Nishiki food market photos

Nishiki market is a long, covered alleyway right in the middle of the shopping area of Kyoto ( paralell and north of Sijo-Dori). I like looking but beats me what most of this stuff is. ( I recognise the things with eyes and I am pretty sure there are brains in there!). We did eat some of the street food shown first ( although Dennis did not like his very much at all!)

Fabric and shopping Kyoto - Part 2

On our second day in Kyoto I stumbled on more crafty / fabric places anyone travelling here might like to know about. It was not always obvious what the shop was called so I will give you directions and photos so you can recognise it when you get there. And I hope that all those of you who leave comments saying my photos make you want to go to Japan actually get here someday!
First, this shop which sells rubber stamps with Japanese themes and designs from calligraphy to picture of Geisha. Walk down the pedestrianised street Teramachi from the north ( by City Hall) and it is on your left. Further down Teramachi you will see a sign over head for the Nishiki market. This will gets its own post in due course but towards the end of the market ( past many fish stalls) is a shop on the left selling kimono fabric by the meter.

Another option is to buy what at first I thought were hemmed fat quarters which are fairly ubiquitous. Now, why would anyone hem fat quarters. Eventually it dawned. Not fat quarters - Japanese gift wrapping cloths! But you know - fabric squares are fabric squares! Just by example, this shop is on Shijo-Dori, on the North side between Starbucks and Kawaramachi Station.

We walked from here to the old area of Pontocho which is an alley way of old houses - now lost of bars and restaurants, parallel to the river which was the old gay area of Kyoto. We walked over the river bridge at Keihan-sanjo station, along Sanjo-Dori and turned south down Higashioji-dori. this is not really a tourist area but it served as a way to get to Gion ( which will also get its own post in due course). However, on the right just down Higashioji there was a small fabric shop selling Kimono offcuts and I finally found ones I liked and which went with the fabric I bought in Toyko and it was only Y400! (About £3). This nice lady owner threw a scrap of shibori in for free too when I admired her curtain made of it.

These are the two fabrics with some thread I went back to Nomura Tailor in Taramagachi for.

And for identification purposes, the outside of the shop.

In the old restored area of Gion between Koadji temple and Kiyomizudera there are lots of shops selling the wrapping cloths and other product made of textiles. Or, there is this one which also sells kimono lengths and paper sheets. It is in Shin-kyogoku arcade which is the mall that runs parallel to Teramachi. If you go north from Shijo-Dori is it very soon on your right.

And just a little further up - another stamp shop again with Japanese themes stamps.

For patchwork magazines you want the Foreign language Institute on the north side of Shijo-Dori. Don't be beguiled - there are no foreign language books in this shop ( unless I suppose you view Japanese as a foreign language.!) Not should you assume that magazines such as Patchwork Tushin will be downstairs with the magazines. Nope. think like the Japanese! Up on the first floor with the patchwork books. (About the middle of the store, stand facing the street, top shelf.) And books/ magazines about knitting and yarns and embroidery too - lots of pictures and diagrams so the language does not matter too much. I did buy one book here ( and I might well go back for the one I resisted becuase I have checked and it is not as I thought possible readily available online!) but all in all I did well just looking today!

Fabric & shopping Kyoto - part 1

On our first day in Kyoto we set out to do a walk from a book which has what might best be called 'temple crawls' in it and I had no intention of going shopping. But, you know how it is...! I will give directions to my finds in case anyone is reading this who has googled 'fabric shopping Kyoto'. I did that to have it suggested that there were no real fabric shops in Kyoto. Oh not true!!

My first find was in fact a button store - this is just one wall of it. It is on the open air part of Taramachi which is a street running from North to East along the eastern side of the Imperial Palace park and continues further south to Shijo-dori where the big departments stores are. If you go from the south-east corner of the Park towards City Hall this shop called La Maison Du Boutons is on your left. They had perfect buttons to go with my Tokyo fabric. There is another haberdashery shop opposite. Just a little further down again on the left is Terra this shop selling paper and calligraphy items. my haul - just two pieces of paper I thought would make good embroidery backgrounds.

Taramachi becomes an indoor mall and about half way down this section on the right is a shop called Nomura Tailor. As you can see it has US quilting cottons, DMC threads and some more local stuff like this hemp string I did not buy because this was during the 'we have no cash' crisis. I might go back now that has been averted!

The above is the Teramachi store. If you go to the end of the covered part of Teramachi and turn right onto Shijo-Dori along there (before you get to Daimaru department store) is another branch of the same shop which is less crafty but has three floors of fabric and haberdashery including Japanese style prints and some kimono fabrics.

Later, after our trip to the Imperial Palace and armed with recently acquired entrance fee cash, we went to Kyoto Shibori Kogei Kan. I didn't know about this until I was desperately scouring the hotel tourist map for currency exchanges. The centre was not marked on the map we bought or in the guide book. This cost Y500 to enter for which you get a 7 min video in Japanese - but any textile person can work out what they are doing!- and a short tour of some examples of shibori and then entrance to the shop. But what examples! I had no idea that shibori could be so intricate. Sadly no photos were allowed but let me just say they had kimono there using a technique which requires 150,000 knots per kimono. Yup. 150,000. Tiny, tiny little ties. Tiny! Nothing like the 'shove it down a pole' or tie it around a marble' shibori I have done. you can do classes but the staff do the tiny ties and leave you to do bigger designs so I didn't bother to reserve and go back.

Of course, I had to contribute to the continuation of this ancient art. For £60 - I chose this bag and purse. It was by no means the most impressive or tempting item on sale but it was right for my souvenir budget!

I have photographed the purse here with a standard sized lipstick to show the scale of the tied knots.

The centre is on Abura-no-koji which is a north-south street -it is on the block south of Oike-dori.

Dennis, as you might expect had his, "I'm not interested personally, but if you want to go some obscure textile place that's fine, I'll come with you...", face on, when the taxi driver got lost taking us there.

"What do you think this says about the choices of all the other tourists who come to Kyoto?" Dennis asked.

"That they didn't choose this taxi driver."

He was quiet after that.

Food packaging photos

I love packaging and the Japanese do it so well...

Japan is hard!

Japan takes some work - it is worth it but nothing is ever quite straightforward. Let me give you an example: today our plan was to include a tour of the Imperial Palace - all the photos on this post are architectural details from there, because really there are no photos relevant to my tale of hard work! Even getting on this tour involved two registration offices and two showings of passports. Japan is a country where you need a lot of cash because not everywhere will take a credit card, including some restaurants we have been in. We took some with us from home but planned to get more on arrival. In Tokyo we noticed that ATM's were not readily available in the places we would find them at home - filling stations, shops, holes in the wall on the street. That we find is typical of Japan - its not that they don't do things we do, they just do them differently. (You all know about Japanese toilets I am sure!)

So in Tokyo we decided we needed to find a bank. We went to Shinjuku main station, got outside, walked down the street, saw a CityBank, went inside and there is the ATM. It has an English option. Card in, cash out. Bingo. Easy save that I would have preferred the ATM in the station where we would put it, but you know - no big deal.

Today we realised we were getting very low on cash again. Time to find a bank. The map has department stores. Where there are stores there are banks I reckoned. True. The main shopping area has lots of them. Only all their (inside) ATMs are in Japanese. In the third bank I ask for help. No, bank ATMs do not take English cards. But the machine in the department store does. But....??? Oh never mind. When in Rome ( or Kyoto) and all that... Off to the department store.

Where the machine rejects my card, twice. The same card I used in Tokyo. It rejects Dennis's too saying both are out of date which they are most definitely not. Now what to do? I try another bank. The security guard points us to the post office at the end of the street. There is no Post Office there. ... It is now getting dangerously close to the time we need to be at the Imperial Palace but I am reluctant to spend on a taxi in case I need our precious cash for food. The inspiration! We have been carrying emergency British Pounds. Those hurriedly exchanged for cash in a Travelex we found, we leaped in a taxi and just caught the tour as it was going around to the second building!

To change the subject. This is an Imperial storehouse built by an Emperor in 1915. Dennis looked at it and looked at me and said, "That would make you a good studio." Quite.

Miyajima island

A twenty-five minute train ride and a ten minute ferry takes you from Hiroshima to Miyajima island, home to the much photographed Tori gate leading to the large shrine. When you get off the ferry there are signs telling you that the deer on the island are tame. At first we though the deer would be up on the hillside walking trails. Oh no. These are tame-tame deer! They mingle and like to eat paper -we saw a couple munching on tourist maps!

The area around the shrine is very busy and there are streets of souvenir and sweet shops. but, if you are prepared to wait for a gap in the crowds and to snap quickly, you can get a sense of serenity.

The island's highest peak is Mount Misen at 500 meters (1800 feet) and you can get most of the way my 'ropeway' which is actually two cable car systems. This is the first one.

The January cold weather was creating a haze but despite the bad photos I think you can see that the view is fantastic.

And even better - at the top: monkeys! Dennis was so excited - he said he had read that there was a reserve and he hoped he might get to see one, "even just a quick glimpse from a distance." But when we got there... monkeys everywhere!!

And I confess - I liked them too!

Kindle research

It was cold in Hiroshima and we had been wandering around a lot on Miyajima island so we decided do have some rest time in the hotel in the evening - Dennis with his music and a book and me with the complimentary Internet. A good opportunity, I thought, to look into these Kindle things.

Now I already understood that the major plus of these things is that it saves you weight when you travel. So you might think that my research was a bit late. But, for most of this trip we have not been weight challenged and when we realised needed to slim down for our forthcoming two economy trips we decided to gift some read paperbacks to relatives or hotel receptionists or waitresses - anyone who said they would enjoy them. One I sold to a second hand shop to fund a new purchase. Granted, it was a bit painful to give away such a beautiful item as a book, but if I want to read them again I can have a new copy at very little cost and I know that they are being appreciated more probably by their new owners than they would have been sitting on my shelf at home.

But there are lots of Kindle owners and not all of them are travelling so there must be more to this Kindle thing than lightness. I did some online research and the basic points seem to be these:

1. Kindle books are cheaper than actual books.
This may be true. Except that you cannot loan, regift, or sell them. So you are getting less value for less money. Nor can you touch them, smell them or weigh them in your hand. That these latter qualities were important to Dennis and I was emphasised when we both found ourselves lingering in an Japanese bookstore where we did not understand a word of the content just because books were so - well beautiful. No matter how streamlined, the same cannot be said for a Kindle. Further, the new bigger, better Kindle costs $489. That means I have to read a lot of books before I save the cost of the machine that gives me the savings on the books. And by then a bigger, better more expensive one will be out. And before then the Apple Tablet will be out to complicate things even more.

2. You can get Kindle books in 60 seconds.
This is I admit a huge plus for an impatient reader. Less so for someone who already has a stockpile of books to get through and who never forgets to take one with her. I frequently pack three in a case and one in my handbag just for an overnight business trip. I am never going to be bookless for having to wait the whole 24 hours it takes to get a real one in the post.

3. A Kindle looks like a real book.
Good. But you know what - that means my books look exactly like a Kindle. And they smell better.

4. Amazon envisages having all books available for Kindle.
And I envisage making all the quilts in my head before I go back to work in March, Not going to happen. I did a scientific test. That is, I took the list of books I have found as I have been travelling that are now on my Amazon wish list. Of a list of 34, 4 were available for Kindle. To be fair, I have found a lot of art and textile books. But of the non-illustrated 'reading books' (8), 4 were available.

5. The new Kindle will read to you.
This did get me interested. It would be nice to have the ability to continue my book as I drive which this lets you do. However, the Kindle costs $489. Of the 8 'reading' books, 6 were available on Audible ( the 2 not available were non-fiction), an Amazon owned company incidentally, at less costs than the Kindle version and are downloadable on to a cheap MP3 or a CD. I can read more than one book at a time so I can happily have one in the car for driving and more for reading in paper versions.

6. The Kindle holds 3500 books.
So does my house. I have never felt the need to carry more around than I can carry in my luggage. And I can carry a lot in my luggage. Which is where I came in.

Verdict: I want to want a Kindle. But I don't. I do want those 34 books though.

Hiroshima

Of course, the purpose of our being in Hiroshima was to visit the Peace Park and Memorial. Our hotel was just across the river and so just a few hundred meters away from the 'hypocentre' - the spot where the atomic bomb exploded 600 m over the city. Almost all buildings for mile around were either instantly destroyed or burned in the subsequent fires. However some ferro-concrete buildings were less destroyed. This building - now known as the A-dome - was almost exactly under the centre of the blast and because of the downward forces its walls continued, in part to stand. It has been preserved as a memorial. The park itself stands on a river island - the bridge across the river - the Aioi bridge, being the target for the Enola Gay, actually survived the blast although was rebuilt in the 1980's. The park has various memorials in it including the cenotaph.

There is a museum which takes a couple of hours or more to do - it is all in English and an audio guide is available. It covers the history leading up to the use of the bomb and material about the nuclear arms race since. Then, in the last room are items which survived the blast - melted iron statutes, shadows of vaporised people on stone steps, this watch which stopped at the time of the blast

and this - perhaps the most poignant of all. A three year old boy was outside riding this tricycle when the bomb hit. He was killed and his metal bike melted. His father thought he was too young to be buried away from his family so he buried him in the backyard and with him his bike and helmet for comfort. Forty years later the child's remains were moved by the father to the family grave and the helmet and tricycle donated to the museum.