Thursday, August 31, 2017

Upcoming events for fall 2017

We've got several events coming up over the next month and I'd like to take a quick moment to tell you a little more about them. :)

First up is the Pensacola FL BonFest on 9/9. This event is organized by the Japan-America Society of Northwest Florida and Florida Okinawa Kenjinkai. There will be food, Bon odori(dances), games, local vendors, and a whole lot of fun for all age groups. And also excellent taiko music performed by Matsuriza Taiko!

Next is JapanFest Atlanta on 9/16-9/17. Put on annually in Duluth GA by the Japan-America Society of Georgia, this will be the festival's 31st year. Over the weekend it will draw crowds of over 30,000 people so it's best to be early to avoid the rush. Inside you'll find food stalls, traditional Japanese artisans, craft and martial arts demonstrations, Japanese dance and performance arts, beautiful music, and many unique vendors.

The following weekend, we'll be at the Memphis Japan Festival on 9/24. In addition to food, music and vendors, there will also be kamishibai paper theater for the kids. As well as lectures on the Japanese tea ceremony, kimono, bonsai, origami and the game of go. So many awesome things to experience all in one day!

And rounding out the month of September, we will be attending a Sake tasting event sponsored by the Clearwater Sister Cities organization on 9/30.

Check out our calendar of events for more details including event locations and times. We hope to see see you soon!

Tuesday, January 31, 2017

First blog update of 2017

Hi there everyone, it’s been a looooong time(read almost a year -_-) since I made a blog post and I had some down time today so I figured I should try to get that problem resolved and kick myself into writing again. A lot has happened in the last year. We’ve been all over the place meeting great people and enjoying the different local scenes while selling our lovely kimono. As many of you already know in a week I’m heading back to Japan to do more restock, and this time my mom is going with me! We’re excited beyond words as this will be her first time staying in Japan since she lived on US Air Force bases there as a young girl in the 60’s and 70’s.


There may be some changes to our event scheduling in the coming year. Though I know many of you want us to sell at conventions, so far they have been very neutral venues for us as far as cost vs profit is concerned. Though I have signed up for a few this year, we may eventually be cutting a lot of them out, possibly to just one or two a year. In an attempt to make them work and because I enjoy doing conventions, I’m going try a new approach this buying trip at finding merchandise that would also appeal more to the convention goer. And of course we will still continue to stock all our regular items, but not bring as much of the traditional clothing items to the conventions. We’ll see how this works out for us, and as usual, if there is anything specific you’re looking for that we carry and you know in advance that you’ll be looking to purchase at an upcoming event, just send us a message and we’ll be sure to bring it along.


While we’re in Japan the online store will be closed (from the 7th-27th of February), and I’m trying to figure out how to more effectively use my social media sites so that I can give you some interesting content from our trips. So be on the lookout for a few live feeds from Japan on our Facebook page in the next few weeks. I’m also doing some personal shopping for a few customers so if there’s something you’ve been wanting to purchase from the Kansai and Kanto regions, send me a message and we'll see if we can work out a way to get it to you.


That’s pretty much all for this blog update. We hope your 2017 is off to a great start and we’ll see you in a weeks at Florida Anime Experience in Kissimmee!


-Sara