Tag: crafts

Itchiku Kubota Art Museum, located near Kawaguchi-ko Lake in Yamanashi, is an off-the-beaten-path architecture.  Kubota was an textile artist who revived the old silk dyeing.  And this museum was dedicated to exhibit his craftwork.  The silk he dyed is of course beautiful but what I like most is the architecture ...

When I went to Kuramae last time, I saw a stationery shop called Kakimori.  This is a very unique shop where you can make your own one-and-only notebook.  There are two sizes you can choose from; B5 (182x257mm) and B6 (128x182mm). ...

Kuramae has quite a few artisans’ workshops.  Sometimes the town is called as Brooklyn in Tokyo.  If you visit those workshops, you may find something special is waiting for you.  Those crafts are what you cannot find in the ordinary chain stores or branches of large-scale retail shops. ...

Kuramae is a town of wholesalers.  As I wrote in the previous posting, there are shops old and new.  Kuramae in Japanese means “in front of the rice warehouses”.  It was called so because there used to be rice warehouses where Edo Government during 17th – 19th Century kept rice ...

Kuramae is not far from Asakusa and a kind of “emerging artisanal area” as lots of craft shops lined up along the street.  Some of them are century-old shops and some are new comers including trendy cafes.  There is a good mixture of old and new. ...