Hello and Welcome to
www.nipponcraft.com,
Thank you very much for visiting our nipponcraft's booth at the Japan Block Fair on May 20th. We had a wonderful time with you and we enjoyed having conversations with many people. We are based in Tokyo, so it was very meaningful for us to have direct conversations to understand customers and the people living in NY. The weather was beautiful and the temperature went up to over 80 degrees. So we had many guests at the Japan Block Fair.
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| Nipponcraft's booth at the Japan Block Fair on May 20th, 2012 |
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| Many visitors to the Japan Block Fair |
BJAFA (Brooklyn Japanese Family Association), which is an NPO at Brooklyn, organized origami schools for children and we visited there twice to teach how to fold origami papers to the children. Either farther or mother of the children are Japanese, but they don't have much chance to learn origami folding. We taught how to fold cranes, air planes and hats and the children were very excited with flying the air planes they folded by themselves. We had a wonderful time with the children to share origami experience.
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| At Brooklyn's Pacific Library |
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| Children very pleased with flying origami air planes |
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| At Brooklyn's elementary school |
To see more American cities, we made a round trip to Boston. We walked along Freedom Trail to learn American Independence history and we also found many beautiful and old architectures, which we never have a chance see in Japan. We were very much impressed with the beauty of Boston and historical mood there.
My Japanese friend suggested me not to miss sea food and clam chowder at Boston, so we visited one of the sea food restaurants at Back Bay. Many people were having dinner with lots of conversations and we enjoyed the energetic atmosphere of an American restaurant. The cuisines were also wonderful!
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| At Granary Burying Ground |
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| I shot a photo of Acorn street, Beacon Hill |
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| Fish and chips were great! |
For getting to Boston, we took Amtrak Acela Express. It was my first time to ride express trains in US. I heard a rumor that American trains were delayed all the time, but the Acela Express we took were not delayed for both services of going and returning. They were on schedule. Actually, the returning train from Boston delayed 10 to 15 minutes but it was not a severe impact on our itinerary. The express trains were quiet and comfortable and I will recommend my Japanese friends to experience Acela Express.
We took first class on the way back from Boston to NY just to experience what it is like. I was amazed that the first class seats were almost full and I was also impressed that meal and drink were served. The meals were good. We never have such nice services on Japanese express trains! Japanese express trains are more business like.
Another thing I found different was that the track number of trains were not decided until 10 minutes before their departures. In Japan, all the track numbers of departing trains are fixed per train services. It is ridiculous to say what is right about this, but what is important is to enjoy the custom or cultural difference.
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| First class meal on Acela Express; it was good! |
On the last day in NY, we visited the Metropolitan Museum to see Japanese arts. When I personally visited this museum in 2003 the Japanese arts section was closed due to reforming. I was impressed that many Japanese arts are displayed at the museum. I also saw many European paintings at the museum but one day visit may be too short to see all of them. It is a huge museum!
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| Japanese Byobu (painted room partitioning) |
Thank you for visiting nipponcraft's blog!
