Dennis Mathewson Goes to Yokohama, Japan

Story by Dennis Mathewson

Koninichi wa, everyone.

I just returned from my 10th trip to Japan and teaching my 6th Seminar at the Iwata factory in Yokohama, Japan. I’ve made many friends there and Japan is very similar to Hawaii with the cultures of food, art and price. This trip I took my wife, Susan and my daughter, Indigo for their second trip there and spent a week in Kyoto first before my seminar at Iwata. It was the week before Sakura (the blossoming of the Cherry trees), but it was starting to happen a little anyway. Just not as crowded, yet. WOW! Was that cool. My good friend Satoru Iwata joined us for some fun and we even went to the Ramen Museum for lunch in Yokohama. That place was amazing as well, seems like all we do is eat in Japan.

Here you see Susan and Indigo checking out the streets of Kyoto. Indigo just loves to hang out with her mom & dad - hehehe.

The art and culture amazes me. I must take 1,000 photos each trip I go and even now I still find old, old art like this breathtaking dragon at one of the many temples we visited some dated back to 300 A.D.

Japan is not weak at use of color (much like Hawaii) even in store display you will see bright colors almost seems eatable at times.

Here is the Golden temple in Kyoto its all hand gold-leafed, imagine that! Page after page (I looked close to check it to be true). Man! that must have taken some time.

This building is NOT hand Gold-leafed or airbrushed, but worth its weight in gold to me. It’s at the top of a hill of watercress fields and gardens in Yokohama and its where I call home while in Japan.

Satoru Iwata is a celebrity to all airbrushers everywhere. Friendly as always, he gave me a tour of the new factory showroom and new training (secret) facility - mostly robotics and spray tech you don’t need to know about as an airbrusher anyway. Iwata’s main biz is pumps, compressors, powder-coating gear, spray guns and yes, airbrushes too, WOW! Still, to me I love to see it and even see my own work hanging in the showroom with greats like Shin, and Chuta, Japan’s finest custom painters as well.

Here’s some of the star line up in the new showroom - the TH, HP and the T series some of my personal favorites.

Iwata has lots of conversion air caps many U.S. folks don’t even need to know about yet. My job is to tell you when I teach and travel in water borne areas. They are always thinking ahead. That’s Iwata.

Familiar guns like LPH 50 even have new air-caps to show off.

Iwata goes back 100 years when two brothers opened the company. Here is just one of the spray-guns from the early days, a 1955 spray gun.

Compressors are big, or I mean small and powerful. I have one of these myself in my home studio with scroll technology and a 5 horse silent air source, my neighbors can’t even see or hear it. It makes a small amount of noise like a refrigerator and about the size of one. I have the second one, also - the one on the left - and I can run everything up to even buffers off it (quiet as hell too). Iwata Medea can get these for you in U.S if you’re interested.

Here is more old stuff (love the color).

Even older.

Close up antique compressors the Iwata brothers themselves made.

Here’s my favorite part. I get to try the new mini spray gun, the HP-G3 and the HP-G5. Both work like an airbrush and a small compressor is sufficient to power them. AWESOME! These will be GREAT for home users as well as make up artists, even tanning folks. They spray as smooth as butter and at low pressure. The HP-G3 has a 0.35 nozzle and the HP-G5 a 0.5. They are intense atomization the air-caps and heads are so advanced I can’t even talk about it. But get one - they ROCK! Just ask the folks at Iwata Medea about them - they should be arriving in the U.S. soon.

They even have a new two-headed air compressor to pump it up a bit for home or portable users. In the U.S. we can only make two-headed calves and frogs hehehe.

The air chamber is in the handle - how cool is that? Thanks again Iwata.

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All images and text in this post were provided by Dennis Mathewson at Cosmic Airbrush and are © copyright 2008 Dennis Mathewson. Used by permission.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, March 29th, 2008 at 8:00 am and is filed under Photos, Artists, Travel Pics, Industry, Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.