L'enfant qui rêve @ Moerenuma Park, Sapporo Japan

About three weeks ago,  I finally paid a visit to Moerenuma Park in Sapporo Japan, a multi acre creation by the late Modernist Isamu Noguchi; filled with earthworks, museums, parks and a French restaurant called: L'enfant qui rêve.

Link to Moerenuma Park

 I've been researching the life of Isamu Noguchi for four years now for a sound-based project I'm working on. I needed to make a field recording at the park and was able to successfully do that. I had read all about the park but nothing prepared me for the experience. It's a monumental expression of Noguchi's vision and a direct manifestation of his life as Japanese-American/ Japanese diaspora.

As a young adult, Noguchi was mentored by Rosanji, the legendary artist, ceramicist and culinary original. Roasanji founded the first high-end Japanese restaurant in Tokyo and one of the many things he started was this idea that Japanese traditional cuisine should be presented in vessels that celebrate the food.

After walking around the huge park, which takes a good two hours to see everything or almost everything, I was hungry and saw that there was a restaurant. As I sat at my table, it dawned on me that, of course, there's a place to eat. I found out from the server that in fact the restaurant had been in the plans since Noguchi's first draft and was an initial part of the parks over all aesthetic and mission.

This is when i realized that all the chairs face the same large scale window. Noguchi is presenting a view of the park as a kind of moving painting for your culinary experience. The food is Nuevo French-Japanese. Excellent and I am sorry i have no images of my multi-course meal.

I have to apologize about the pictures for this post.

I lost most of the photos I took on my trip in Tokyo. Towards the end of my journey, a leaking ceiling in my Air BnB in Ikebukuro wiped out my logic board, screen and usb-c contacts.

I'm posting pictures I scavenged from my IG.