The Anthem Philatelist

After an hour fast train ride from Osaka via the the Shin-Osaka line, and a 15 minute walk, we arrive at the magnificent Himeji-jo castle. The castle is the finest surviving example of early 17th-century Japanese castle architecture. It is located in Himeji City, in the Hyogo Prefecture, an area that has been an important transportation hub in West Japan since ancient times. The castle property, situated on a hill summit in the central part of the Harima Plain, covers 107 hectares and comprises eighty-two buildings. It is centred on the Tenshu-gun, a complex made up of the donjon, keeps and connecting structures that are part of a highly developed system of defence and ingenious protection devices dating from the beginning of the Shogun period. The castle functioned continuously as the centre of a feudal domain for almost three centuries, until 1868 when the Shogun fell and a new national government was created.  The principal complex　of these structures is a master...

Hoi An Ancient town is located in Viet Nam’s central Quang Nam Province, on the north bank near the mouth of the Thu Bon River . The inscribed property comprises 30 ha and it has a buffer zone of 280 ha. It  is an exceptionally well-preserved example of a small-scale trading port active the 15th to 19th centuries  which traded widely, both with the countries of Southeast and East Asia and with the rest of the world. Its decline in the later 19th century ensured that it has retained its traditional urban tissue to a remarkable degree. The town reflects a fusion of indigenous and foreign cultures (principally Chinese and Japanese with later European influences) that combined to produce this unique survival.  The town comprises a well-preserved complex of 1,107 timber frame buildings, with brick or wooden walls, which include architectural monuments, commercial and domestic vernacular structures, notably an open market and a ferry quay, and religious ...

Ephesus contains successive settlements from the Neolithic, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, Selçuk and Ottoman periods. The property is located at the Aegean Coast of Turkey within what was once the estuary of the River Kaystros, Ephesus comprises Hellenistic and Roman settlements founded on new locations, which followed the coastline as it retreated westward. Excavations have revealed grand monuments of the Roman Imperial period including the Library of Celsus and the Great Theater. Little remains of the famous Temple of Artemis, one of the “Seven Wonders of the World,” which drew pilgrims from all around the Mediterranean. Since the 5 th century, the House of the Virgin Mary, a domed cruciform chapel seven kilometers from Ephesus, became a major place of Christian pilgrimage. The Ancient City of Ephesus is an outstanding example of a Roman port city, with sea channel and harbor basin.

After an hour plane ride from Ho Chi Minh City, we arrived at the beautiful resort city of Da Nang .  It took us another 45 minutes to arrive at our hotel in Hoi An city - the Hoi An Historic hotel.     It is the first hotel in this town which 5 minute walk to the ancient town center.  The trip to Hue city , which was the former capital of unified Vietnam in 1802 was a three and a half hour ride with several stops- the French and American bunkers in the previous wars, a marble museum and restaurant, before arriving at the citadel. Hue was not only a political  but also cultural and religious center under the Nguyen dynasty until 1945.   The Perfume river - which we traversed winding through the capital, the Imperial city and the Inner city gives this unique feudal capital a setting of great natural beauty.

Edgar B. Mojares was a Cebu -based artist who studied art at Cebu's UPCC Fine Arts Program in 1975. Born to public school teachers from Polanco , Zamboanga del Norte , he is the brother of National Artist in Literature, Resil B. Mojares . The late Mojares was a reclusive painter who had several group art exhibits but never had a one man show. The online exhibit at CAI gallery was his first. His works spans fifteen years, roughly running between the late 70s to early 90s. Pencil sketch, 1990 He is well regarded as the leading proponent of Cebuano synthetic collage cubism in the 70's with Tito Cuevas in abstract expressionism . These two turned down pecuniary gains to lead Cebu to novel art forms which were not well received during their time, as buyers and collectors where more inclined to buy realist paintings. Radel Paredes aptly stated, "the late Mojares took up Picasso's collage but used basket weave, coco fiber and other organic materials more telling of local...