Well we didn’t leave Japan empty handed. In our usual fashion we showed up at the airport with our suitcases over stuffed and some extra carry on luggage.

Everything is always colour coordinated! We also have that stack of books at the top left that will have to wait to be shared during another post.

One of the most exciting finds were a set of Ryuji Mitani spoons. I came to Tokyo looking for anything made by Mitani and with the help of Yumiko we found this wonderful set. He is one of the most famous contemporary artisans in all of Japan and his stuff is really hard to get your hands on since the production is so limited. We put the desert spoons to use last night when we ate a whole mini tub of ice cream.

From left: spice spoon, baby spoon, coffee spoon x2, desert spoon x2.

I wanted to find a similar tray to the one that Oji Masanori has on his website displaying his brass bottle openers. I found this beautiful tray at the Claska hotel shop by artisan Kazuhiro Yamaguchi. You can see all the little tool marks revealing that the piece was all done by hand.

On the left are our Muji finds: The most beautiful kitchen scale we’ve ever seen, a wonderful ceramic ladle holder, and black pen designed by Naoto Fukasawa. Fukasawa also designed the paper pen/glasses holder in the photo to the right. He designed the entire product range (SIWA), which we will be carrying at the store soon. The pencil/glasses case is made from the highest grade shoingami paper, it’s super strong and gets softer with use.

We found this quirky house shaped coffee scoop at Spiral.

We can’t leave out the wonderful gifts we received during our trip! We got a beautiful cherry butter case, and brass bottle opener from Oji Masanori and his family. The multi-useful textiles are from Makoto Koizumi when we visited his studio.

More great Claska buys on the left: A simple oak cutting board for cheese, and a beautiful ceramic cross by the artist ONZ. I had the shop keeper at the Claska right down her name, but I can’t seem to find the piece of paper! It’s a multi-use art piece that can be a spoon rest or paper weight.

The chopsticks on the right are like the ones we used at Oji Masanori’s home. We are excited to get our order of brass chopstick rests in so that we can put these to good use!

We found the Corona globe designed by Japan’s amazing design firm Nendo. Did you know the founder of Nendo, Oki Sato is from Toronto?

It was a pain traveling with it, but it’s the most stylish globe we’ve seen.

The two things Juli said she wanted to get when she went to Tokyo were a new purse and a new wallet. Check and check. She got her beautiful leather bag from the Petit_Ami pop-up shop. It’s a beautiful blend of canvas and buttery leather, with a hint of pink suede on the back. Plus lots of little pockets.

She also scored a super soft leather walled from Petit_Ami.

All in all, we got some nice, classic treasures from our trip!

Visit us at mjölk during the month of May to see Per Kristiansen’s photographic series, Untitled.

There is something beyond an edifying pleasure in the act of comparing, in the impulse to investigate and catalog the infinite ways any one thing can appear, its ‘mood’; its ‘feel’; as cast in the Mandelbrodian algorithms of nature. To really look closely at something, as a fly on the wall of the ceaseless changes that happen with or without our hand, is the search, however delusive, for its true form.

While you are at it, make it a date to The Junction and visit the 20+ venues who are also participating in the CONTACT Photography Festival (search Junction).

On Saturday, May 8 from 6-9pm there will be a public reception throughout the neighborhood, but we invite our loyal Kitka readers to the private reception from 9-11pm. If you would like to attend, we require you to RSVP to info[at]kitkadesigntoronto[dot]com.

We couldn’t do this alone. A warm and special thanks goes out to:

Richard Marazzi, for his design work.

The Go Lightly Jazz Band, for their great music.

Rekorderlig Berry Cider, for a great local cider.

Rekorderlig Cider, for a great local cider.

Warsteiner Beer, for supplying a fantastic beer.

Organized Crime Winery, for a champion Ontario wine.

The Junction BIA, for their support of the arts.

So this is the last post of our trip to Japan (besides our show and tell)! The next day we would become time travelers, leaving Monday afternoon and arriving in Toronto late Monday afternoon 14 hours later, did we just blow your mind?! Anyway the day before we set off to find the Japanese Folk art museum. It was highly recommended to us by Yumiko from Fog Linen. We walked from our hotel and opted to take the scenic route through the neighborhoods, where we found some very beautiful modern homes.

We also passed a university with a cool glass classroom.

Here is the front of the Japanese folk art museum, which is actually the home where Sori Yanagi grew up. His father was a collector of antique pottery and the home was later transformed into a gallery displaying pieces from Yanagi’s personal collection. It also has an amazing gift shop. The museum was beautiful and we wish we could have taken some pictures of the interior to share with you.

There was a big pot with coy fish in the front yard.

Of course we had to do some last minute shopping before we left so on our way to meet with Liza and Henry for lunch we stopped off at Spiral again and on the first floor we were surprised to discover an interesting pop-up shop (this was perplexing because not even a week before it was a shop selling lovely women’s clothing, that Juli was actually interested in having another look at).

The store was called Petit_Ami, and was filled with beautiful handmade leather purses and accessories. We’ll have to have a little show and tell in the next post to show you what Juli ended up getting!

Isn’t that a ridiculously big bag?! They were really cute and asked if we would take a photo with them. Since Juli was the one with the camera, I ended up holding the large purse. Awkward!

From what we could gather from the limited English-Japanese exchange, the women working in the shop were also the designers of the collection. They took our photo and we took theirs.

We met up with our friends Liza and Henry at Aquavit, a very fancy Scandinavian restaurant. Lucky for us their lunch prices weren’t so bad.

The interior had an interesting mix of Japanese and Scandinavian influence, just how we like it.

We also found out where all the Dansk pepper mills have gone… they’re all in Japan!

Not only was there a pepper mill on each table, they also used Jens Quistgaard trays for bread.

The starter: our favourite – pickled herring!

And the big finale: Swedish meatballs! Just thinking about them makes us salivate.

The next day we got on a train and headed to the airport. Before we left we stopped at the market and picked up some Maisen pork sandwiches that Wataru first introduced us to (we later realized that the restaurant is mentioned in the Tokyo Wallpaper city guide, but you can buy these little boxes of them from the food halls in department stores). They are a little piece of heaven and helped us through the terrible airplane food we were about to be fed…oh I miss these!