Hello from Tokyo! 

What an amazing, diverse, surprising, huge, daunting and friendly place.  For those of you haven’t caught up with the news Robbie and I are visiting Japan for the Tokyo Quilt Festival and taking a few extra days out to see as much of the country as we can in a short time.  Make sure you check out the Annie’s Facebook page as well as my Instagram  page #anniescountryquilts to see more pictures.

After a bit of rough start and feeling particularly unwell after a long flight and no sleep, whatever it cost for the pre-arranged shuttle from the airport late at night was well worth it…otherwise I would still be sitting there curled up in the corner with my sick bag!

However everything came right with some much needed sleep and it was  on to the Quilt Show the next day…The Tokyo dome is quite an impressive building and the show is pretty huge with more than 1800 absolutely stunning quilts on display, some of which I cannot even begin to imagine how many hours work are involved per square inch let alone a queen size quilt.  Of course there are many merchants and international machine and fabric companies to temp the thousands of yen out your pocket.

The Japanese are the masters of detail in terms of quilts – their handwork is exquisite and beyond belief.  The are so many bags kits that I am sure that many of these ladies have a different hand bag for every day of the year.  They are also the masters of miniature.

I have been to large quilt shows in the US, but what differentiates this one is the sheer number of people which is mind boggling.  With between 30-40 thousand people visiting the show each day you have to be a pretty determined shopper and be incredibly patient to get what you want.  I do not envy the merchants one bit!

We have met some lovely people and you only have to hold a map and look half bewildered and you generally have people fighting over who can help you and practice their English.  I think we could all learn a thing or two from this in terms of how we treat visitors to New Zealand!

The city is clean and incredibly well organised and it is probably the safest city I have ever been to.  Everything runs on time and everybody plays by the many, many rules!  We visited the Imperial palace gardens today and there were signs telling joggers not to listen to music or to run too fast!  If you do make the mistake of being or eating something in the wrong place you are politely and gently redirected.

 You also have remember that there is only one group of people more important than men in uniform – men in uniform with loud hailers!!!

Our next adventure involves exploring some of the country by bullet train which will be completely different and I will be sure to update you with the photos as I can.

Sorry no recipe this week..I am still researching!

Take care and happy stitching

Rachel