While I'm in Japan... Tokyo Design Festa

Surprisingly I haven't talked about it on the blog yet, but this time next month I'll be in Japan!  The trip has been planned for ages and booked for a while, but over the last month there has been a little umming and ahhing about whether it would go ahead or not.

I'm really happy now to say that it is!

I'll be in Japan for 18 days.  I'll be travelling about a bit, mostly following the antique markets to stock up on vintage kimonos.  But there are a few other must-dos while I'm there.

The first one is the Tokyo Design Festa.  It's a truly amazing, inspiring, mind blowing international art event, held twice a year.  I plan to plan my trips to Japan to ensure that I'll be able to go each year.  The show has over 2850 booths of work by indie designers and artists as well as performance artists and musicians.  This much creativity and creative freedom all packed under one roof is astounding. 

Here are a few pictures from when I went a few years ago.

You can see these pictures  and more, in a larger size over here.  And a few posts on a few of the artists here, here and here.

The big problem is that I'm going to the show my first weekend there, I could blow my entire 3 week budget in the first two days!  Luckily many of the painters and illustrators also sell postcards of their work, last time I came home with quite a collection.  Many of them used to hang on my Japanese studio/office wall, and a smaller collection is in my current office/workspace still.

I'm afraid after this trip, I'm going to need a lot more wall space to hang things on!

Watch this space for some more hints of places I'll be visiting next month.