So, I’ve been taking a bit of a break from shoes to work on other projects (repairing house stuff, sewing, etc.) and in case you were not aware, I actually have to work for a living, more is the pity. It does have a few perks, though, other than keeping a roof over my head and the cat fed. This time, it’s a trip to Japan, and I’m fortunate enough to spend the weekend in Japan for a bit of sight-seeing and tourist-y stuff. This post focuses primarily on my trip to Nippori Fabric Town. Now, there are a lot of blogs out there that talk about their trip to Nippori Fabric Town with stunning amazement at the wide selection and the number of stores. If you’re interested in scarves, jeans, quilting, or anything that is remotely modern, then I suppose this is a fair assessment. The moment you start looking for materials suitable for the 18th century and before…well, aside from the restaurants with really good noodles, I’m afraid that I’ll have to disappoint you.

It started off favorably – a very easy trip to Nippori station from Shinagawa, and pretty much right out of the station, I saw a sign!

Well, it was a specific sign telling me I was on the right track. Now…where did the signs lead me?

To Fabric Town! Or Street. Either works.

So, I’m excited, I have my map of Fabric Town on my phone (which I downloaded from the web), and I’m really thrilled to see what kind of amazing silks that they have to offer. Note that you probably want to download the most up-to-date one at http://www.nippori-senigai.com for reasons that will soon become readily apparent. I start off at a few places, and realize that I can’t actually read the content of the fabrics! No problem, I have some experience, and can figure it out reasonably well. Allow me to share for your reference:

The first is linen or flax (different symbols – isn’t it neat that flax looks like plants growing?), the second shows the symbol for cotton along with linen (cotton is 45% here), the third shows wool (I’ve seen two different symbols used for wool), and the third is…silk! Lovely silk. Anything else is pretty much useless, right? =)

Now, I’m thinking of my visit to Singapore, and remembering how hard it was to find decent taffetas (even though I did end up finding quite a few). I recalled one guy saying to me, “Taffeta is old! No one uses taffeta anymore.” Still, I figured that this was Japan! How could they not have every single silk offering known to man? So, it turns out, rather easily.

I went to a total of 33 stores. 33! See the full list at the bottom of the post. Some of them did have very lightweight silks, great for scarves or lightweight clothes. Only one of them had anything resembling decent weight silks for anything prior to 1800, and the selections there were either slubby shantungs or 50% silk taffetas. No, let me give you more. There is one store in particular, Tomato, which has five different buildings, most with 2 floors, and in one building, it has five floors. That’s practically ten different floors of fabric, and they’re good sized too. Allow me to show you their silk selection (recalling to mind the silk symbol from earlier):

This really begs kind of a “WTF.” One lousy section for silks, 95% of which is completely unusable for any kind of historical costume. Incredibly disappointing. I spent about four and a half hours in Nippori, and couldn’t find any good silk. But, wait!! There was one ray of hope. There was a shop called “Silk Shop Kinuya!” This was my saving grace! Of course, they had just piled all of the silk into one shop. I headed right over there and started looking for it…and I walked right by it, evidently. So I went back and tried again. Still no luck. What the heck? And then I realized that I had grabbed a more recent map of the area and had it in my bag. I looked at it. Well, the result was pretty depressing, I can tell you:

Even asking around was no help…and, since I hadn’t had lunch yet, I completely over-ate at this noodle house which served cheap, but good, soba in a hot broth. Yeah, I know, it looks dingy, but it was tasty and cheap and matched my salty spirits at this point. In fact, I felt a bit uncomfortable from the food on the way home, but after walking all day, I clearly needed it.

Oh, there were a few good things about the trip. I did get a couple of yards of black and white knit wool that I’ll use for 16th century hose. And, I met one of the most relaxed cats around. He’s probably relaxed because he lives in a liquor store. Ah, kitty. There was also the fact that the Tomato stores played Beatles, Classical Music, and Brittney Spears. I had “Hit Me Baby” stuck in my head for a while.

List of Fabric stores visited:

Tomato main (5 floors)
Tomato arch
Happy 1 and 2
Arai
Okuyama 2nd
Okuyama
Knit 2
Ito
Momo
Wink
Domuto
Knit
Youtou
Yamayo
Tomato select
Elegance
Nagato
Nagato annnex
Tsukiyasu
Tomato interior
Zak Zak
Y2nd
Yonezawa
Saito
Nunohashi
Sano
Iwase
Mogi
Satoh bin
Humongous
Alon
Yasuda
Nanwa