Tokyo post 13 April

 I ditched the pre-planned itinerary today and had a leisurely morning so I feel a lot better now. I started with a journey across the bay to visit Small Worlds, the much-hyped Tokyo miniatures museum. 

I enjoyed parts of it but overall I wouldn't say it was amazing. There was a heavy focus on technology and transport like airports and space ports which I'm not so interested in.

Launching space rocket which was kind of cool

big room recreating Kansai airport - literally just a room full of runways and planes driving around slowly, the Japanese visitors seemed fascinated

The best room for me was the Global Village, a sort of fantasy take on various world architectures. Unfortunately this was also the most dimly lit room, making it really difficult to see a lot of the incredible detail. They are very into whimsical touches, and every nook and cranny has something twee or unusual going on, like octopus dancing under bridges, or sea monsters surfacing in the bay. The global village had a wizard's village and a steampunk town and a sort of Bladerunner asian city.  There are buttons to push everywhere but many of them only add a sound (hard to hear over the blaring muzak in every room) or initiate some miniscule movement somewhere in the vast modelscape (like the octopus waving two of its legs) which could be quite hard to spot. Some didn't work at all, there seemed to be some derailed trains. Others were more satisfying and turned a ferris wheel or lifted the roof of a house.

Towards the end there were some classic miniature room boxes such as this bakery.

All the exhibits are mainly one large floor, although there are also a few in the cafe area (where I had a surprisingly-for-Japan truly mediocre meal).

Then it was back on the train to head over to Cohana, the luxury sewing accessory store that keeps running full page ads in my quilting magazines. This is not a cheap place, but everything is exquisitely made and so tiny and cute. I succumbed first to a Sakura (cherry blossom) special edition pair of tiny scissors, and matching pins, and it was a downhill slope from there to include two pincushions and a wee little wax canvas work tote to put them in. My luxury treat from Japan. (I'm sorry about how awful my loot pics are, the lighting in my hotel room makes it virtually impossible to avoid shadows and/or glare)

I walked the short distance to Ozu Washi, a 360 year old traditional washi paper store. It's huge, over three floors. On the ground floor are displayed goods from paper (I picked up a couple of lovely wallhanging scrolls but they're packed in a tube so I haven't unwrapped them) and all kinds of paper sheets, some displayed like fabric (I asked and they let me take a pic from a distance). On the next two floors are galleries of paper art, museum artefacts from their history of papermaking, and a film in English about how paper is made. You can also pay to try papermaking yourself, I watched a few other tourists having a go. Really interesting.

I haven't really been doing the 'tourist trail' but from here I wandered into Asakusa which is tourist central. I don't really enjoy seeing streets thronged with tourists and all the accompanying hot dog stands and fast food etc., but down a side street I did stumble across a quiet shop selling better quality goods, particularly furoshiki, the Japanese wrapping cloths that I bought some of on previous visits.  She had some lovely things and also books in English on ways to use them.

I also saw this poor guy, a giant spider crab, which I instinctively find repellant but at the same time I felt sorry for him, destined to be someone's dinner.