Madge's Tokyo Tales Part One Inky, gluey hands! Plastic food in rainy Harajuku
More plastic food in pastry shop Harajuku
Fabulously funky neon 80s style quilted dress HAJ Show
Vibrant Raw Wool for felted desserts
Super cute stuffed deer crafts HAJ Show
Quilted Desserts...note amazing detail and felted accents

But wait...there's more quilty desserts!

Kewpiemania hits Tokyo HAJ Show (Madge stocked up big time!)

Lobby staircase Hotel Nikko Tokyo.

The infamous Tokyo Toilet Hole...don't fall in the ****.

My favorite photo I took at a train station in Tokyo.

Gorgeous Fimo and crystal jewelry HAJ Show

Felty flowers and fruit HAJ Show

Happy Condom cartoons!

They like their condoms in Tokyo...check this window out!

Lovely day, lovely socks. Enough said.

Last day...

Last Day Two

What would I have given for the ruby slippers at this moment?!


Shiny Happy Greetings All:

I spent the bulk of my time in Tokyo on the man made island of Daiba working at the HAJ Show. Drew and Avalon helped me some days and went to Tokyo on others but we didn't really get a full day of exploration in unfortunately. By 8:30 every night the three of us all flatlined. The cedar pollen level was outrageous and many, many folks were walking around in masks to avoid it. The Japanese goverment planted a gazillion cedar trees after WWII. Now they've all matured and they have super high pollen levels every Spring. That combined with industrial chemical spraying and the pollution from China wafting up made my asthma kick into overdrive and my poor daughter was also miserable. Every morning we said, oh let's take the train into Tokyo tonight and every night at 9pm we were all in bed. Pathetic. We stayed at the exquisite Hotel Nikko overlooking Tokyo Bay. Breathtaking views indeed though the earthquake and the aftershocks made me reticent to stand by the window!

HAJ is a consumer show, so it's open to the public and folks sell product at retail. I was so busy with the demos and the clean up/set up from one to the next that I barely got to walk a fraction of the show floor. The attendence was incredible, you can not believe how hot crafting is in Japan. Jewelry making is apparently not so hot anymore, as they've only been shown stringing and seed bead jewelry and they've all grown bored of these things. They do love fine materials like gold and Swarovski crystal, but they don't really wear a lot of jewelry over there. I was hard pressed to find a single woman wearing more than a tiny gold necklace the entire trip. Interesting. I think in terms of popularity though it's a matter of not being exposed to enough variety of jewelry making arts. Folks loved the UTEE demos I did making molds and pendants and they must have loved my paper arts jewelry since they stole all of my samples when I turned my back after my last demo. ARGH. It wouldn't have sucked so badly had I taken some photos before they got horked. Someone even stole one earring from a set I made to wear to the show! One earring?! At least take the pair people! Sheesh.

The demos were interesting because I had an interpreter. Keiko was fabulous. I've got such an odd and quirky sense of humor I am quite certain some of my jokes got lost in translation, but she made a valiant effort. It's so weird having a translator for someone who talks as fast and as effortlessly as I do because you have to pause frequently and wait. I'm not so good at that part. Since I don't speak Japanese, I had no clue when she was finished and more than a few times it seemed like my one sentence took about five to translate! My title at the show was Sensai Margotsan. I felt so Kung Fu! Hee hee. The Japanese people are painfully polite and it's almost impossible to tell what they're thinking. Did folks enjoy my demos?! I have no clue. I hope so, they seemed to be smiling a lot and laughing and I'm going to tell myself it wasn't "at me" it was "with me."

There is a deep love of the pomp and the cir****tance in Japan. There is endless bowing and greeting and there are a variety of bows for different occasions. They don't expect you to know every sort of bow and as long as you make an effort to reciprocate everyone seems happy. The show had a very formal opening ceremony with long speeches, white gloved ribbon cutting and later a super fancy reception where I had to go onstage and make a short speech. Most of the time I was just trying not to say something stupid or inadvertantly do something rude. This is a culture of formalities and contradictions and I didn't always know what was and what was not acceptable behaviour. Ah well, ignorance is truly bliss.

As for the show, felting is super hot there, sewing is big, making applique and quilted three dimensional desserts is huge and another big trend is Kewpie Doll art. Oh, I'm so in love with this! They take little plastic Kewpie dolls and make fabulous costumes for them. Some dolls are standing and some are crawling. Some look like recognizable cartoon/film characters and some look like funky monsters or sushi or vegetables! These were also in all of the little gift shops as cell phone charms, practically everyone has multiple charms hanging from their cell phones in Tokyo. I didn't see much in terms of knitting or crochet, though it was there it didn't seem to be the hot thing. Needlepoint is popular. They love making cute little things and that seems to be the main focus of crafting. Everything was childlike and happy.
Although American influence is evident in so much of their design and culture, my overall impression was that they could give a hoot about us. Seriously. It's the idea of America and American cultural kitsch that's appealing. We even found a mall just for kids that had crazy punk rock/Harajuku girl style clothing that was so insanely expensive we could not for the life of us figure out who was buying this stuff. I didn't see any small kids dressed funky and the older folks in Tokyo are very conservative.

The women wear modestly high necked shirts and do not show cleavage. The 80s Yohji Yamamoto layered look with leggings was predimonant as well as a funky 70s hippie chick vibe. They love t-shirts with totally meaningless syntax challenged English sentences on them and I was bummed I didn't get a chance to buy one. I also saw a lot of felt embellished t-shirts that were almost quilted looking, very 3-d and super colorful. Loved them. As for footwear, I wasn't digging it. The shoes were all rather boring and conservative, except for the funky mondo creepers and the Converse all stars. Men wore elongated square toed shoes that curled up a little elfinly and women mostly wore either pumps or comfort shoes. I did see a lot of gladiator sandals in the high fashion stores and that's good because I've got a pair in my closet I've been waiting to rock for a couple of years now.

The young women wear insanely short skirts, so it's I think a matter of different erogenous zones as we in America tend to be more "breast obsessed." There's an overtly juvenile quality to the younger fashionable women (and even to the older women), over the knee socks with bows, little girl layered and ruffled skirts...all very Lolitaesque. It's sexual in a sort of 'naughty little school girl' manner. It seemed like everything had a juvenile vibe from the popular art, billboards, TV shows and the rampant love of cartoon characters. It was almost Victorian in feel, with an overtone of innocence and under current of intense sexuality. Overtly sexual colorful super happy condom stores were everywhere we went!

I'm not a huge fan of Japanese food, I'll take Thai or Indian any day of the week, but I'm not into the textures and flavors in Japanese cooking. I wish I were because they really love food in Japan and they eat out often in Tokyo because they live in such small apartments. I didn't love eating the real thing but I did love the meticulously crafted plastic food replicas in all of the restaurant windows and kept pondering ways I could make them into jewelry items. I tried, really tried, to enjoy my meals but everything had this odd aftertaste that just did not rock my socks. I'm not a seafood lover so maybe that's the problem. Couldn't say. We did have a fabulous buffet breakfast in our hotel every morning with a huge variety of delicious choices. I loaded up then because I wasn't sure what I'd find appealing later.

I came back with a few cool things. I found a fabulous purse at Kiddyland, which is actually a diaper bag, and that makes it even better because it's waterproof inside and has a gazillion little pockets and pouches for your stuff. I am a gal who likes to carry a big old purse. The fabric on the purse has images of adorable Matroyoshkas in these delicious retro colors, I'll share later. I also grabbed a handful of rockin' postcards, gorgeous handkerchiefs, rubber food erasers for jewelry items and a bag full of tiny kewpie dolls.

I'll share more stories and pics from Harajuku tomorrow, I woke up with a freaky rash on my chest and I'm feeling like I've been run over by a bullet train. I've got a week before my book shoot and I need to catch my breath here again! I'm seriously looking forward to June and gearing up for my next phase of total world takeover!

Until tomorrow...sayonara!
Sensai Margotsan (Yeah, I'm going to milk this one for all it's worth, Grasshopper)