Sunday at Ueda Joint

I know I promised this post several days ago, but with earthquakes, typhoons, train delays, busy markets, and regional strategy meetings I was a bit more busy this week than I anticipated.  Sorry!  You may have noticed that Tokyo experienced three large earthquakes in just a few days.  The first one I didn’t feel at all because I was on a train.  The second quake ripped me out of a sound sleep at 5 am – I was not happy.  And the third one hit while I was at work.  My office is on the 9th floor of our building.  Making buildings that can withstand earthquakes means making buildings that sway when a quake hits – if the building is rigid, the shaking will cause structural damage, sometimes to the p0int of building collapse. So riding out a good-sized earthquake while on the 9th floor is definitely…interesting.  I have been in many earthquakes before, both in Japan and in the US, but that was one of the more unsettling experiences.  Anyway, on to the post I promised!

So on Sunday we realized that the festival wasn’t going well for us and that we should try to have some fun  instead of stressing out about things.  We packed up the shop and just enjoyed ourselves.  I mean, it was a festival at a castle.  Does it get much better than that?

Ueda castle was built in 1583 – when you think about what it means for something to be “old” in the US and then compare it to something like this you realize we have very little concept of what it means when a building is old.  There were some battles and some politics, which you can read about here, but the long and the short of it is that it was razed to the ground and rebuilt in 1622.  Most of the walls and towers of the castle visible today are from 1622.  Why is this significant, you ask?  Well, a lot of historical sites are reconstructions of castles and homes that were destroyed at one point or another and rebuilt in modern times.  Ueda Castle isn’t one of those sites.

Tepee stage with castle tower in the background.

The largest stage.

There were three stages at the festival – two of them inside the original walls behind the gate in the picture.  One of them was set up inside a tepee.  Seriously.  The other one was small and hosted mostly DJs for the weekend.  The third and largest was at the base of the castle wall.  You can’t see it in the picture of the entrance, but the castle is at the top of a hill.  To the left of the gate things drop off pretty steeply to a grassy field where the largest stage was set up.  People wandered freely from stage to stage as the performers changed, stopping at booths to shop and snack along the way.  Shop owners from all over the Nagano area and Tokyo set up booths offering handcrafted items made of organic materials.  A lot of the food was organic, most of it was locally grown.

Several artists were also creating new works during the weekend on enormous canvases set up along the major pathways around the castle.  It was actually really interesting to watch them as they worked.  I have never really been able to draw or do anything freehand like this, so watching someone fearlessly take a brush to canvas simply boggles the mind.  The second painting was definitely our favorite – a pagoda, a train, a Buddha, and a taiko drummer – fantastic.  Interesting fact for you – the hotel room we stayed in had a Bible by the bed.  It wasn’t placed by the Gideons, but it was there nonetheless.  It was right next to a book on Buddhist teachings.  Definitely made me smile.

I also saw some unbelievable crochet while I was there.  The first was a free-form wall hanging made of countless different yarns – forgive the poor photo, I took it in their booth which had a red awning.  The girls running this booth run a boutique in an area of Tokyo known for its bohemian style – it also happens to be an area of Tokyo very near the Kaizer Kasa.  One of the girls does all the crochet and she makes some of the most adorable hats, bags, and headbands I’ve ever seen.  I have always been really impressed by crochet, mostly because it is the only medium I have tried but have not really been able to get the hang of.  I think it’s because it’s a little too free-form for me.  I do better with a bit of structure, and having a large piece of crocheted cloth with only a tiny little hook in it just never seems to work out well.  Knitting, on the other hand, has the additional structure I need to really feel confident in myself.  Speaking of confidence, I would never have the guts to wear something as outrageous as the crocheted vest I saw on one of the festival-goers.  (When it comes to my clothing I am depressingly conservative and spend most of my time wishing I could be more daring.)  I spotted her in the crowd and immediately pulled out my camera, but I was only able to get one shot before she disappeared.  It was by far the best summer crochet/knit project I saw all weekend and perhaps the best one I have ever seen, period.

When it was all said and done, Ueda Joint would be a fun festival to attend again in the future, but I don’t think we’ll be having a booth again for a long while.

May life continue to inspire you,

Miss Kaizer

I’m back!

Betcha thought I was never coming back, huh?  Well, I did come back and first thing’s first – where the heck have I been, young lady?  (I know that’s what you’re thinking.)

Two words: Ueda Joint.  I have been talking about this music festival since just after the birth of my blog.  About three weeks ago we really hit crunch-time for production and the blogging fell to the very  bottom of the priority list.  Mr. Kaizer was cutting and ironing all day while I was in the office, and when I got home at 7 pm or later I would stay up until 1-2 am stitching my little heart out, only to wake up again at 5 am the next morning.  This continued for two weeks.  The coffee machine and I were the best of friends.

Despite all this effort, we fell short of our production goals (admittedly, they were quite lofty), but we still had more than enough product in inventory.  How did it go, you ask?  Well, let me just say this: hippies with limited fiscal resources make delightful friends.  They make terrible paying customers.

All the people were extremely friendly and we had more than one person comment on the quality of our handmade items.  Huge stroke to the ego on that one.  But ya know what popped it like a bubble?  Losing money on the endeavor overall.  But as Mr. Kaizer and I like to say, it was a learning experience and those are invaluable.  (Lather, rinse, repeat.  I lost track of the number of times I had to say it until I started to feel better.)

The festival itself (held July 31 – August 2), according to the other vendors we spoke with, didn’t have nearly the attendance it had last year.  Nor was the weather particularly cooperative.  It bucketed down rain Friday and Saturday afternoon.  Sunday was a pretty constant intermittent drizzle.  We actually lost a bit of inventory to the unexpected downpour on Friday.  By the end of the day Saturday we pretty much expected that everything we owned would have at least a bit of mud on it.

All in all, it was a positive weekend, even if it didn’t feel that way at the time.  But once I finish scraping mud off of everything, I plan to start listing items in my Etsy shop.  And now that the festival has passed, I should have enough time to blog more regularly again – tomorrow I will be sharing with you our Sunday Ueda Joint experience.  See?  Every cloud does have a silver lining!

Imabari

I had every intention, dear Kaizer Peeps, of posting about appliques and other bits of sewing miscellanea.  But there are more than a few colorful expressions my dad has for intentions, opinions, and the like, so I won’t bore you with what I intended to do.  (And I’ll spare you the gritty details on said expressions.)  The long and the short of it is this – I got out of town over the long weekend!

Mr. Kaizer and I headed down to Imabari in Ehime prefecture on the island of Shikoku to visit some friends.  (If I were a more clever blogger, and if it wasn’t currently past 11 pm, I would insert a fancy-shmancy link to a Google Map.  But no such luck today.)  Our friends live very near the ocean in this lovely town rich in maritime history.  It also has a castle.  And who doesn’t love a castle?  (This particular castle had historic samurai suits of armor.  Totally cool, but I know that if one of those guys came running at me with a sword that I would probably definitely make a stinky mess in my lil’ ‘ol panties…but I digress.)

Despite the awesomeness of the castle, we were there to visit our delightful Kaizer Kompadres – the castle was just a bonus.  M & Y used to live in our neighborhood in Tokyo before moving to Imabari nearly one year ago.  But the terrible part was that we hadn’t seen them since they moved.  *sniffle!

We had fun visiting historic sites and all, but the best part of the vacation was definitely spending time with M & Y.  They’re wonderful people!

Can’t wait to see them again soon!

May life continue to inspire you,

Miss Kaizer