September 28, 2011

Noren-curtain for studio room

Hello and Welcome to Nipponcraft.com,

I did some experiments how Japanese Noren-curtain fitted and looked like for an US studio room in NY. Let me show you how it looked like.

(1) I hang the bamboo Noren-curtain at a window instead of a window shade. It's amazing that the Noren-curtain fits beautifully and looks quite good! The blue bamboo design looks refreshing.

 



(2) Then, I hang the Noren-curtain between the doorway and the kitchen.  It's useful for the partitioning to keep privacy.



 (3) Finally, I hang the Noren-curtain between the kitchen and the room. It's also useful for light partitioning between them.


I hope US people will like Noren-curtains and find them useful for US life.

 Thank you!
- KEN

September 26, 2011

About the slide show

Hello and Welcome to Nipponcraft.com,

Recently we updated the top page slide show.  I think I need to explain about them.  My colleague visited Osaka and took these photos.

Osaka is the second largest metropolitan of Japan with the population of over eight million. This is the city where you can meet with unique culture - quite different atmospheres from other cities and towns in Japan.

For example, the neon advertisement boards are very bright and colorful. Osaka citizens love bright colors and unique designs. They just don't want to the same as other people. The language spoken in Osaka is called "Osaka-ben" or "Kansai-ben"  (literally Osaka dialect) and has unique intonation. Tokyo people and Osaka people are still able to communicate with each other, but the spoken language intonation is quite different.

The following photos were taken at Doton-bori area where you can find many bars and restaurants. Doton-bori is the name of a river and you can find these large neon boards on the both sides of the river. The running man advertisement is the symbol of Glico, a confectionery and food producer in Osaka. They produce chocolates snacks, ice creams, and instant curry.






Along Doton-bori street, you can find many small restaurants and bars.





What Doton-bori makes attractive is many unique advertisements and symbols.
Easily understood, this restaurant serves crab - this shop is called "Kani Doraku" or crab mania!


This is the octopus pan cake called "Tako-yaki". They bake flour with a piece of octopus inside.


Oh, a demon is there!


This is another confectionery ads. This snack is called "Carl" and has been long loved by Japanese people. In TV, this farmer wearing the hat always appears for this snack ads.


This is Biliken, the god of lucky. Biliken was first created by an American artist in 1908 and introduced to Japan.



If you have a chance, please visit these areas and meet with the unique culture and atmospheres.

Thank you!

September 14, 2011

Wind ring bell train

Hello and Welcome to Nipponcraft.com,
For traveling information, here is the wind-bell decorated train that run in the northern part of Kanto (approximately 100km north of Tokyo). This train runs between Kiryu and Maebashi in Gunma prefecture. The website of this train service company is at http://www15.wind.ne.jp/~joden/, but once again it's only in Japanese. This is a very local train. It's so local that I don't think any English written guidebook pick up this wind-bell train.

To visit there, take Tobu express train from Asakusa station in Tokyo and transfer at Akagi station. It is about two hours trip from Asakusa.

Wind-bell is usually used for feeling freshness in humid summer in Japan. It's very interesting that they attach so many wind bells on the ceiling of train cars so as to make them ring as they run.

Sorry to say, the wind-bell train service ended at the end of August but should be again next summer.
I have uploaded the movies. I hope you will find them enjoyable.



Thank you!
- Ken