Catchup Japan 28 April

 The school programme is almost half over, it's hard to believe.  I haven't actually learned very much which is a disappointment. There's been a cold bug going around the shared houses and two teachers went down with it as well. The school doesn't seem to have any substitute teachers available so they combined the classes for a week. The resulting numbers and wider range of ability has meant that we've spent most of the week just playing simple games or revising very simple material. One teacher is back next week so hopefully it will get better.  Meanwhile both shared houses have had some drama, inevitable when a bunch of disparate people are shoved together to live in basic conditions with few facilities. We unfortunately have a difficult American woman in our house,  judgemental and impatient, and just downright rude at times.  I'm trying to avoid her but it's difficult. Two more weeks and then we will all go our separate ways.

We've seen a bit more of the area.  We drove to a lake which is a beauty spot, although up in the mountains it is definitely still the end of winter and quite cold, some snow amongst the trees, bare branches. There was a nice shrine you could walk to.

Meanwhile down near the school, spring has definitely arrived. Lots of daffodils and tulips, but the cherry blossom is virtually gone now. It's been a bit warmer, so not so awfully cold at night which is a relief.

Another activity we did was to visit a workshop making traditional wooden bento boxes called Magewappa. They had some beautiful things on display. The boxes are made by bending cedar from northern Japan into shape, and then securing the shape by threading through a strip of cedar bark. We did a workshop to 'make' our own box - really they had premade it and all's we did was glue in the already-cut-to-size lid and base, and a bit of sanding.  Still a nice souvenir though. I hope I can get it home in one piece - I will probably stuff it with fabric and wrap it in more fabric.

Despite temporarily living in Japan, it's not  immersion.  The students all speak English to each other and the locals of course are getting on with their daily lives.  I did join a group that went to a local izakaya (a little pub) for a tasty meal, and we chatted to the owner a bit; and I spoke a bit to the staff at the local museum the other day. The Magewappa owner gave an introduction to our workshop in Japanese and frustratingly I couldn't understand most of it. Despite studying for several years now, my conversational Japanese is still minimal. I'm not sure what I want to do with my Japanese after this experience is over.  Having even a rudimentary ability has really made my trip easier and opened up the prospect of going places I wouldn't have attempted without any Japanese. For example, I'm going to do a week in the Tohoku region after school finishes, staying mostly in Japanese-only hotels and getting around by public transport. I feel like I have enough Japanese to ask for directions or to check into a hotel. But to get better at Japanese, I would have to put some serious effort and time in , to expand my vocabulary, learn kanji, maybe pay for a class with a teacher, read and speak a lot more. At my age I find it a lot more difficult to memorise things and also I just don't retain them very well.  I will never be fluent, that's for sure. So I don't know. During COVID, learning Japanese every day became a hobby that kept me busy, and I knew I would be going back to Japan eventually.  But at the end of the day, it is a long way and very expensive to come here, and I don't know how many more times I will come back.

I finished the vanilla sock I started knitting on the plane. It's tempting to crack on with the second one but I feel like I should save it for plane knitting on the way back, since it's basic enough that I don't need good light for it. I've still got my charted cowl project and a few other things to work on. I gave away the little trinket tray I made from the Japanese fabric to a younger student who was fervently admiring all the Japanese motifs on  the little pencil case I made from the same fabric, she was really delighted which was nice.

Catchup - Japan 20 April 2023

 I've been at school four days now and it seems like much longer as we have been kept pretty busy. I travelled up north on the shinkansen bullet train on Sunday without any issues. I put all the heavy fabric purchases into my little rolling suitcase, and piled two folding bags of clothes and stuff on top, and managed to negotiate it through the subway system to Tokyo station to catch the shinkansen. Thank goodness for elevators. 

We were met at the station and taken to the shared house where I am living with five other women and two junior teachers. It's a pretty roomy house, a bit basic. It reminds me of living in a youth hostel or maybe a dated college dorm. I paid for my own room and requested a western style bed. Several of the other rooms have  tatami floors and people are sleeping on futon. I've tried that before and it kills my back. Plus you can't have any liquids in the tatami rooms as they are easily damaged.

 It was bitterly cold when we got here, almost down to freezing. There is no central heating so the house was basically the same temperature as outside.  There are kerosene heaters in the dining room and kitchen, and in each bedroom.  You aren't supposed to run them for very long, no more than an hour, and they are very smelly.  The Japanese method is to only heat a room that people are in, and bedrooms only when you go to bed and get up in the morning.  So the first few nights were a bit like caravanning: I was sleeping in a sweatshirt and hat to stay warm. Thankfully it has now warmed up and was 22 degrees today, but down to 13 again tomorrow, it's incredibly variable here amongst the mountains.

We have classes in the morning for three hours with breaks every hour. I'm in the intermediate class but I would say the level is more advanced beginner as there are a variety of abilities in the class. It's a good reminder of basics that I learned five years ago and have since forgotten, plus lots of new vocab and a bit of grammar. My class is taught almost entirely in Japanese, sometimes I don't understand and I have to ask a classmate, but most of it is ok. We have bento for lunch, then usually in the afternoon there is an activity.  On Tuesday we went to Hirosaki castle to see the cherry blossom festival which was lovely.  Still lots of blossom here in the north although it is starting to go over, and the Hirosaki festival is quite large so there were quite a few street food stalls and market stalls. I took about 100 pictures of cherry blossom, here are a few:

Today's activity was to wear kimono for a few hours. About 8 of us did it, mostly the younger girls, who looked like colourful flowers as they wandered through the nearby park where there was still some fading cherry blossom. Lots of Japanese people were stopping to take their picture even. We wore our own shoes, which wasn't as stylish as tabi socks and sandals but a lot easier to walk in.  This is me perusing the shops at the 7-11 convenience store on the way back to the shop. This was my second time in kimono this trip - I also wore it last Saturday in Tokyo. I met up with a Japanese lady I have chatted to on the internet, and she wanted to book a kimono experience. She said that it would be a treat for her also as she doesn't normally get to wear it since it is so complicated to put on by yourself. Unfortunately that day it was raining heavily all day and fairly cold at around 13 degrees, so I found it very cold in just a kimono. I wore it for a few hours while we went to lunch and then humbly requested to put my warm ugly clothes back on. She didn't mind, and she wore hers the whole afternoon - made of sterner stuff obviously.

After kimono, we visited a giant superstore, a bit like a Walmart, which sold absolutely everything including a bit of fabric (yes I bought a little more) and cute stationery like post it notes that look like cat paws (got some) and even a bit of plastic dollshouse stuff.

I'm here for four weeks, and my first week is almost over.  It's not really an immersion experience since all the students are speaking English to each other and it's difficult to meet the locals who of course are just going about their normal lives.  But on Saturday we are having a picnic with some locals so hopefully might get to try out my Japanese then.

Tokyo Post 14 April

 Today was quilt shop day.  

First up was Mother's Dream quilt shop, home of well known Japanese author and quilter Reiko Kato (you have probably seen her Sunbonnet Sue variations in magazines). The shop is in the right hand half of the building.

It's not that big inside but stuffed with many samples of her work and creations from her books. There are quite a few kits packaged up for sale, selection packs of fabric for applique, some fabric on bolts, and a selection of hardware and quilting tools.  I was helped by two friendly staff who didn't volunteer any English. One of them may have been Reiko Kato but I don't know, she was definitely in charge but also very nice.  I quite enjoyed looking around and picked up some kits to make small applique bags and some packs of fabric for applique.

Then it was over to QuiltParty, which is Yoko Saito's shop.  This was a much bigger affair, surprisingly big for Tokyo, bigger than many UK quilt shops including my local one.  

There was a copious amount of fabric on bolts, including both Japanese and American fabrics. Also large quantities of fat quarters. There were some packets of precut fabrics. Not so many kits here, although they had kitted up what looked like the fabric only to go with some of the projects from her most recent book.  Quite a wide selection of hardware, bag handles, quilting tools, some stabilisers, and more speciality projects such as heavy papery drawstrings, homespun woven webbing straps, some beads and embroidery threads for embellishment, and of course a lot of her books.  Again, I think the staff mainly spoke only Japanese but they were quite helpful. And the fabric seemed so cheap compared to the UK! I was especially after the textured homespun wovens that you see so much of in Japanese books but are quite scarce in the UK.  Their FQs were only 220 yen each which I think is only around £1.40 - you can't get a cheap print fabric FQ for that in the UK.  So I piled up on various colours of the textured homespun, and also picked up a couple of half meters plus some packets of precuts. They had the wooden handles I see in the Japanese books, much more reasonably than at Yuzawaya, so I got some of those. I also got some of the webbing and drawstring.

It's hard to buy for future projects without any specific details, but hopefully I've covered the bases to try out some more of the projects in my existing Japanese quilt book collection.

I had some time before meeting a friend for supper, so I headed over to Harajuku and Takeshita Street. I remember when we briefly visited here in 2016 on a guided tour, the guide said that the balance was tipping away from the trendy young Japanese visitor in favour of tourists. Well the balance has definitely gone all the way now, it was a mob scene of tourists thronging the length of the street and almost all the shops now are food shops, sweet shops or souvenir shops.  Although I couldn't resist buying a small version of the multicoloured candy floss that you can see being made in the picture, the larger ones were as big as umbrellas.

I did a trial repack tonight and put all the heavy fabric in the suitcase, and pulled out the lighter clothes to put in the folding bags. I get the train to college on Sunday thankfully so I won't have to fight the rush hour.  I haven't actually been on one of the trains where they squash you in, but a few times I've been in a pretty tight squeeze when I've been travelling early in the morning rush.  Still better than commuting in London: everyone is wearing a mask, everyone is immaculate, they are all silent, and all trying to be very considerate about any bag or pack they are carrying.

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.

Tokyo post 12 April

 I'm getting tired now - it's been 23 or 24 degrees for a few days, and the constant exertion of trying to exist in a land where I can't read the signs and can only understand a little of what is said, is very wearying.  I think I need a holiday from my holiday! It's still great to be here though.

Monday was a sumo day, walking around the area where a lot of the sumo stables are located, and the Tokyo arena, and buying sumo souvenirs.  Tuesday I went to Nezu Shrine where there is a beautiful hillside covered in flowering azaleas, really amazing.

In the afternoon I went to Nippori fabric town, and tried to walk straight to Tomato fabrics without looking right or left. But I did get sucked into a few of the many haberdasheries and fabric shops. These are some leather zip pulls and leather sew-on flowers, and some woven ribbons. Then I went straight to the Tomato store on the left hand side of the road and resolutely did not cross to the other branch opposite nor any of the enticing stores over there. I was very conscious that I didn't have DH and his muscles for carrying the purchases, and fabric is heavy. Not to mention that I am beginning to worry about getting me and all my loot to college on the train.

At Tomato I was looking for bag fabrics.  There is a heavyweight cotton here, almost like a light canvas, which is great for bagmaking and comes in many lovely prints.  I got a mixture of half yards for pouches and 1.5 yards for bagmaking.

cats in a sushi bar!

Today after watching some sumo practice, I headed over to Noe cafe. It was a bit of a trek, two trains and a walk, but turned out to be so worth it.

The owner, whose name I don't know, is a big-time collector and visits all the big shows such as London, Paris and America and must spend a fortune.  She also seems to have subscribed to every Betterley series ever released and builds all the kits herself superbly, as well as kits by many other artists. The upstairs of the cafe is her exhbition room which is just crammed to the gills with the most amazing mixture of scales and themes, all mixed in with antiques and laces and dolls and needlework tools etc etc. You hardly know where to look. Everything is exquisite and in the best taste. She is an artist by training and has arranged everything so beautifully.  I took so many photos but can only show you a few.

loved this half-scale box with the ribbon - she had another one in a different theme

she made the houses on the right and left, and taught them as classes I think

Then I went to Ikebukuro to visit some of the geek shops in Sunshine City, and on the way back stopped into the branch of Yuzawaya in the Tobu department store where I picked up a Clover magnetic needleminder, a threadcutting ring (which I hope will expand to fit my big fingers), two little bag handles and some 'cat sushi' fabric that I will make a gift from.

I've done so much as I am out and about every day, but it seems pointless and boring to give you a big list of where I've been. One of the more amazing things was a sound and light show of cherry blossom around a big area in Shinjuku Gyoen park. They had lit up a lot of the trees, and also were using laser effects on some of them which made it look like petals were falling then rowing back. Everyone was given a lit lantern to take on their walk through the dark park on paths outlined with lamps, really quite magical.