Gearing Up for the Year of the Dragon: Peevish Takes Another Stab at Kimekomi

Fearless and I were treated to a swell time by Matsuzaki last week. She asked her friend, who teaches kimekomi in Tokyo, to show us how to make dragons for our upcoming special birthday year. The Year of the Dragon will be even more special for me than for Fearless because she'll be a mere forty-eight while I will celebrate the beginning of what the Japanese refer to as my "second life" when I turn sixty next July. Fearless is already tired of hearing me refer to myself as extra-special so she'll probably be ready to strangle me by the time the Year of the Dragon actually arrives.

I love the fact that turning sixty is cause for celebration here. If questioned about my age back home, I'd be mumbling behind my hand. Just my luck to get old a decade or so after America knocked Wisdom off its pedestal.

At any rate, we gathered at Matsuzaki's house in Kamakura. That in itself is worth a couple more posts but today I'll stick to kimekomi which, as most of you know by now, involves tucking small pieces of fabric into crevices carved into a small object filled with sawdust.

This is what our dragons are supposed to look like upon completion:

This is what I found inside the box of supplies the teacher distributed:

This is the teacher. She's using a sharp little spatula to smooth the crevices before filling them with glue. She doesn't speak a lick of English but Matsuzaki-san is an excellent translator.

Yuka-san and Matsuzaki-san

You might recall that Matsuzaki-san operated a shop until last June where she sold all sorts of items -- tote bags, skirts, table runners, jackets, book covers, etc. -- she fashioned from scraps of old obis and kimono. She has, in short, nimbler fingers than most. The teacher gave each of us a pair of tiny scissors for cutting the excess fabric after the crevices were stuffed, but Matsuzaki-san was the only one of us permitted to touch the scissors. I picked mine up at one point but the teacher told me in no uncertain terms to drop them. Remember how I said she doesn't speak a lick of English? Yet I knew exactly what she was telling me. It was all in the tone of voice, hauntingly reminiscent of Nicholas Cage declaiming, "Put The Bunny Down!"

Teacher snipping excess fabric

Jamming fabric into crevice after excess fabric is snipped

We covered the dragons' bodies today and will meet again soon to finish this project. Everyone else placed their fabric in the direction that was shown in the example but I glued mine in place upside down to look more like real dragon scales. Not that there is such a thing as a real dragon, of course.

This is what my dragon looked like at the end of the lesson:

So far, so good.

Use a Wire and Eat a Cream Puff . . . or Three

You might think I'm a crafty lady -- the type who whips up a few quilt squares before breakfast and spends her evenings bent over the stove, stirring wood pulp into paper for one-of-a-kind scrapbook pages littered with charming stamped designs and painstaking calligraphy.

Nothing could be further from the truth, which is:  I can't even pronounce the name of the most popular craft store in this part of Japan, let alone do anything useful with most of its products.

Background
Ishii was practicing her English while helping me untangle a rat's nest of yarn a couple weeks back -- this was before I scored the wooden balls in Asakusabashi -- when my glance happened to fall on the kimekome ball I brought home from Tadodai House. ("Glance happened to fall" is my euphemism for what other English language "teachers" here call "lesson plans".)

"Where can I buy one of those two-headed knife tools to finish this second ball? Do they have them at Yuzawaya?" I thought it was a fairly simple question, really, but I'll be the first to admit my spoken sentences tend to be less complete than my written ones. Nouns, verbs, and punctuation marks appear in random order, assuming they appear at all.

Ishii reached across the yarn clump on her lap to pick up a little bundle of gold cord from the coffee table. "This is what you use to cover the seams," she replied. In careful and perfect English.

"I know THAT. But what about the knife tool? Yuzawaya?"

"No. This cord." She gave the little bundle of gold cord a gentle shake, like a patient young mother trying to interest a baby in a rattle or like my brother trying to bribe Mel with a doggie treat. Her face was tense with concentration.

We were down to nouns.

"Knife. Yoo-zah-why-yuh? Kamioooooooka?"

Her face muscles relaxed a bit. "Yoo-zah-why-yuh store?"  I nodded.

"Yes, I think they sell the knives at the Yuzawaya store in Kamiooka. I thought you wondered if you could 'use a wire' in place of the gold cord."

Placing equal stress on all syllables is particularly difficult for people prone to melodramatic inflection. Apparently.

The Field Trip

The Oakleaf knitters meet at my house most Monday mornings.  Cheryl coordinates both the Oakleaf knitters and the base knitting group.  I said, "Hey, Cheryl, let's take the knitters on a field trip to Yuzawaya in Kamiooka some Monday.  We can have lunch and try to find the cream puff shop."

About a dozen of us set off for Kamiooka last Monday morning.  About half were mainly interested in having lunch, five never turn down a chance to buy fabric and/or yarn, and one was looking for a knife tool she might someday use to apply fabric to kimekome balls.

All, it turned out, were interested in tracking down the cream puff shop.  They didn't care that I couldn't quite remember where the shop is located.  There's a lot to be said for friends who will follow you anywhere. 

Regrettably, I was too embarrassed to pull out my camera and snap a picture of the long line of gaijin women following me single-file around the perimeter of the Keikyu department store basement.  (The last time I saw such optimistic faces lined up like that was in the home movie my dad took as we filed down the stairs in age order on Christmas morning circa 1961.  It dawns on me that he must have been feeling a lot of pressure to please on that and other Christmas mornings.  Excuse me while I wallow in a puddle of belated empathy.)

How much pressure was I under?  Enough to ask three clerks for directions.  Yes, brothers and sis, you read that correctly:  I approached three perfect strangers and said "Beard Papa's?" in the most questioning and hopeful tone of voice I could muster.  (See 'melodramatic inflection', above.)  The third clerk actually understood English and was able to point us in the right direction.

Beard Papa's is located between the tobacco shop and department store entrance on the ground floor of the train station, just outside the turnstiles. So now you know and won't have to talk to strangers.

Beard Papa's offered five varieties of cream puff the day we visited:

1. Regular crust, custard filling.
2. Crust studded with brown sugar, custard filling.
3. Crunchy donut crust, custard filling.
4. Regular crust, chestnut filling.
5. Crust studded with brown sugar, chestnut filling.

Not sure I would like the chestnut filling, I settled for one each of the first three options, kicked myself for missing the pumpkin filling offered in October, and vowed to return in December to slake my flavor-of-the-month curiousity.

As I watched the clerks stuff cream puff after cream puff into boxes and sacks for my friends, the thought crossed my mind that Beard Papa's might want to offer me some sort of profit-sharing deal. This, alas, is what comes from cramming five and a half seasons of "The Sopranos" into eight weekends. Shame on me.

Lots of Japanese food service workers wear floor-length aprons. I hope they aren't planning to discard all those puff shell fragments on the tray in the right foreground. Thoughts like that make it hard for me to sleep at night.

(That clicking sound you hear is my sister desperately searching for bargain flights to Japan.)

Bags, Balls, Bunnies, and Subliminal Messages in Asakusabashi

Tokyo's Street of Dolls in Asakusabashi is a mere sixty-six minutes from Yokosuka. You can hop on a train just before 9:00 and waltz into the eight-story paper store just two or three minutes after the shop opens at 10:00. Why don't I go there more often?

The merchants are gearing up for the Year of the Rabbit so we saw lots of bunnies in the doll shop windows and a few sad tigers in the sales bins.  Sakura Horikiri, a three-story craft supply store hidden away on a side street across from the paper store, had bunnies hopping across washi paper in every color of the rainbow and kits for crafty people who want to hang bunnies on their walls or dangle them from their cell phones.  Reminding myself that I still haven't done anything with the washi paper and craft kits I bought the last two times I visited Sakura Horikiri, I bought just a few rolls of paper. 

Self-control?  Not hardly, but credit me with a bit of progress in the deferred gratification department.  Sakura Horikiri is bringing a few truckloads of craft supplies and paper to Yokosuka next week.  Why lug the stuff home on the train when a quick sprint across Route 16 is an option?

 As we were wandering up that little side street toward Sakura Horikiri, Mary Beth and Sue -- I am still working on appropriate nicknames -- started rummaging through a sales bin outside a little shop on the left. They spotted wooden kimekomi forms in the shape of tigers. Could there be balls inside?  Be still my heart.  I have searched high and low for wooden balls since February when the Ikebana ladies showed me how easy it is to cover these balls with fabric. Many stores offer styrofoam balls but they don't appeal to me, i.e., I'm pretty sure the end result would be a table covered with styrofoam crumbs.


Wooden kimekomi balls and holiday treat bags

We ventured into the shop and, lo and behold, spotted wooden balls. Four different sizes of wooden balls, to be exact! But if you are in the market for wooden balls, you might want to wait a week or so before you hop a plane or train to Tokyo. The shop will need that long to restock its shelves.


We hit the paper store on our way back to the subway. Gleefully clutching my wooden balls, I skipped down aisle after aisle of school supplies and paper products until a display of notebooks stopped me in my tracks.

Have you ever heard a notebook try to clear its throat? Trust me, it's not a pleasant sound. "Ahem! What's with the balls? Weren't you supposed to be finding Christmas trinkets for a couple of dozen great-nieces and -nephews today? The generation that's multiplying like rabbits?"

"What can I do? I've squandered most of my yen on wooden balls!" I wailed as Japanese shoppers cast wary (albeit excruciatingly polite) glances in the direction of the gaijin lady who seemed to be conversing with a notebook.

"Make this the Year of the Japanese Treats," advised the notebook. "And don't even think of reaching for the small treat bags.  You have enough yen left to buy the larger bags." Hai.

We Awl Had a Ball at Ikebana

Once a year the Ikebana crowd tackles a traditional Japanese craft. Two years ago it was indigo dyeing. I still get compliments whenever I wear my tie-dyed scarf (although, come to think of it, the complimenters might simply be less impressed with my creativity than happy not to have to look at my crepey neck).

Thursday, after the Shrine Maiden dance, we stretched fabric over sawdust-coated balls, dabbed glue into crevices, and jammed the edges of the fabric into those grooves with an awl. We finished our kimekomi "goten mari" ("ball of the palace") by gluing gold thread over the seams. Ta-da!

Using the awl was my favorite part, although squirting the glue into the little aluminum sushi dish was a close second. As luck would have it, I actually have an awl in my utensil drawer. It's surely an antique since Mike's dad was the original owner (he probably used it for punching holes in saddle cinches and other cowboy chores). At any rate, that awl has been causing quite a ruckus for the past 18 hours, rattling around in that drawer and hollering, "Hey! Let me out! I want to jab some fabric into cracks!"

This is a tempting proposition. I like my Ikebana kimekomi but I think I would be even happier if I could cover balls with fabric I chose myself. Perhaps I should pick up some balls and glue and cord when I lead the Oakleaf Explorers to Yuzawaya, the flagship craft store in Kamata, next week.

I am hoping this picture will steer me to the right sort of glue.

There's no such thing as too many decorative balls, right? They'd look nice on, say, a Christmas tree, or displayed in a bowl, or maybe you have an even better idea you can send my way. One thing I know for certain is that your chances of getting a kimekomi for Christmas are a heck of a lot better than your chances for finding a pair of hand-knit socks when you rip off the gift wrap come December but that's a story for another day.

Fumie (pictured here holding my finished ball) got the plum assignment of helping the four ladies at my table make kimekomi. I wheedled her e-mail address in case I need help when I try this craft at home but now I'm thinking I ought to just stock up on lots of supplies and ask her to teach a kimekomi class at my house for my less mobile friends. Not a Kimekomi Party per se, of course, since I've sworn off theme parties.

Here is a peek at my sandwich bento lunch. I ate the whole thing, even the one in the middle featuring chopped vegetables and smoked salmon swimming in mayonnaise. The dessert was a cream-filled cake in the shape of a fish. I was not the only person at my table who played with my food.

Lincoln's Four-Score Olive and Seven Bean Salad

Reiko and I were cooling our heels in the base pass office this afternoon, wondering how it could possibly take someone more than 72 hours to substitute one teacher's name (Kathryn) for another's (Margaret), when I started giggling. This had been happening off and on all day, thanks to the first comment Diane left on yesterday's post, the one where she suggested adding four-score olives to a tossed salad.

I was launching into a rather pedantic explication of "score" when Reiko -- no doubt recalling my 45-minute synopsis of Guns, Germs, and Steel just last Friday -- cut right to the chase. "Isn't a score twenty years? Like in 'four score and seven years'?" "Exactly! Or maybe like in 'four score and seven bean salad.' Or how about 'four-score olive and seven bean salad'?"

Voila! West meets East and explosive synergy results! The package already enroute to Norfolk has been hastily re-imagined as a prize rather than a surprise. It's a Japanese cookbook published by our mutual friend/photographer extraordinaire Kim Jordan.

Erin and Geraldine will both be rewarded for providing presidential trivia questions, although I'm a bit tempted to deduct cookies from Erin for sending me cherry trifle recipes peppered with heinous adjectives like sugar-free and low-fat.

As for Reiko, she's going to be my Ikebana guest next week. We're going to make kimekomi balls at Hachimangu Shrine in Kamakura. It looks like quilting minus the threading a needle part. Christmas ornaments, perhaps?

Okay, I'm off to track down seven different kinds of beans.