The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures opened in 2021 with a Hayao Miyazaki retrospective. Four and a half years later, they exhibited Studio Ghibli’s Ponyo.
Ponyo (2008) is Miyazaki’s reinterpretation of the Hans Christian Andersen story The Little Mermaid. A tale of a magical goldfish princess named Ponyo and up, a five-year-old boy named Sōsuke.
The movie is almost entirely hand-drawn. Studio Ghibli donated more than 100 pieces to the Academy Collection: art boards, Japanese release posters, key animation drawings, Miyazaki’s own sketches, and an actual Ghibli animation desk.
The C.F. Martin guitar factory is located in Nazareth, Pennsylvania. They offer tours for a modest cost of $5/pp but the tour groups sell out quickly. Advanced online reservations are imperative, especially for popular summer months.
The guided tours are groups of 12 led through the working factory and meet workers. The tour ends in the Picking Room where visitors can try out guitars on the wall and order them at a modest discount.
You can visit the Museum inside the factory without a reservation. The Museum contains guitars and instruments from the breadth of company history, from C.F. Martin’s first guitars to its 1-millionth guitar.
At the Cottage of Sweets in Carmel, CA, I found hand-made fudge and old-school sweets. Given the various waves of anti-smoking in popular culture, I was surprised to find candy cigarettes.
Bakersfield has never been accused of being a sushi capital, but Kura Revolving Sushi Bar at 10530 Stockdale Highway Suite 300 decided the Central Valley was ready for the full conveyor-belt treatment. Opened as a deliberate test of smaller markets, this location brings the Japanese revolving-sushi formula—two-level belt, covered plates, touchscreen specials, and a drink-delivery robot named Kur-B—straight into The Shops at River Walk.
Kura is an authentic Japanese conveyor belt sushi restaurant chain that started in Osaka in 1977. It’s known for affordable plates of fresh sushi for only $3.95. Stack fifteen plates and drop them into the return slot at your table and a Bikkura Pon machine rewards you with a prize that drops from the ceiling like a very polite slot machine. Service is a mix of efficient humans and the occasional robot glide-by delivering water and real wasabi to your table at the start of your meal.
We weren’t expecting to find a Kura in Bakersfield; an oil-drilling town at the southern edge of California farming country. We detoured through Bakersfield because of a traffic accident on the 5 on our way from Los Angeles to San Francisco. If you’re ever in Bakersfield and want a healthy, affordable Japanese meal, Kura is a good choice.
Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room is a multi-artist exhibition whose narrative is generated by the real, lived history of Seneca Village, a vibrant community founded predominantly by free Black tenants and landowners that flourished from the 1820s to the 1850s near The Met’s current site.
The Temple of Dendur is an Egyptian religious temple that was rescued from the floodwaters during the construction of the Aswan Dam and reservoir. It was donated by the Egyptian government and has been on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art since 1978.
The museum built an extension to its north wing to house the temple. It connects the Egyptian art wing to the American wing of the Met. It is one of the most striking and visited installations at the museum. It was featured in several films, including When Harry Met Sally. A recent addition to the exhibit is a projection depicting the original white surface and brightly colored decorations that would have adorned the temple.
Washington Crossing the Delaware is a life-sized oil-on-canvas painting by Emanuel Leutze depicting General George Washington’s crossing of the Delaware River during the Revolutionary War. This large-format painting hangs in the Gallery of American Painting in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC. This painting is 1-of-2 existing versions; the other hangs in the Metropolitan Marine Museum.
This painting is famously used in many American History textbooks. What was surprising to me was the size of the painting, at 12ft x 22ft. The figures are life-sized.
The Fifth Avenue Apple Store is Apple’s flagship store in Manhattan. Opened in 2006 and with its iconic glass cube installed in 2011, this store was built on the site of the General Motors Gardens. It still contains potted trees which are carefully illuminated by sunlight and artificial lighting.
The store was originally designed by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson. Its renovation in 2011, which included the construction of its iconic glass cube entrance, was by Foster + Partners and Apple’s chief design officer Jony Ive. It visually harkens to I.M. Pei’s Louver pyramid. The Apple Store sits at the corner of Fifth Avenue opposite Grand Army Plaza at the corner of Central Park.
