkably daring way to fill a page with color. And still does. 

Google video [paint nikko dragons]

Related: 20 beautiful stairs.

Does this look like a dragon, or what?  ↑