Japan
Random bits and pieces
By Marceline | December 10, 2008
Aaaaah. I am standing outside Loft in Shibuya! How I wish there was an arrow going down those steps and in the door! I was skimming the Google Blog on my RSS reader when I spotted a mention that Street View now covered parts of Tokyo. So off I went and walked from our old hotel (B on the map) to Loft, just to show that it’s not that hard to find. Okay, it is hard if you just look ahead but a few looks UP and you will spot the big yellow sign from streets away. I’ve added the link to my Loft entry in the Tokyo Shopping Guide and will look up some more when I get a chance. But if you’ve ever wanted to go to Tokyo, now you can!
Here is a photo of the joint Miso Funky/Asking For Trouble stall at Made in the Shade last weekend. It was hard work squeezing all our stuff on to one table but I’m glad I did as if I’d had my own stall, I would have just broken even. I don’t think Made in the Shade likes me – I never do as well there as at other markets. Oh well. At least I sold lots of stuff for Miso Funky and met some nice people. My final market of the year is this Sunday at Mono and I must say, I’ll be glad to pack the suitcase away and not have to lug it around every weekend.
Probably my major achievement of the year is above. I bought that amazing Jay Ryan screenprint TWO YEARS AGO and then spent the next two years fruitlessly searching for a frame it would fit in. I even considered getting it framed professionally but I’ve never had the spare cash. So instead I just put in a frame that’s too big! At least now I can look at it. Maybe I will find the perfect little prints to place underneath it but in the meantime I have just stuck in some of my favourite little things of the moment; my hilarious LOST notecard by Betty Turbo, a darling Christmas card from Argyle Whale and my Folksy Owl wooden postcard via Merulapie. This is all right opposite my bed so I’m getting constant enjoyment. Yay! Sorry for terrible photo btw – reflective things are no fun.
And finally, Rowan at Kitschen Sink wrote up a lovely post about my stuff. Go read!
Topics: Ideas and Inspiration, Japan, Me Me Me | 2 Comments »
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Bridge of the Brocade Sash
By Marceline | September 17, 2008
“I lay down in a state of happy exhaustion, and not for the first or last time could hardly believe I was in Japan”
I bought this book (a first edition, no less) from a secondhand book shop near Forres when I was visiting my dad earlier this year. I like a good travelogue and it had some good photos that I thought might give me some inspiration in future.
The author Sacheverell Sitwell was the younger brother of Edith Sitwell the poet, and wrote several million books during his lifetime including such amazing titles as Old Fashioned Flowers, Poltergeists: An Introduction and Examination Followed By Chosen Instances, Look at Sowerby’s English Mushrooms and Fungi and many many more. Apparently they have “all stood as bastions of intelligence, taste and style against the Philistine”, or so it says in the flyleaf. He was also an art critic and extremely well-travelled.
Bridge of the Brocade Sash contains his observations of Japan in the 1950s when he and his wife spent three months or so travelling around and viewing as much culture as possible. He seems to have spent a great deal of his life studying and romanticising Japanese art, architecture and culture but only made it to Japan when he was around 60.
From what I can tell, he seems to have had no editor (or judging by that list of books he published, a very indulgent editor) who just seems to let him get on with things. This gives the whole book an air of rambling reminiscences as told by a kindly but slightly boring man after a couple of drinks.
Luckily, this is one of my favourite styles of writing. My two favourite authors are Frank Kuppner and Bill Drummond, both of whom enjoy writing down whatever comes to mind, not letting truth get in the way of a good story or sanity get in the way of a crazy idea, and talking directly to the reader as if to a good friend.
Thus it was easy to forgive Mr Sitwell his bumbling tales of utter confusion at the sight of unrecognisable foodstuffs or plants – he just gives us his best guess and moves on, leaving aside any pesky irritations as checking up facts on his return. Because of his elevated position and lifelong interest, he gains himself entry to all kinds of temples and private galleries and when he really wants to see something but doesn’t know how, he sends off the driver or hotel concierge to find him a local resident with a particular breed of dog or to wake up the priest to open a special temple area. It really is a stunning insight into the workings of the mind of the privileged.
A good forty years of romanticising Japan can only lead to one thing: disappointment. Even when he takes three pages to describe how wonderful something is, he inevitably finishes up by saying it was a bit disappointing, either compared to his imagined ideal or because it was raining or because a certain piece of art wasn’t on display that day or a myriad of other reasons.
I really enjoyed reading about his experiences of things I also did in Japan, fifty years later. The old places like Kyoto and Nara seem to have changed little but Tokyo, as he describes it, seems a backward drab metropolis with nothing going for it at all. Clearly, he never visited Kiddyland :)
I think the most interesting thing though, was a concept he comes back to a few times of people painting or writing about things they had never seen. In the temples there are many painted screens of tigers drawn by artists who had never seen a tiger, or even a picture of a tiger, just maybe a tiger skin. On visiting Ryuanji, a famous zen sand garden, he is so overwhelmed (and of course, disappointed) that he feels unable to write anything better than the long article he wrote about the garden years before he had seen it. The whole idea has set my mind running.
The only bad part of the book is near the end where he spends a couple of chapters pontificating on the history of Japanese art. I managed to toil my way through the chapter on Ukiyo-e artists but had to skim-read the following chapter where he tediously describes a set of kimono designs. I’m sure the kimonos were beautiful but there is a reason why people say a picture is worth a thousand words.
Anyway, they finish their trip with an epic and evocative train journey round the Inland Sea to Miyajima and Hiroshima and finally to the very Bridge of the Brocade Sash, one thing that doesn’t disappoint him. He describes so well that horrible feeling of loss knowing you have to leave a country before you’re quite done enjoying it and with so many things unseen. I suppose it was much worse for him, knowing he would probably never return.
If you ever see a copy of this, I’d recommend it. It’s out of print but there are a few second hand copies knocking around on Amazon for reasonable prices. I hope to pick up some more of Mr Sitwell’s books but apparently there are so many, no-one has been able to put together a definitive list!
Topics: Books, Japan | 1 Comment »
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Tokyo Shopping Guide in print!
By Marceline | August 25, 2008
I am so pleased to finally announce the print version of my Tokyo Shopping Guide. It’s by far the most popular thing on my site and makes me happy every day to see how many people find their way here from search engines, and knowing they’ll find the answer to their query. I get so many people emailing and commenting saying they’re going to print out all the information and take it with them so I’m happy to be able to help out even more by providing a pocket-sized print version. It’s A6 size so will fit in any pocket or handbag ready for consulting as you travel. It contains most of the information available online along with a few little extras. I really want to stress that the online version will still always be available for free – the printed version is an accompaniment, not a replacement.
Also available is Ten Days in Tokyo, my new zine about all the fun and adventures we had in Japan last October. It tells all about our sightseeing, shopping, eating and general fun times and is full of photos. We literally went everywhere in Tokyo so it should be a good read for anyone planning a trip or wishing they could go someday.
Both are now available in the shop for PRE-ORDER. Printing up zines costs money upfront so I’m doing a pre-order period while I do the proofreading and final tweaking. Pre-orders give me an idea of how many copies to get printed as the initial run and also help cover the costs. All pre-orders will ship in a couple of week’s time and you’ll get a free gift in your order as a thank you, yay!
So, what are you waiting for? Get ye over to the shop!
Topics: Japan, New Work, Tokyo Shopping Guide | 4 Comments »
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Japan Crafts
By Marceline | July 28, 2008
Good news for anyone planning a trip to Japan (like you need any more good news) – there’s a new blog called Japan Craft Journal where some awesome crafty bloggers have joined up to collect together all the info you might need about Japanese crafts and shopping. They’re already posting up some great tips for shops and neighbourhoods to visit so it’s definitely one to bookmark. There’s also a Flickr group so go add your pics.
Coincidentally, I tidied up my Tokyo Shopping Guide just the other day so there’s a few more useful links in there.
(and yes, my Bangkok Shopping Guide will be starting very soon)
Topics: Japan, Tokyo Shopping Guide | No Comments »
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Ghibli Museum
By Marceline | June 3, 2008
I’m a massive fan of the anime films of Studio Ghibli (creators of Spirited Away, My Neighbour Totoro, Howl’s Moving Castle, Princes Mononoke etc.) so the first time we visited Japan in 2006 a visit to the Ghibli Museum was top of my list. We were on an organised tour but managed to schedule a visit on one of our free days in Tokyo. It’s a massively popular place for both the Japanese and for tourists so non-residents have to buy their tickets before arriving in Japan which you can do online.
The museum is in Mitaka, a short train ride from Tokyo and is pretty easy to find, thanks to Totoro’s signs. You can also get the amazing, Ghibli decorated bus there but it really isn’t far. It’s so popular you’re given a time to arrive at and ours was the first of the day so we were queued up at opening time with a few classes of cute Japanese schoolkids, all wearing coloured caps decorated with their choice of cute character, from Pokemon to Doreamon – it was so kawaii. When you first arrive there is a fake entrance manned by Totoro himself along with a little window stuffed full of dust bunnies!
Topics: Japan | 4 Comments »
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Tokyo Extras: souvenir stampers
By Marceline | April 16, 2008
When we were planning our second trip to Tokyo, we kept reading mentions of souvenir stampers. These are large custom stamps situated at major attractions and the suggestion was that you should give your child a notebook and get them to collect stamps during the visit. Now, call me childish, but I love stampers so we were on the lookout at all times. It turned out that most of the stampers are beautiful and intricate and well worth collecting. They usually have an image of the attraction and come complete with the date so you can be reminded of when exactly you visited. Some places even had special paper sheets that you could use the stampers on and fold into a little book. They are very popular with children and we eventually ended up battling with groups of Japanese children to get our stamps for the day.
I’ve scanned in a selection of the ones I collected so you can have a look. At the top are stampers for the gardens at Meiji Shrine and Ueno Zoo, home of Ling Ling the Giant Panda. We visited both on the same day.
Train stations even have their own stampers. These are Hamamatsucho and Nippori.
More stampers below.
Topics: Ideas and Inspiration, Japan | 3 Comments »
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Tokyo extras: Mori Art Museum
By Marceline | January 31, 2008
A few extra Tokyo posts coming up that don’t fit into the main shopping guide.
Although we were organising everything ourselves this time (last time we went on an organised tour with just-bankrupted Travelscope), we did sign up for an organised Evening Tour of Tokyo to re-introduce us to Japan. It went to two famed Tokyo areas we had no other plans to visit (man-made island Odaiba and Roppongi) and included a full Japanese meal so it turned out to be a pretty good deal for us. We booked ours through Viator if you’re interested. (Oh! They used my photos – look here!)
I have no complaints about the tour at all – the guide was friendly, the food was amazing, Odaiba at night was an awesome sight and the 360 degree views from Mori Tower in Roppongi were stunning. The unexpected treat was that our Mori Tower tickets also got us entry to the Mori Art Museum. On show was an exhibition of new and futurist Japanese art called Roppongi Crossing 2007: Future Beats in Japanese Art.
I’m a big fan of modern art but even so I was surprised that I enjoyed almost all of the artwork on display, covering everything from pencil drawings to video installation. There were some clunkers but on the whole it was a very inspiring and wide-ranging show of work.
The picture above was one of the most fun exhibits – Arithmetik Garden by Sato Masahiko + Kiriyama Takashi, a kind of maths puzzle maze. The installation was a simple maze but with with electronic gates signposted with subtractions, multiplications etc. You picked up an electronic board at the start which had a number on it and hung this around your neck and then had to pass through the correct gates to electronically apply the arithmetic until the number round your neck was equal to the number on the exit gate. My mental arithmetic skills are pretty poor so I declined an invite to have a go but we all watched two young Japanese guys who got a big cheer when they finally made it out.
More conventionally, there was some great drawing, painting and printmaking on display. Much of the works were cleverly detailed in a way that you wouldn’t notice at a glance and I soon learned to give everything a closer look. This really struck home when I glanced at what appeared to be some pages of the Japan Times newspaper stuck to the wall. On closer inspection they turned out to be hand-drawn copies in pencil, rendered in perfect obsessive detail! Sadly I’ve forgotten the name of the artist and can’t find any images online. Below are a couple of pieces by artists that particularly resonated with me. The first is by Deki Yayoi who had a number of works on show, all vibrant repeat patterns of flowers and faces often using neon paint and thumbprints. The second is Fukaya Etsuko, whose tiny exquisitely detailed etchings had me almost nose to the glass to take in all the beauty of her animals and girls.
Topics: Ideas and Inspiration, Japan | No Comments »
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Shop Indie: Chocolate Swirl
By Marceline | September 21, 2007
The best thing about being part of the Gifted exhibition is that I’ve had to buy more amazing fabrics so that I would have twenty different purses. Etsy really is a wonder for this. I can’t remember what I was searching for but I found lots of new cute fabric sellers setting up shop. It seems Japanese fabric is a bit of a craze these days. Anyway, Chocolate Swirl had some lovely fabrics I hadn’t seen before, and they were pretty cheap too so I gave them a go, ordering the two above for the exhibition and some cute goldfish to make a gift for my sister.
Chocolate Swirl is based in San Francisco and they stock a huge range of Japanese craft books on sewing, felting, toys, beading etc. as well as some fabrics, tapes and supplies. The fabrics turned up pretty quick and are just as lovely in real life. Above is a bunny purse for the exhibition and a tissue holder for my sister. So, go have a look >>
If I wasn’t going to Tokyo in three weeks, I’d be severely tempted to pick up one of these books. So cute!
Topics: Japan, Shop Indie! | No Comments »
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Shop Indie: Sakura Fabric
By Marceline | August 30, 2007
If I had to pick one thing as the greatest part of selling my crafts online it’s that it provides me with both money and an excuse to buy lots of amazing Japanese fabric. I really am obsessed but at least I pass a good part of it on to my customers and don’t just hoard it away in a box (okay, I have a secret hoard as well, I admit it!). Anyway, I am so obsessed these days that I really can’t be left alone at a computer. A few weeks back I had some time to kill after work and managed to spend £25 on fabric while looking for something completely unrelated! Paypal really will be the death of me.
Anyway, to get to the point, I came across Sakura Fabric’s Etsy shop and was blown away by all the cuteness on display. Not only was there hilarious exploding bears and the cutest cutest patchwork with bunnies, bears and sweets but there were bundles of offcuts so I could pick up a pile of random cuteness for a fraction of the price of buying a fat quarter of each. Above you can see my offcuts, most of which I haven’t even used yet!
Here are a couple of finished purses using the fabrics I bought. These are both going to be in the Gifted exhibition but I will make more for the shop. The Sugar Sweet Purse is also a Sakura fabric and is in the shop right now.
So, if you like your fabric Japanese and cute then get over to Sakura Fabric. I can’t take any responsibility for the state of your Paypal account though…
Topics: Japan, Shop Indie! | No Comments »
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Shop Indie: re:makeables
By Marceline | August 21, 2007
re:makeables is a lovely online shop based in Malaysia selling amazing Japanese fabrics, trims and books plus handmade buttons and beads. Everything is gorgeous and they specialise in pretty flower and cute animal patterns. I had a browse a while back and spotted some adorable trim with bunnies and flowers which was sadly sold out. I mentioned this on a blog post and the lovely owner Amy emailed to offer me her last bit. So kind! Since I was getting something posted I figured I may as well order some fabric and make it more worthwhile so I got two pretty flower fabrics.
It all arrived last week, packaged beautifully and looking even better in real life. The sakura fabric has a metallic gold in the print that I hadn’t really noticed. Anyway, the fabrics looked so nice together that I couldn’t wait to get stuck in and whipped up a purse using them. So pretty! I’ll hopefully have some for sale soon.
There’s just been a re:makeables shop update so go on over and have a look.
Topics: Japan, Shop Indie! | No Comments »
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