Awhile back our Japanese teacher told me about this store called Joyful Honda. (I'm still not sure whether or not it has anything to do with Honda cars---can't quite get a straight answer on that.) Anyway, she gave me directions and said it was pretty far away from my house. So several weekends ago I made Chad drive me out there to check it out. It's about 35 minutes from our house and we didn't stay long but I resolved to return by myself as soon as possible.
See, here it can be kind of hard to locate good shopping centers but once you do find one....boy, oh boy. I went back by myself this Saturday and pored over everything for several hours.
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way far down out of the picture is a huge Home Depot-esque section, the top floor
of this building is like Micheal's and the bottom floor is basically a Garden Ridge.
plus: a supermarket, dollar store, shoe store and a food court for good measure |
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| the endless Garden Ridge section |
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| the Micheal's section (beads) |
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| scrapbooking supplies (notice Mickey butting in on the right) |
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| need some clay? or a potter's wheel? how about a kiln? |
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I want one, but I have to figure out if it has English instructions.
plus it's kinda crazy expensive. |
You may be wondering exactly how much stuff I'm carting home from all these shopping centers I find....and the answer is, not much. It's nice to know where to find craft supplies when I need them, but mostly I want to buy things that I can't find in the US. Unfortunately, I don't find many. Most of what's available here (in every category of goods except food) is the same stuff I find back home. I do have some good information on where to find local-craftsman/traditional Japanese stuff in Tokyo, but I have to get around to making a trip by myself. Meanwhile, if I pay attention I can find
some different stuff in places like Joyful Honda, for example, near the scrapbooking supplies was a section of origami paper. There were traditional flower-arranging supplies tucked in near the fake flowers and brushes for Japanese calligraphy alongside the regular paintbrushes. It's like that in places like Aeon, and Cainz too....95% same old, 5% new and different.
So, because I'm a scrapbooker, I can tell you that the "big thing" from Japan is washi tape - basically a decorative tape. But the real stuff from Japan has a certain texture and translucence.
ReplyDeleteI did notice a larger than normal collection of decorative tape....and picked up a few nice cherry blossom & crane stickers.
ReplyDeleteI have a Brother sewing/embroidery machine and they have manuals for all of their machines online, so I wouldn't worry about finding English instructions. (I had a crazy time finding a manual for my 30-year old Singer.) I don't know if you're really considering the big purchase, but I love my Brother machine, even though I did totally sew through my finger with it the other day.
ReplyDeleteMy mother keeps trying to convince me I need one of the "Project Runway" computerized ones. I would kind of like one to play around with, but I'm not much of a sewer and they cost between $400 and $700 dollars here!
ReplyDeleteOuch! I understand your reluctance to pay a fortune. My mom was also trying to convince me to get a nice new machine and I told her I wasn't ready because I didn't sew enough to make the investment worthwhile. Then, against my expressed wishes, she gave it to me for Christmas a couple of years ago. I have to admit, having a machine that is really user friendly has made me much more adventurous in my sewing endeavors. (I have the Brother Enthusiast SE-350; it sews and embroiders.) Japanese fabric is so pretty!
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