Origami Convention in Tokyo

How can I describe how incredibly awesome it was to be surrounded by many of the worlds BEST origami artists for nearly two days? When I arrived at Tokyo University ready to sign in for the convention, bumbling about asking for help in my jarbled Japanglish, little did I realize that virtually every volunteer I spoke to was an origami genius. I noticed a lot of children present, and assumed that the more complex models would be out of their reach, little knowing that many of them could fold cleaner, faster, and more-complicated models than I could hope to achieve.

When I finally had my bearings, I noticed a group of foreigners in one corner of the auditorium, and recognized a few of them from the MIT origami meetings I'd been to. Yep, you heard right. Since Harvard lacked it's own origami club, when I heard that MIT had one I made an effort to go to several meetings my senior year. Here's their website, in case you're curious. I had hoped I might see some of them there. So I made my way over and joined their group.

Here I am folding with a couple of the MIT girls. In the background, wearing a brown t-shirt with a splash of green, is Robert Lang. It took some control on my part not to run up and ask for his autograph. I did go to his lecture, though.

Let me tell you, doing origami alone and doing origami in company are two vastly different experiences. For one, you can see how other people got started with origami and how they've improved and who influences them. A few people I talked to seemed surprised that I had picked up origami largely on my own, and gotten to where I am now. There are apparently some stereotypes about who folds origami better, and one guy readily admitted that Japanese origami enthusiasts are much better folders on average than Americans. Their folds are neater, they fold faster, and they seem to know their way around a piece of paper just a little better. A model that took 3 hours to teach, with 50% of the class finishing in America, took 2 hours in Japan, with some students finishing in 1 hour. And in Japan, 15 out of 30 or so of these students were under the age of 15. Here's the model they were folding. That's from one square sheet of paper with no cuts. Below is a picture of a miniature version someone folded. It's next to my watch, to give you an idea of dimension.

I thought my polar bear was kinda cute at that size, but the Nazgul was ridiculous. Tiny and incredibly well-done.

So white people in general have a reputation for not being particularly accurate or good folders. So when I met one of the special guests, whose models were being featured at the convention, he assumed I was probably an amateur, ok-ish folder. He told me so later, when I entered his class late (forgot to set my alarm), caught up, and apparently managed to make a much neater model than half of the, mostly, Japanese class. Interesting assumption, great compliment, to have my folds admired by the teacher. I sat next to two Japanese ladies who were also impressed by my folds, though I think one of them was much better than I was. It was nice, because I was able to actually converse a little with them in Japanese!

The two Japanese ladies I was folding with. On the table is the star we were working on. 

One of the most incredible aspects of origami folding, I think, is some artists' ability to manipulate the two-sided nature of the paper, an aspect known as color changing. A classic example of this is a panda made from one square of paper, colored white one side and black on the other. Folding to get the colors in the right place is a tricky thing, although sometimes depending on the position of the paper, it's surprisingly simple. I'm actually a huge fan of well-done color changing.

On the left is a samurai warrior dude. From one sheet of paper, red on one side, white on the other, Brian Chan folded this. His work is phenomenal, and he's one of the Amazing Artists I've met and sort of gawked at in awe of his sheer genius. I mean, look at the sword! That shit takes serious tallent!

Below is a chimpanzee, with nipples no less, folded by Roman Diaz, and Uruguayan origamist who has quite a knack for color changing, in my opinion. Several of his models were on display at the convention .

The weekend flew by! I left the convention early on the second day to catch a flight back to Kumamoto, and now I'm at work once more. The new JETs have arrived and I will meet many of them tonight and tomorrow at orientation. I'm giving a workshop on Learning Japanese, so I'll be giving suggestions to the newcomers on how to approach the Japanese language. I'm presenting with a guy who's Japanese is super advanced, so we make a perfect team. He majored in the Japanese language before he came, and I knew the word "konnichiwa" before I came. That seems like a long time ago...