Fabric Shopping in Japan

Japan, Tomato & Textiles

This isn’t so much a guide to fabric shopping in Japan, more of a show and tell. A gentle meander with me, if you will.

As you can imagine, we saw some beautiful textiles, they kind of just appeared as we were wandering about. I didn’t take photos of everything. It feels a little intrusive in some cases, especially when a person is just going about their daily life. Not everything is to be photographed with a social media strategy in mind (she says as if she has one). Somethings are supposed to just be quietly enjoyed.

But, I did promise to tell you about my visit to Tomato Fabrics, the famous fabric shop in Tokyo. 

Nippori Fabric Town

Nippori Town is the fabric district in Tokyo and home to many fabric, haberdashery and button shops. We walked there from the Tokyo National Museum and it took about half an hour meandering along. If you are going to Japan it’s actually quite easy to find your way around. We decided to hire a WiFi box, which we pre-booked and collected from the airport on arrival. And you just pop it back in the post box as you are leaving. It meant we had WiFi everywhere, even at Mount Fuji. We used google translate & google maps to navigate, it even tells you which underground platform to stand on. Nothing is fool-proof but it was pretty good!

Anyway, back to fabric town …

We got there quite late in the day after a full day of sightseeing. We’d almost skipped it completely. We had only been in Japan 2 days and were still finding our bearings a little bit. And there had been an earthquake on the first night so all in all quite eventful! But we toddled off and found it. I’m so glad we did.

The short version is it lived up to the hype and was hyperventillatingly, gloriously, filled with 5 floors of fabric joy! You pay on each floor, so there is no need to carry the bolts up and down the stairs. I think it’s a ploy to make it easier to buy more fabric! There were actually about 3 or 4 Tomato shops along the street. I unselfishly took one for the sewing team and visited quite a few.

You don’t really need a step by step guide of navigating a fabric shop. We all have experience in that department. I will say, I’m actually very fussy about the fabric I buy. I am very happy to leave empty handed if nothing speaks to me.

It spoke. Well, more shouted.

I came away with 12 metres, which I happily carried around for 2 weeks. So my advice is save room and take a bag with you!

Mokuba Ribbons

While in Tokyo, we also visited the Mokuba showroom. Mokuba are the designers of the most beautiful Japanese ribbons. If you ever wondered where the Couturiers and Designers get those beautiful trims and ribbons from – this is the place. Richard has been obsessed with these ribbons ever since he found them in our Kleins Deadstock Haul. 

Kyoto

We did happen across a costume museum in Kyoto (not The Costume Institute which would have been a really good one to go to!) when we were actually looking for a castle in completely the opposite direction. The Costume Museum was a series of 1/4 scale accurate dioramas depicting tales from 400 years ago. The level of detail was truly astonishing. There were also some glorious (full sized) Kimonos like this green & orange one. I hadn’t realised there could be so many layers to a Kimono. They had up to 12 layers, with the matching and toning colours visible at the sleeve and neck.

Once you start looking …

We found that textiles just found us as we meandered about. From the rope textile display that drew us into a building. I mean turns out it was actually an office block that we just had a little wander around. Hey-ho!

We came across street art. A gallery with a huge window full with a piece made of used tea bags in Hiroshima. Unfortunately, I don’t have the name of the artist. A Kimono forest. And of course actual beautiful Kimonos.

There is still so much that we didn’t see. I’d like to see an Indigo Dye Studio or farm and we didn’t even begin to explore Denim in Japan. But it’s nice to think we might get to go back again.