Check out these amazing food sculptures from Cooking for Monkeys:

So creative and so healthy at the same time! Not to mention combining my love of kids books and all things Japanese…

Pam, the author and creator of Cooking for Monkeys, is also a fan of Bing (see Lou’s review here).

Check out the Cooking for Monkeys site (and Flickr photostream) for more of Pam’s incredible food art - Curious George makes an appearance too!

A big box arrived in the post from Japan last week - full of many of the kids’ book related treasures I acquired in Tokyo… Here are some of my favourites…

The Very Hungry Caterpillar containers and drink bottle. The containers stack into each other, and the big yellow one is the perfect size for me to take a sandwich to work in!

The Very Hungry Caterpillar stationery - also perfect for a serious career woman like me!

These Hungry Caterpillar souvenirs were found in a shop in ‘Tokyo Character Street‘, which I literally stumbled across on my way to finding the post office as we were catching the train to leave Tokyo. Character Street is one part of the massive shopping real estate under Tokyo Station. It’s dedicated to anime, manga, games, and character goods, including Hello Kitty, Snoopy and Leggo shops. Clearly I got stuck in the Hungry Caterpillar section…

But I also found these Gaspard and Lisa tiles.

Moomin plastic sleeve and keychain (for your mobile phone) and gorgeous letter sets from Ito-ya. (Fabulous NINE-storey stationery store in Ginza; I was in heaven…)

I’m prepared to let Rowan use this one… a Maisy cup, bought from a random homewares store.

And my final kids’ book related purchase was red a ‘Gummi Girl’ by Yoshitomo Nara, cult Japanese pop artist and author of picture book, The Lonesome Puppy. Gummi Girl is made of moulded plastic, and she came with gummi-girl shaped jubes. She was available in an array of colours (blue, green, etc) but the red is definitely my colour. I bought her at a beautiful shop called Sweets and Objects located in the very, very exclusive Omotesando Hills centre in Harajuku. There is something very mysterious about the expression on this Gummi Girl’s face and she currently keeps me company on my kitchen window sill as I do the dishes.

And I also had a bit of a splurge on craft purchases (linen fabric, tape, pattern books). I was very restrained though…

Further to Katie’s post on the Moomin fabric which is divine, I have to share my favorite fabric which I bought off ebay when Ned was born. It is Little Prince fabric but the Japanese Little Prince not the French one! I didn’t even know there was a Japanese version until I saw this fabric and fell in love with it. I have stretched it over an artist’s canvas and it hangs over Ned’s cot.

I have searched for more but never found it. Maybe someone out there knows where to get more?

And here is a shot of Ned, the little bookworm, in his room perusing his bookshelf while his dad took photos of the fabric for the blog.

I guess of all the countries I’ve travelled, Japan would be one of the hardest I’ve experienced to access the local book culture. ‘Cos while there are plenty of bookshops, my lack of familiarity with the Japanese language made it very difficult for me to get a sense of the ‘vibe’ of publishing there.
Nevertheless, as part of my general impression about how well kids are looked after in public spaces in Japan, I got a sense of the high priority kids’ books are given. Several places we visited surprised me by including a library of kids’ books, often housed in funky bookshelves.

One day, for example, we found ourselves in a fairly ‘down-market’ (for Japan) suburban shopping centre. (We were looking for a cheap stroller…) On the top floor was a food court and a sort of games parlour, which had as part of it a preschooler play centre. It cost about 800 yen ($8) to get in, which gave your toddler about half an hour of free play and three rides. Anyway… as part of this fairly run-of-the-mill games-parlour/play-centre thing, there was a gorgeous set of shelves, packed full of beautiful, pristine picture books.

Who woulda thunk it? In the context of all that consumerism and hub-bub, it was so nice to think of a space where parents and kids could pick up a book and read together. Pretty jolly nice kids’ bookshelves too!

And Rowan? Yeah, he had a ball…

Kidzania, subject of my previous post, also had some great children’s bookshelves and other storage in their kindergarten.

But probably my favourite example of a place that gives kids’ books their rightful priority was the Kyoto International Manga Museum. This is a new museum, which is a major centre for the study and appreciation of manga (Japanese comics). The Kyoto International Manga Museum is housed in a converted elementary school, and retains a lot of the charm of the old building and grounds. Approximately 300,000 manga volumes are held in the museum, and can be freely read by visitors, which means the halls and grounds are scattered with people intently reading. (It also has manga drawing demonstrations and exhibition of the history and culture of manga creators. There was even a workshop where kids could learn how to animate a short story using 3D objects.)

And for younger visitors, there is a dedicated children’s library. At the door of the library, there is a sign which reads:
“Children younger than elementary school with their parents only.”
I just love the way this is phrased. How important does it make a child feel? And I don’t think I’ve ever felt more welcome and accepted for the sole reason of having a small child in my days as a mum!
The room opened to a welcoming space of clean design. Tall square-shaped bookshelves contained hundreds and hundreds of picture books, many of them favourites of ours at WeHeartBooks: Olivia, Hungry Caterpillar, Happy Lion, and lots more. Cleverly conceived surfaces – including a sloped reading pit, steps, couches and a large cubby house space – allowed a variety of inviting spaces for children to read. And lots of kids and their parents relaxing and enjoying books together. Just the way you want a kids’ library to be.

Thanks to the Kyoto International Manga Museum for the interior shot of the children’s library.

Kidzania was one of the gobsmacking highlights of our time in Tokyo.

Kidzania is essentially a miniature city of make believe, where kids pretend to be adults for the day, choosing their jobs and take part in the world of commerce. On arrival you enter a streetscape of miniature buildings and vehicles (scaled to two-thirds the size of the real world equivalent), where kids can earn and spend ‘Kidzos’, and learn to be whatever they dream of: businessmen, builders, firemen, cooks, doctors, postmen.

What’s more, each of the 80 activites are dedicated adult-free zones.

It’s not always easy to remember what life was like as an eight- or ten-year-old but I reckon this would have pretty much been a form of heaven for me.

Putting on the uniform required for your dream job, and learning how to work on a radio station, run a police investigation, work on a building site, hire a car, be a travel agent or hairdresser or fashion model are just some of the activities on offer to kids at this amazing theme park. And for the bookworms there was even a publishing house!

With the involvement of major brands like Coca Cola (at the bottling plant), Johnson & Johnson (at the hospital) and Mitsubishi (at the caryard), the creators of this unique theme park have ensured an incredible attention to detail and level of quality.

Something about to overt sponsorship and the stereotyping of some of the roles in this world did make me a little bit uneasy, but nevertheless, I know I would have loved this make-believe world as a kid and I can’t help but think that it teaches some valuable lessons about careers, independence and finances.

Unfortunately going to Kidzania was a form of torture for Rowan. A bit too young to really participate, he had numerous tantrums revolving around a need to drive the fire engine. He did go for two rides on the Kidzania bus (while his Japanese cohorts learnt to be bus tour guides and politely convinced him that he shouldn’t be driving). Eventually we located the Kidzania kindergarten. Here, he was shown a train set and he was sold. Meanwhile, eager Japanese kids learnt to be his kindergarten teachers.

You can imagine the noise of hundreds of exited primary school kids in a confined space, even if it is 6000 square metres, but we nevertheless spent several hours in this amazing world for kids. And when it got too much, there was the ‘Parent Zone’ with free internet and coffee and newspapers…

I would have said ‘Only in Japan’ but Kidzania was a concept born in Mexico. Japan was the first country to adopt it outside Mexico, but other versions have opened or are planned in Indonesia and Dubai. A good article on the concept can be found here.

Kidzania is located in the also fairly gobsmacking Lalaport shopping centre at Toyosu. I didn’t realise it at the time, but have since learnt Lalaport is one of Tokyo’s biggest shopping malls, which makes it a good destination for a rainy day (which it was). While there, I stumbled upon a beautiful craft store called Mano Creare (and bought some treasures which I will have to reveal in a few weeks once my parcel arrives via surface mail…), a branch of the famous ‘Creative Life Store’, Tokyu Hands (a DIY department store with an amazing variety of the normal and bizarre for everyday life) and a branch of the beautiful cooking school, ABC Cooking Studio.

Another reason for it being a good day trip for kids (and big kids) is the mode of transport you can use to get there. From Toyosu you can take the Yurikomome line, which is an elevated and fully-automated type of train. Because the system is operated solely by computers, you can sit right up the front, which meant Rowan could pretend to ‘drive’ the train. (After his frustrations at Kidzania, this was a just reward…) Being elevated, the route also affords views across the bay to the city and past some amazing architecture. A ride on Yurikomome is well worth it as an activity in itself, and was one of my ‘Why-don’t-they-mention-this-in-the-Lonely-Planet?!’ moments!

Is it obvious how much I loved Tokyo?

We are back in Melbourne after an amazing holiday in Japan.

What an incredible country! Almost everything surpassed our expectations. It is an amazing place to experience, especially for kids, or those who are a bit of a big kid themselves (like me).

This was our first big trip with Rowan, and we were prepared for the style of travelling we’d become accustomed to in the past to be seriously curtailed. It was good to go with this expectation, but I think in the end we were pleasantly surprised.

From my perspective, Japan is a country which really looks after children. I wonder if this stems from a mentality first expressed to me by Kenichi, the owner of our accomodation in Tokyo, Tokyo Ryokan. When I first saw our room and the thin screen walls separating us from our neighbours, I vocalised my concern that Rowan’s early wake-ups might disturb other guests. He replied quite simply, ‘But we were all Rowan’s age once.’

Virtually every restaurant we went to had a highchair and without fail, Rowan was provided an unbreakable bowl, a small knife and fork and a glass of water. Many restaurants offered children’s menus, which often included a toy. Children Rowan’s age were accommodated every place we went, and for free! Every public toilet had spotlessly clean change table. Some even had an ingenious invention of a type of highchair where you can prop your baby or toddler while you go to the toilet yourself.

Rowan was an oddity with his blonde hair. Brad and I thought about ‘charging’ for the attention that he got (100 yen for a stare, 200 yen for a comment, 1000 yen for a photo…) and we figured that we would have paid for our holiday if we had implemented it… But it was a great conversation starter to travel with a child, and we made contact with Japanese people that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.

It wasn’t hard for me to unearth numerous treasures related to kids’ books while we were away, and I have many more photos and stories to share… Just got to get a chance to get them all down…