Day Three in Japan - Tokyo Design Festa

After a morning trip on the luxurious Shinkansen from Nagoya to Tokyo, yesterday was all about the Design Festa.

I've always had trouble describing the Design Festa in a manner that really did it justice.  "An international art event" just was never enough.  Quoting from the brochure is better... "The creative chaos of original art..... jam packed with genre-crossing, off the wall artworks and exciting live performances guaranteed to inspire and enchant..."  And it's not just the 10,000 exhibiting artists / designers / crafters / performers spread over 3,000 booths and two stages that are a sight to be seen, but there are many visitors themselves dressed in expressive fashion and cosplay.  

Thanks Design Festa, it was mind-blowing as always!  See you again next year!

*If you're lucky enough to be in Japan at the time, the Design Festa is also in both May and November every year*

Japan Trip 2014 - The Tokyo Design Festa in Pictures

My trip to Japan last month went by in a blur.  With just a week on Japanese soil there was so much to fit in, see and do.

My second day there I went to the Tokyo Design Festa, a favourite event of mine.  I always try to time my trips to Japan to get to this show.  It's full of work by designers, illustrators, crafters, painters and performers, there is so much to see and inspire.  Many of the 56,000 visitors to the festa have fun with their appearance  as well so there are lots of fashions and costumes to also amaze. 

There was so much more to photograph, but as it was, I didn't get to see all of the 3000+ booths that were there.  If I had stopped to photograph everything that interested me, I could have seen even half of what I saw.

You can see more photos from my visits to the Design Festa on previous years here, here, here, here, here and here.

The Design Festa - The Cute Version

Here I am, safely in Japan and time is already slipping away, the first four days of the trip have rushed by.

My first port of call here was the Tokyo Design Festa.  It was truly amazing event with everything from cute toys and characters, jewellery, clothing as well as a lot of work by illustrators and artists.  With something like 3000 booths, I did a pretty impressive job at seeing a large percentage of the visual artists.  The event also has outdoor and indoor stages housing musicians and performance artists, so given time, I would have much preferred to do it over two days.

I took so many photos and they are going to take me a while to go through.  I have links to the artists for many of them and stories to tell of some, but in the meantime, here's a small taste of some of the cute versions of the Design Festa.

1. Embroidered Brooches, 2. Norah and Jam, 3. Oni Oni Town, 4. Button Lamp and Artwork, 5. Cuddle Me, 6. Monster Purses, 7. Stitching on a Sofa, 8. Tweet Tweet, 9. Kame

While here in Japan, I am getting less time to blog (and I have so much to blog about!), but I'm posting random pictures of what I'm seeing on my journey on my Facebook page.  Thank you to everyone who has joined me on there and has commented along the way, it really helps me feel like I'm not travelling so alone.

Some More Tokyo Design Festa Yumminess

I'm still very slowly working my way through photos from the Tokyo Design Festa. I'm going to try to put up a few every day or so.

I loved the illustration work of this woman. Her pieces were transferred onto fabric and sewn into little pencil cases and coin purses.

Sadly, she didn't have a website for me to direct you to.

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.

Getting ready for a big, arty weekend!

I'm so excited about this weekend, and to make it even better, it starts tomorrow! Early-ish in the morning, I'll be hopping on the train to Tokyo. The original plan was to go just for the two days of the Tokyo Design Festa, then I scored a couple of extra days off. To top it off, it turned out that my mate from Australia, who is in Japan on business for a few months, had time off as well, so we're making a short holiday of it.

Our plans aren't set in stone, but tomorrow, I hope to go to Nippori Textile town. Mmm.. it's a good thing they don't take credit cards because otherwise it could be really dangerous! Friday, will involve a lot more shopping, as it's best to get my shopping fix before hubby arrives to join us. I'll also be meeting Fuji Mama for French crepes. She's the first person I'll have ever met from the blogging world. It's funny, I'm excited and nervous at the same time. The rest of the weekend will probably be taken up with the Design Festa and hopefully a trip to Harajuku to get some Cos Play photos and possibly to the Sumo.

To get to Tokyo, my friend and I decided to save a little money and take the slow, fast train there. This one takes three hours rather than the usual two. That means lots of catching up chatting time, but hopefully also some creative ideas time. I love to write on trains and get lots of ideas then as well. I'm not sure why. So, for the occasion, I've packed a special little bag. In it, I've popped a blank journal (with a kimono fabric design on the front of course), a couple of pens, some scissors, glue and colour pencils. Plenty to write and do some rough sketches with. I always plan to take my sketch book with me, but it's a bit too big, so I though maybe downsizing might help. I think it may be time for a moleskin.

In the back of the journal I've also created a pocket to keep some small pieces of Japanese yuzen. Some of the designs I do, I like to use colour patterns, but am not so great at sketching, so am going to get back to doing mini collages.


I've also packed my new copy of the Artist's Way which I'm dying to get into. Of course my camera bag is ready to go but I'm still umming and ahhing about taking my computer... Now, I just need to pack some underwear and I'm ready for the weekend!

Random Photos from the Tokyo Design Festa

It may take me a few days to catch up on everything here before I get a real chance to write about my amazing weekend in Tokyo. So for now, here are a few random shots from the Design Festa.

And if anyone's interested, I have written in more detail about my capsule hotel sleep-over on my other blog.

More from Tokyo Design Festa - Bags by Ema

At the Design Festa, I just drooled over this woman's work! Not only were they amazing, original pieces of art, they were in fabric AND they had been made into bags! I had an ever-so-brief chat with the artist, and she was a darling as well.


Mmm... a lovely combination of red and black and cute and scary. Can you guess how tempted I was to buy this piece?

Check out these Japanese choir girls in their school uniform. I love the detail in the library too!

Talk about purse feet! This one has purse legs and feet! If you look close, you can see that they are dangling from the bottom of the bag. Actually, talking of purse feet... soon I'll show you the bag I did buy at this event... The funkiest purse feet I've ever seen.

You can see more of Ema’s work here.

Tomorrow, if all goes well, I'll be rearranging my workroom wall just in time for this week's This is… theme.