When in unfamiliar places there is a tendency to feel disorientated and what is seen becomes a blur. Being Japanese and as a foreigner in this country I experience this feeling where ever I go. I am trying to paint places that are not distracted by emotions – in the way that a foreigner might perceive an unfamiliar landscape, one they have no previous experience of. It forces me to think about my own culture, morals and rules and it recalls memory of the places I have been in my life, places where I have sentimental memories. I am trying to see the “real beauty” of a place that is often distracted by emotions. When I am looking at the landscape I am including myself in that landscape, however, when I paint them I exclude myself from these places, which relates to the Buddhism philosophy “anaatman” which refers to the notion of "non-self" or "absence of separate self" I think there is guilty conscience lurking in this convenient and superficial world. Painting these landscapes may be an escape from the dilemma of environmental destruction. People living in the contemporary world are stretched and twisted by the enormous amount of information and choice and, myself included, are in someway living in the bubble and looking at material prosperity with blurry eyes.