RECAP!
Thanks so much to SK Arts and Canada Council for the Arts for supporting my travel to Japan. The main purpose of my trip was to attend a masterclass and exhibition special event being put on by the International Tsumami Zaiku Association (ITA). I also got to visit a number of museums and cultural sites as research for my future artworks and exhibition proposals.
Learn more about the International Tsumami-zaiku Association here: https://www.tsumami-kanzashi.tokyo/p/tsumami-kanzashi-school-online-ita
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Day two was a bit of a gong show – mostly because I woke up at 3AM and couldn’t go back to sleep. Jet lag was kicking my butt. Oh, and I got lost on the train. My fault. I wasn’t paying attention (may have been drifting because of the jet lag) and got off at the wrong place. Then, my GPS kept having issues and taking me in circles when I was trying to find my way to the meeting point for the ITA group – which was only a few minutes from my hotel. Ugh.
After my early morning adventure to the Cafe Tarot, the Tokyo Tarot Museum, and Hareruya 2, I spent the rest of the day with the ITA group. The first day of the event we had a welcome lunch, then went on a shopping tour where we walked around Asakusa visiting stores that sold jewelry findings, scissors and tweezers, mizuhiki, fabric – anything that would be useful for tsumami-zaiku. I was so tired that I didn’t get photos or videos of this…and I didn’t want to delay or trouble anyone with our tour group. But, I did finally get a tamagoyaki pan! I’ve always wanted one.
I bowed out a little bit early because the jet lag was catching up to me. My Mom and Aunt arrived that evening, and we were all pretty tired so we just used Uber Eats to order yakitori to our hotel. It was probably the cheapest meal we had while we were there – and it was really tasty!
I also want to give a shout out to Hareruya 2. This store specializes in Pokemon cards, and the staff was amazing. I visited a couple times to hunt down specific cards for my friends and family, and even though my Japanese is not great they were able to find all the cards on my list!
One of the staff members was also kind enough to explain to me their lucky dip-style special. Basically, you can buy a pack of lucky dip cards; there will be random cards, and one special ranked card. You can do the lucky dip up to 5 times per visit, and trade the ranked cards in for extremely valuable cards – OR for unopened booster packs. They don’t sell booster packs to adults without a child present.
I also learned that the Pokemon Centers only allow people to buy 5 packs of their new sets, across all the stores in Tokyo (it’s an honor system, but still not great). That’s not five per each set, or five per store, that’s five packs from all sets and all stores total. They even have an explanation of it in English that they want you to agree to before they will sell the packs to you.
Using the lucky dip system at Hareruya I was able to get 40 packs of the new Raging Surf set for my cousin – way more than the five I would have been allowed to purchase at the Pokemon Center. I may have paid a little more per pack (it’s 2,000yen per dip) but I also got the selection of random cards – and I would not have been able to obtain that quantity of packs otherwise.
Tokyo Tarot Museum: https://www.tokyo-tarot-museum.art/
Hareruya 2: https://www.hareruyamtg.com/en/
More from the Japan Bound 2023 series
Day One in Brief: https://youtube.com/shorts/y0lTQxPODWU
Day Two in Brief: https://youtube.com/shorts/MtP1VYR23qU
Day Three in Brief: https://youtube.com/shorts/VEzABW0DkeU
Day Four in Brief: https://youtube.com/shorts/_t3nc01Sfe0
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My Art: http://www.appledainty.com
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