(Tokyo, Japan)

Before the family emergency struck (see the last post), we enjoyed some time in Japan and got to do some awesome stuff. One of the things I’ve done in the past with my cousin M was making a furin, which is a glass Japanese wind chime. There is a place on the outskirts of Tokyo that allows you to do just that and walks you threw the steps, including glass-blowing and painting. This is a fun experience and one that I wanted to share with Grant.

My cousin made the reservation for two days after we arrived in Japan, which gave us time to rest and adjust to the time change. It’s about an hour away from where we were staying. At first when we got off the train, we couldn’t imagine there could be a glass-blowing workshop here as we were definitely in a residential area in the suburbs, or so it felt like. But as we walked not knowing exactly where we were heading, we began to see signs pointing us in the right direction.

This glass-blowing furin studio has been there for a long time and the original artist passed away but the studio still operates. We had a teacher who had, according to him, “only been making furins for 22 years” which still makes him more of an apprentice than an expert apparently.

After being given basic instructions, our first task was to blow a glass ball about 5 inches in diameter while rotating the blowing stick to ensure the ball is even. On our first try blowing the glass ball, we all failed. Grant was the first to go and he blew too fast that the glass ball burst, sending little shards of glittering glass fluttering to the floor. Next was M, and hers also burst after lilting to one side. I tried to adapt my glass blowing strategy after observing these two fails and blew too slowly which caused my glass ball to remain solid, slip off the stick, and fall to the ground.

For the next round, our instructor guided us by telling us how fast to blow and twirling the stick for us. Success for all of us! Grant’s one turned out to be the largest, but bowed on the sides, M did a good job with a more circular glass ball but medium in size, and mine was cautiously blown a little slow and turned out to be smaller than the others. They say that each furin has a different sound when rung, as different as a fingerprint, and that each person’s individual personality goes into creating the tone. Because mine was so small, I assumed it would turn out to have the highest pitch.

The next step was to paint the wind chime. This is more difficult than it seems because you have to paint from the inside of the ball and it feels like you’re painting backwards. And you have to layer it to get the outermost layers and the darkest colors painted first. We all made mistakes, which we just have to live with. As you can see, Grant had the most talent out of all of us.

Can you guess which is Grant’s?

Once we were done painting it, we got to the exciting part… getting to hear what the furin sounds like! It was a bit of a surprise to find that cousin M’s furin actually had a slight vibrato and Grant’s furin rung at a higher pitch than mine did. My furin was the lowest in pitch out of all three and when rung together, Grant’s and mine harmonized into exactly a minor 3rd interval (musician’s will know what I am talking about here, sorry for the geek talk!).

This was a good experience and Grant and I can’t wait to hang these up in our future house when we decide to settle down. One of the benefits of fitting the outside of your house with a furin is that it keeps evil spirits away.

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