After 20 years, Japan updated its banknotes on July 3rd. They are rolling out slowly, but I went to the bank and got one of each (¥1000, ¥5000, ¥10,000).

The back of the 1000 yen note features the famous woodblock print “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” by Hokusai.

Just by luck, the Okayama Prefectural Museum of Art is now having an exhibition of Hokusai and Hiroshige (Japan’s other famous woodblock print artist) works. I’m not sure how many original prints of the Great Wave still exist, but I got to see one of them!

This exhibit ends tomorrow, but features hundreds of the most famous prints. There were also a lot of other “books” by the artists with a lot of black and white prints that put modern comic and manga artists to shame, and these were from the early 1800s!