Next stop Koya-san

After a few days back in Tokyo after our Thailand trip, we have headed off again for more travels. This time we headed South to tick some Japanese places off our list. First stop was the Toyota factory in Nagoya (gosh I'm a good wife!), followed by an overnight stay in Osaka. One of our favorite Japanese dishes is okonomiyaki, so we found a fab restaurant to have that last night. After a mooch round the castle in Osaka this morning, we headed to Koya-san this afternoon. It is a beautiful town up in the mountains and full of monasteries that rent out rooms. We are staying in a beautiful place where we had a tasty dinner served to us in our room, followed by a soak in the onsen (hot tub). It's now 8pm and I'm ready for bed!

Our home for the week

This is our home for the week - Anantara resort in Hua Hin, Thailand. Not a bad way to spend a week! See you soon.

Printing at Futaba-en

A few months ago I wrote about a trip I did to a the Miyoshoji river where a lot of traditional kimono printing and dyeing still goes on. Once a year, the town celebrates this tradition by hanging kimonos across the river. While I was there, my friend Michiko found out about some printing classes that we could do at Futaba-en, and so we returned there last week to do a little sample class using paper stencils to print the dyes onto fabric.

The dyes were laid out for us and we had 6 colours to work with. The brush is made from deer hair.

The fabric is taped down to a board and then each stencil is placed over the fabric and pinned in place. Each colour had two paper stencils and the dye is brushed through the stencil using the deer hair brushes.

The finished result!

Beautiful coloured brushes and a colour test strip.

Shades of purple.

A trip to Kawagoe

A trip to Kawagoe is always fun, and on the 28th of each month, there is an antique market held at a local shrine there, with many juicy items to forage through. On Tuesday a group of us decided to head out there and see what we could find. I have learnt my lesson now and take a suitcase on wheels with me - sad but true! This enables me to stock up on lovely fabrics that I can use for my bags as well as for my design work. Needless to say, I came home with some amazing, inspiring pieces.

In the back streets of Kawagoe. Note the giant lady in red trousers pulling a tatty brown suitcase!

There were many groups of Japanese women dressed in kimono. The colours were beautifully soft.

A break on the main street for ginger ale.

Our bemused waiter.

I bought some lovely old furniture at the antique market and it is now happily ensconced under our hanging kimono. I'm wondering how well it's going to fit into a Victorian house in rainy London!

My super heroes

Ever since arriving in Japan I've been intrigued by the obsession some Japanese people have with dressing up their pets. Dogs are the most likely to get dressed up here (although I've seen a rabbit being pushed along in a buggy!) and I've seen many funny things, from a large Airedale in dungarees, to a small poodle in jeans and sunglasses. 

For a while now I've been meaning to embrace this obsession and get little outfits for Bob and Tom. The other day was their debut, although it didn't go quite as expected. First of all, I wanted super hero outfits for both of them, but all I could find was a Spiderman outfit.... and Pooh Bear! So Tom became Spiderman and Bob was Pooh. Needless to say, they weren't too happy being dressing up and paraded around, so after a quick photo session, the outfits came off.

 

Hoki Museum

A trip to the Hoki Museum recently was a rather unique experience. It's a place I have wanted to go to for a while, but not had the opportunity until now. It's quite a hike out of Tokyo in Chiba and is an awesome, modern building, surrounded by suburban sprawl. The museum houses a private collection of realism paintings that seem out of context with their ultra modern surroundings, where many of them take inspiration from the great masters. It's not the type of painting I gravitate towards, but the execution of many of them was stunning and I loved the building!

Paper passion

Yesterday I went on a trip to a gorgeous book shop called Kakimori in Kuramae. It's an area I often go to to get clasps for my bags, but I had no idea there was an array of gorgeous little shops scattered around the neighbourhood. At this shop, you can make up your own notebook, choosing from an overwhelming selection of covers, papers, closures and binding.

This chart at the entrance to the shop shows you the process of how to chose the items to make up your notebook. 

There is an overwhelming selection of covers to choose from, from printed papers, to soft leather pieces, to pleasingly coloured linen covered board and all of them mix and match perfectly.

There is a selection of closures to choose from. These are coloured elastics that wrap around the book.

These closures have a thin leather strap that wraps around them to keep the book closed.

These ones have a popper and an option to have a pen holder in them too.

 I had a lot of fun trying out different combinations, but ended up with a pink leather front cover, sage green linen back cover and a slate blue leather popper closure. I also managed to pick up some inspiring printed papers that are used as envelope inserts. You can see them here.

Shabu shabu

And the feasting continues! On Monday night I went out for shabu shabu in Shibuya. Shabu shabu consists of dunking thinly sliced pieces of meat, along with vegetables etc into flavoured boiling water that sits on a burner at your table. It's a great social way of feasting and very tasty.

At the restaurant we went to, you can concoct your own dipping sauces using a massive array of ingredients that you mix together yourself.

The table is spread with a selection of thinly sliced meat and vegetables that you place into different boiling pots that sit on burners.

We had a selection of beef and pork that is cooked quickly in the boiling broth.

Sumo

One of the things we have loved attending here in Japan is the twice yearly sumo tournaments. I'm afraid I know very little about the sport and even less about the individual players, but I love going to watch it and on sunday afternoon we trotted off to check it out.

The stadium is built especially for the sumo tournaments that are held twice a year. The audience at the front sit on cushions on the floor. It's a great view, but beware of flying sumo wrestlers!

Before each session, the ring is carefully manicured by a team of sweepers. One guy waters the sand with a watering can and then the sweepers come in and tidy it up.

The sumo wrestlers march single-file into the arena, wearing their special 'aprons'.

Each wrestler has his name called out as he steps up in the ring. It's an amazing sight to see them standing proudly. Once all of them are in the ring, they ceremonially lift their 'apron', clap and raise their hands in the air before filing off. Then the games begin.

There is a lot of drama before each match, with thigh slapping, leg lifting and salt throwing. Note the referee to the right. I love his decorative robes.

The salt is held in a basket in each corner, along with a bucket of water and towel. The wrestlers grab a handful of salt and throw it across the ring. Some of them make it into quite a dramatic gesture, which is a bit of a crowd-pleaser.

I love the leg-lifting and thigh-slapping. We have tried doing this action (in the privacy of our own home), and it's really hard to do!

Once the sumo has done his grand gestures and is ready to go, the fists are placed on the ground to show that they are ready and the match suddenly shoots into action.

The loser is the first one to step outside the ring, or to fall to the ground. Most matches are over with in the first few seconds, but some good ones go on for much longer, which is very exciting.

Morning tea Japanese-style

I'm embarrassed to say that in the four years I have been in Tokyo, I have never been to a Japanese tea ceremony. When I was at the kimono event last tuesday, I was able to watch a woman do a tea ceremony demonstration and I loved it. So I decided to go along to one on sunday morning, held at a special traditional Japanese house used specifically for tea ceremonies.

The charcoal for heating the water is carefully selected and configured in a pre-determined arrangement.

The hot charcoals are then placed in an earthenware pot.

The teapot is placed over the heated charcoal which sits in a bed of ash designed to look like sand dunes. The theme of the month was bamboo, and the water pot to the right depicts a bamboo forest.

As each attendee comes into the room, they kneel at the door of the tea room, bow and then slide forward on their knees, with their fan placed on the mat in front of them. They make their way to the arrangement at the front of the room and bow to it. This month's theme was bamboo, so the flower pot to the left was a bamboo pot.

The attendees kneel on the tatami mat floor in front of the server. 

Note the little red block behind them - that was for me to place my bottom on!

The server then goes through the motions of preparing the tea. It is beautiful to watch. Note the teacher behind, watching what she does. There is so much to remember and the teacher was there to remind her what to do.

Before the tea is served, Japanese sweets are served to counteract the bitterness of the green tea. These were in the shape of leaves with a bean paste centre and dealt out using bamboo chopsticks. We each took it in turn to take a piece and bow to the server as we did, followed by an appreciation to her of the sweet we were eating. This was followed by a thick green tea. We took it in turns to drink from the same bowl. Afterwards, we had to show our appreciation of the tea, the bowl and cloth that the tea was served on.