Recently, I went to the Biwako Biennale (English page) in Omihachiman, Shiga. If you’re in the area, you can go too! It’s running until November 11, 2018.

First of all, Omihachiman is a charming little town, worth the trip by itself. There’s a reason you’ll find essentially this same picture, taken by a hundred other people — it’s a beautiful view that isn’t hard to enjoy.

Lovely canal!

Our main destination that day, though, was the Biwako Biennale, an art installation festival going on throughout Omihachiman. For ¥2,200, we got admission to a variety of very cool art installations.

These were generally built into old houses or other old buildings — these art installation biennales and triennales are becoming fairly popular throughout Japan, especially in smaller towns where dropping populations are leading to vacant buildings.

Some of the exhibits are full-scale installations that simply must be visited to be properly enjoyed (such as the hanging lights near the top, or this one above), but some of them were collections of smaller items. For instance, this next photo is one of several similar items; though it looks like a jar or vase or something wrapped in a cloth, the whole thing — “cloth” and all — is made of clay.

And then there was this large, impressive work. Perhaps the most impressive aspect was the fact that every part of it was made out of food. The bags below, in fact, contain examples of some of the seeds and other items used in the sculpture above.

If you have the chance, I absolutely recommend visiting for yourself! It’s still running for another week or so, and these photos only scratch the surface. A lot of the exhibits can only be properly experienced in person, so I didn’t even try to photograph them! And some of them, well… some of them are at least sort of expressed in video, but they’re still a lot more fun in person too.

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