My Love Affair with Tokyo | kimberly ah

Sep 16 2013

adventures, coffee talk, Japan 2013, My Love Affair with Tokyo, Office Supplies, snail mail

Heaven is bunbougu cafe

Stationery store + coffee shop = heaven, am I right?

Hisae (Naoto’s older sister) played tour guide for us during part of our stay in Tokyo. She mentioned that she had a “surprise” for me. Well, the surprise was bunbougu cafe and it was more amazing than I could have imagined.

(This is where I will tell you that I regret a few things about our trip to Japan. One is that I didn’t carry my “big” camera with me very often and another is that I didn’t take more pictures. Sigh. Sorry for my poor iPhone photos!)Bunbougu cafe is in Omotesando neighborhood. It is in the basement of a building and you walk down into a stationery shop and cafe. There are place mats (seen above) at each seat and pens, rubber stamps, markers, colored pencils and other art supplies are available to borrow for doodling and writing. They have a full menu available, but we came right after lunch, so we ordered drinks and doodled a bit at the table as I sat amazed at this incredible cafe concept. While we waited for our drinks, I poked around the store. Bunbougu sells stationery, cards, pens, stickers, washi tape, pen cases, boxes…pretty much anything you could imagine needing if you’re a letter writer or journaler. In addition to the obvious Japanese stationery offerings, they had a lot of my favorite American designers at bunbougu. I saw lots of Rifle Paper Co., Yellow Owl Workshop and Chicago’s own Field Notes! Field Notes were even one of the bunbougu employee’s favorite picks! I limited myself to a few purchases (which I will share in a bit!) and spent most of my time hanging out with Naoto and Hisae drawing at the table and enjoying my coffee. As if being a stationery store/cafe didn’t make bunbougu awesome enough, they have a membership option. For 700 yen (about $7) members receive a key to the stationery drawers at each table. Members have access to the “secret” pens, stationery, art supplies and other treats in the drawers. They also get invited to members-only events and seminars about stationery and other paper-y things. Isn’t this a genius concept? Now, who wants to move to Omotesando with me to join bunbougu cafe? Better yet, who wants to open one here in Chicago? For a great article and better pictures of the bunbougu cafe, go here!

Tagged adventures, coffee, I *heart* Japan, mail art, office supplies, rubber stamp, snail mail, washi tape

Sep 13 2013

8 Comments

adventures, Japan 2013, My Love Affair with Tokyo, Oh Presley!

Fifteen Minutes in a Cat Cafe

Let me tell you about the time Naoto & I spent 300 yen each to play with a stranger’s cats.

It all happened by accident. I hadn’t planned on going to a cat cafe–yes, a cat cafe…where you pay a cover charge to enter and play with cats, not to eat them, thankfully. But one morning, while we were exploring Shimokitazawa and waiting for the stores and restaurants to open, we happened upon Cateriam. We decided it would be a funny thing to do, and it turns out, it was the best part of that day! Our three hundred yen allowed us fifteen minutes to play with, pet, and take pictures of the variety of cats. There were about a dozen or so cats in a large room with a couch, chairs, cat towers and other furniture for the humans and the cats. There were tons of toys to promote play and interaction with the cats, too. There was another customer in the cafe who appeared to be a regular. She stayed a lot longer than we did. There was a small menu with drink and snack options and a gift shop, too!

The cats had access to a little room where they could escape human contact and take a nap or eat, so they weren’t trapped socializing the whole time. All of the cats were really friendly (Presley could never be a cat cafe cat!) Some were hiding out, and others were more playful and social. They each had a name and you could tell that the cat cafe owner, Shigemori-san really cared about each one and knew their personalities well. This cat was a big ol’ ragdoll and just flopped into my arms when Shigemori-san handed him to me. I played with this furry one, but he wouldn’t give the ball back. During our visit, the owner told us to go into the bathroom to see something “interesting”. The cats were helping themselves to some water! I took a little video of this guy lapping it up.

Although the visit made us miss little Presley even more, we both enjoyed our cat fix and experiencing something that seemed very “Japan”. Thumbs up for the cat cafe!

Tagged adventures, I *heart* Japan

Sep 12 2013

3 Comments

adventures, Japan 2013, My Love Affair with Tokyo, snail mail

Tokyo: PO

One of my favorite parts of traveling is sending postcards. I usually take a long time choosing cheesy tourist postcards. (Naoto is very tolerant of this habit. I don’t know what he’s thinking while he stands waiting outside the tourist shops, but he certainly isn’t showing impatience!) And I like to write them out during a slow mid-vacation morning, over coffee of course. There’s less pressure that way. I also always send a postcard to Naoto and me, with a little recap of our favorite things about our trip. It is seriously like pulling teeth to get Naoto to participate, but I know someday he’s going to thank me…when we’re old and grey, he’s going to love remembering that his favorite part of Tokyo 2013 was the food (ahem…and of course seeing his family!) Unfortunately, I was rather unorganized during our trip and postcard writing had to wait until the last two days in Japan. It was difficult to find “travel-y” postcards there…but there were plenty of other pretty options to choose from. (The red post box card above is from the post office…I should have bought more of those. The bird ones were from Itoya.) Once I finally collected enough cards, I sat down at Mister Donut on two separate mornings to get the job done. One of those mornings was especially perfect because Naoto had an errand to run. So it was just me, my postcards, my coffee and donuts…a nice way to spend a solo morning.Since we found the post office right away, I bought stamps on the first day. I felt pressured to make a decision (which is silly, because Japan has the most patient and amazing customer service ever!) so I just snagged the first ones that caught my eye. They happened to be in celebration of Letter Writing Day. (Japan issues a stamp–or stamps?–for Letter Writing Day every year in July! I am disappointed that I never knew this before!) The stamps are pictured above (the 50yen ones…the 20 yens just help get those postcards across the ocean!) I originally chose them because of the old-time red mailbox stamp, but I also fell in love with the little boy writing a postcard and the others, too…I mean, isn’t that vegetable stamp wonderful?

The Letter Writing Day stamps have a lovely matte finish and they are the licking kind (technical term). It was fun to tear the perforation and lick ’em and stick ’em. I also appreciate the fact that the perforation goes all around the stamp. (I personally hate when there are only a couple of perforated sides on the stamp and the rest of the sides have straight edges. It happens on many stamps here in the US and I think it looks silly.) So, the stamps all around were quite pleasing to use. I have two other sheets of postage to share with you as soon as I am home and awake during daylight hours. (Jet lag is in full force around here!) The mailbox above was in my mother-in-law’s neighborhood. I love the red and the modern shape of the new boxes, but the traditional style will always be my favorite. This one makes sense for modern times–there is a slot for international mail and small packages and a slot for regular domestic mail–but really…who doesn’t love the old one? (Picture from our 2011 trip to Japan.)

Tagged adventures, mail art, snail mail

Sep 11 2013

4 Comments

adventures, Japan 2013, My Love Affair with Tokyo

Tokyo: Jet Lag Edition

I have so much to tell you about Japan! As good as it feels to be home (and to hug Presley), I can’t help but feel sad that we aren’t in Japan anymore. I feel like our vacation was a love affair with Tokyo. The busy streets, the crazy-stuffed trains, the bustling train stations, the incredible food, the amazing customer service, the gorgeous stationery stores, my best friend Mister Donut, the loud and smoky izakayas…I already feel nostalgic about the whole trip.

Naoto and I had serious jet lag in the beginning of our trip. After our thirteen hour flight, the ninety minute train trip (pictured above) and the two-stop subway trip (which all includes struggling up and down hundreds of stairs with our luggage), we made it to our hotel, grabbed a snack at a convenience store and fell into bed around 11PM. We were both wide awake at 4AM (2PM Chicago time), so we decided to get up, shower and enjoy a little walk around our neighborhood.

We stayed in a little hotel, the b, two blocks away from the Sangen-Jaya station. The hotel was in a pretty residential/non-touristy neighborhood. It was an ideal location: two blocks away from Mister Donut, two blocks away from the subway, three blocks away from a post office, and two train stops away from Shibuya (the Times Square of Tokyo) and some really awesome stationery shopping. I cannot thank my sister-in-law, Hisae, enough for doing the research and finding this dream location.

The picture at the top was taken around 6AM as we walked around our neighborhood that first morning. All of the shops and restaurants were closed (most shops don’t open until 10 or 11AM), but it was fun to see what was available in a short walk around the area. (Honestly, we were just killing time while we waited for Mister Donut to open!) Did you notice the man in the pink shirt sleeping on the side of the street? Apparently it is not uncommon in Japan to “sleep it off” wherever you happen to pass out.

The only bad thing about our trip was that it was so hot in Tokyo…so hot… I’m not sure if I was just not used to the heat since we’ve had such a mild and cool summer in Chicago, or that the humidity was out to kill me…but I really haven’t felt that kind of boiling madness over a long stretch of days in a really long time. (Shout out to my cousin serving in Kuwait…I know I shouldn’t complain about the heat!!) The weather made it hard to enjoy getting to places, but once we got to our destinations (usually cool, air conditioned destinations), we felt refreshed and ready to take it all in.

I’ll be back tomorrow with another post about our trip. I think we can just consider September “Japan Month” here on the blog.

Tagged adventures, I *heart* Japan