Our third day is Asahikawa was a really special one. We got to visit two amazing work shops so I thought we would do two separate posts so we can highlight them equally. Our first stop of the day is the Tanno studio, where our business card holders are handmade. The studio is a family run operation with both father and son carving out their unique paths in the world of precision woodworking.

Let me introduce the designers: the gentleman on the left is craftsman Norio Tanno, and the far right is his son craftsman Masakage Tanno, the designer of our business card case.

Above is a photo of Oji san showing some photos of our store on his iPhone.

We entered their home through sliding doors and took our shoes off, to the left was the work shop and the home just up the stairs. A beautiful light filled space with plywood walls and a central wood burning fireplace.

Flowers were drying from the ceiling of their office.

A beautiful antique cabinet.

In the dining room there was a large dining table with a row of shelves against the wall, chronicling the work of both Masakage and Tanio.

A set of storage boxes with embedded magnets.

Masakage Tanno in his work uniform.

A stunning rosewood tea container with folding tea scoop by Norio Tanno.

We fell in love with this cool storage box with little drawers that need to be opened in a certain pattern to unlock the larger doors – this was made by yet another wood worker.

A newly designed–and award winning—business card case, coming soon to Mjolk!

A little wooden Dala horse from a trip to Scandinavia, maybe from Gotland?

Norio Tanno mentioned he was recently there. Sitting down with Norio Tanno he was very intrigued to hear why we chose to open a Scandinavian inspired store. We answered with a long drawn out rationality about how Canadians can easily connect with the Scandinavian sensibility because the landscape and climate are very similar, and that when you eliminate unnecessary details in design you create a longer lasting and timeless product, etc.

We should have posed the same question to him!

A set of wooden scoops by Masanao Nakanishi who is currently serving an apprenticeship at the Tanno studio. In Asahikawa he works under the name Bjorn (Swedish for bear) and will be opening his own workshop in the near future. We look forward to getting our hands on one of those scoops!

Off to the work shop!

A collection of jigs hang on the wall.

Nearly finished business card cases, it was fascinating to hear the process. Since the stability of the wood is so necessary to create a long lasting product we found out that after each time the wood is cut, they set the piece aside and let it rest to stabilize.

A piece of local Hokkaido birch, Masakage Tanno tells me it’s a material he would like to work with in the future. He tries to use as much local materials as possible in his production, but it’s getting harder. Simply put, the cost to mill lumber is really high, but due to the fading economy the cost of milled lumber is at an all time low. It’s become cheaper to import wood than to mill it locally in Asahikawa. Masakage Tanno pointed to a stack of fireplace logs saying that sometimes if he finds a beautiful piece of wood he will mill it himself, but the drying process takes a lot of time.

I am intrigued by all of these little wooden pieces. Norio Tanno tells me that he cuts these pieces from a single piece so that the grains all match up.

You can see the two pieces being placed quite far apart, and it’s only when you look very closely that you can align the wood grain. For Tanno it’s more about personally knowing the piece is in harmony with itself.

These exact tea containers will be available through Mjolk shortly.

The matriarch of the family runs the business side of the Tanno studio, it really is a family business.

Good bye! Thanks for the hospitality!

We left the Tanno workshop to grab some lunch at Kitanosumai Sekkeisha (Northern House Planning) a collection of buildings which was once a school converted by architects and made into a shop, furniture showroom, cafe, and offices. The site is in the mountains quite a distance away from Asahikawa but it is worth the long trek, the destination has everything and visiting is quite satisfying. The food was great and we even purchased a few items from the gift shop.

Northern house planning refers to the architects who reside here, they specialize is Nordic inspired buildings. The cafe was very Scandinavian and we sat at a big birch table.

We loved this wooden utensil rest.

I ordered the onion soup, which was delicious.

Juli ordered the pizza. We found out later that the chef specializes in Italian food. Over lunch we talked about how a lot of tourists don’t really grasp how good Western food is in Japan. Taku, Naoto, and Masanori are all from the generation that was introduced to Western food at around 8 – 10 years old. Taku reminisced about the first time he ate a bun from KFC and how he thought it was the most magical thing in the world. The one thing they all shared in experience was eating a McDonald’s burger for the first time and being really grossed out by the flavor of pickles!

I pointed out the collection of pickle preserves on the shelf for sale, I guess tastes have come a long way.

The restaurant smelled so delicious because there was a bakery directly underneath us. Naoto grabbed some treats to take as a gift to our next host, who’s beautiful home you will see in Asahikawa day 3, part 2….

We woke up the next day to a beautiful morning. We had some surprisingly good hotel breakfast and everyone gathered in the lobby to wait for Naoto to come pick us up in his van. Where were we traveling to?

We thought we would start the morning right with some SAKE! But not just any sake, special igloo sake!

One of the shop keepers at the brewery met us out front (I think someone called ahead to make this appointment, because in the car we weren’t sure if we would be able to see the igloo or not.)

They create this little snow cave by inflating a large balloon and when the temperature hits a certain low, they pour water on it, over and over again until they build up a thick layer before deflating the balloon.

Inside is a grass roots version of a sake brewing. The sacks are filled with fermenting rice which liquidates and then drop by drop, drips into that little stainless pot. No filter, completely unpasteurized ice sake!

Samples? Yes Please!

Bottoms up! It was really delicious we bought a tiny bottle to take home with us.

The old brewery was really beautiful on the outside.

Vintage sake ads.

A collection of old Japanese water buckets. The vintage Jens Quistgaard ice bucket I have was inspired by these shapes.

After the sake tasting we headed over to Iba Takahito’s house.

Iba Takahito’s work is a pure form of wood working. He uses techniques from the Showa period and produces all his work by hand at his farm house just outside Asahikawa. Not only is he a young designer working with traditional methods, he is also known for using traditional Japanese lacquer in his work.

We were invited into his beautiful farmhouse where he and his wife live.

The fire place is the heart of the home, here in Asahkawa.

Cat shelf!

This beautiful handmade shelf, designed for one purpose–holding these glasses–was very poetic.

Hand bound brushes.

Not only did the couple let us bombard their home with a mob of people, they even served us tea. We appreciate the hospitality so much.

Oji Masanori talking shop.

Next Iba Takahito offered to show us his workshop.

This is where Iba Takahito mixes his lacquer.

A wall of chisels and planers.

Iba san showing us his traditional wood planer.

We decided to grab some lunch at “Gosh“, a really popular lunch spot. Oji Masanori attempted to visit here on his last trip to Asahikawa but because the restaurant doesn’t take any reservations, the place was packed and he couldn’t get a table.

We had a lot more luck this time.

Juli had the tuna melt.

I (and nearly everyone else) had the beef stew. It was delicious.

Dueling cameras.

After touring about Furano town and checking out the scenery we headed for our next meal (we have been eating A LOT).

Furano Burger, a little burger house in the middle of nowhere. I read about this place in my D&Department guide and was instantly charmed by it, their farm produced burgers and sausages are well worth the long drive from Asahikawa.

The inside has a simple pine interior, we ordered a couple of beers while we waited for our food. We weren’t too hungry when we arrived but after sitting for a couple of minutes and smelling the grill, we were anticipating our burgers.

There was a little glass fridge display where you could purchase their farm sausages or bacon.

Our burger arrives with bacon, cheese, fried Hokkkaido potatoes, and a side sausage. It was amazing, it sets a whole new standard for eating burgers in Japan.

We were invited to Sato san’s home near Furano, a beautiful property on the mountains surrounded by wilderness. I’m told they get a lot of bears and deer around here. Mr. Sato is a distributor of fine Japanese products, he says there are three types of real design.

1 – Single produced art pieces that are displayed in art galleries.
2 – Mass produced designs that are found in many shops.
3 – Artisan designs that can be produced in small batches and sold to specialty design stores.

He fits the latter, and he has a beautiful collection to prove it. Everything from antique Japanese lacquer ware to contemporary technical wood working craft, it was a real treat to see everything and Mr. Sato graciously let me touch everything.

Oji san testing out the snow blower, he started getting adventurous and blasted everyone with snow.

Now, time for revenge!

In Hokkaido it is a tradition to build ice huts to sit in and cook rice cakes. Mr. Sato piled up snow and created the interior with a chainsaw.

The rice cakes were cooked over an open flame and then wrapped in seaweed and dipped in soy sauce.

It was very tasty, and such a treat to hang out in an igloo!

Goodnight!

We arrived at the Asahikawa train station after an hour long express train ride from Sapporo. We were greeted by Naoto Yoshida, the creator of To-mo-ni and the ingenious wrap-wrap which we carry in our store, and his friend Steve King, a Brit turned Asahikawan. We stopped by one of Naoto’s favorite lunch spots – Casa el nino.

The lunch spot is a local haunt with Spanish inspired dishes made from local ingredients.

The first course was a nice hot vegetable soup made from local Hokkaido vegetables.

Next was a pickled herring with potato and shrimp cocktail.

This fish soup dish was particularly deslicious. I thought it had to be the main course.

And then they brought out the paella, one with seafood, and one with chicken.

After we filled our stomachs we went to the Asahikawa Furniture Center. A must see for anyone who’s making a trip to Asahikawa, as the town is a furniture making town and this multi-level showroom is dedicated to mostly local work.

Naoto took us to the CREER booth which is designed by and made by his father, craftsman Yukio Yoshida. Winner of the technical prize for wood working in Japan, and 3rd internationally.

A beautiful sculpted walnut floor lamp.

The more you look at beautifully crafted furniture, the more you become desensitized to it. After only a few minutes it was sensory overload and it got hard to pick out the really special pieces.

We really loved this thin wooden shelf, which is a recent award winner.

This wooden sink was beautifully executed.

Beautiful lacquered stools by Iba Takahito, whom we’ll be lucky enough to visit with the next day.

Many of the pieces here feature beautiful wooden joints.

We stopped by the To-mo-ni/CREER office to meet Naoto’s father and visit the connected workshop.

Japanese tea was served.

This is an article of the two of them in Monocle magazine. They had a large shelf on the wall with every copy.

This is a photo of a chair Yukio Yoshida made using Japanese Bog Wood, an extremely rare wood that is between 5000 – 8000 years old.

You can see the wrap wraps in the top right hand corner of the photo. Naoto tells us that the inspiration of the wrap wrap came after buying an expensive pair of earphones. The cord was too long and was a bit of a nuisance so Naoto decided to design his own cord organizer using scrap wood from a local wood working shop. Now he loves seeing young hip Tokyo kids using the wrap wrap, he says it’s a good way of getting a material like wood into their lives.

An extremely large promotional sample of the wrap wrap.

After tea Yukio-San offered to take us on a tour of his workshop.

This is where all of the CREER products are made, and they also have a custom furniture and repair service.

These are rough sawed pieces of walnut for the CREER lounge chair, each piece is hand planed and sanded to perfection. It’s amazing to see that these processes still exist in a world so filled with computer aided furniture.

Marking where the tiny teeth joints will be.

Daruma glue bottle.

The metal and wood tool on the table is used to plane each piece of wood. What a great work shop, thank you for the tour and letting us take so many photos!

After the workshop tour we had a little bit of time to check out a couple local design shops. The first is:

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4-24 11-5 Toyooka, Asahikawa Hokkaido Japan

In the front of the shop they had various new and vintage products from Scandinavia.

They also stock a beautiful collection of Japanese products, a must visit store in Asahikawa.

The last shop we visited was HOMES which was conveniently located a block away from our hotel. HOMES stocks a wonderful collection of local Japanese crafts, needless to say I picked up a few pieces here. I can’t wait to share them at the end of the trip!

HOMES

Downtown Asahikawa features a nice walking street lined with beautifully intricate ice sculptures, most of which strangely feature large topless women for some reason.

We headed off to Machi ya for some local Izakaya awesomeness.

The menu was hard to read even for Steven who can read Kanji.

Sake!

In Japan, you need to serve food with alcohol. I thought this looked like some nice dried fruit, maybe a prune in a white sauce or something so I just popped it in my mouth.

Turns out it was raw chicken, and it tastes as you would think. Actually I think it wasn’t the taste as much as the texture that was the problem. I must say that the chicken prepared in this type of restaurant is very fresh, and therefore totally fine to eat, it’s just hard to get past the raw chicken. Anthony Bourdain, we couldn’t do it.

The rest of the appetizers were delicious. A simple mashed garlic potato ball with seaweed and salmon roe.

Tasty fried chicken.

Bocconcini with sweet cherry tomatoes.

Sesame pork with mustard.

At this point the rest of our posse arrived, here is a picture of Taku Matsuo and Masanori Oji.

They flew all the way from Tokyo to come visit us! Masanori is fishing in his bag for a couple of wedding gifts for us.

SNAKE!

One of the gifts was a crazy Origami snake that folds into a small paper cube.

The rest of the meal continued without a hitch until the next dish.

I guess the equivalent to the practical joke in Japan is tricking Westerners into eating raw fish testicles. I should have known!

The tempura version was actually pretty good.

Man Mountain sake!

So full. Oishi!

This is a pretty amazing entourage, and most of these guys will be with us the rest of the time we are in Asahikawa.

L-R: Juli, John, Yoshida-san, Matsuo-san, Steve, Oji-san, Takahashi-san