TOKYO'S FABRIC TOWN // Nippori Fabric Town in Tokyo!

Hi everyone! I'm here today in the fabric district with Kaila!

Hey!

The fabric district in Tokyo is called Nippori?

Kaila: Yes

And I've been told that it is really big

And I'm very excited!

So I'm gonna take you all with me as I go and explore Fabric Town!

Yay!

It's big alright -

Nippori's fabric district has a total of 90 fabric, bead, haberdashery and craft stores

These are all of the fabric stores

For reference, that's ninety

*Ninety* fabric stores

We've been to... three?

Three so far?

This is the damage that's already been done...

We can't go to ninety

I could spend a whole two weeks just here!

Make sure you pick up one of these guides to help you get around Fabric Town.

These guides can be found in stands at the entrance of many of the fabric shops.

However, I think the best method of exploring Fabric Town is to simply walk up and down

the kilometre long street and go into any store that piques your interest.

I'm going to show you around just a couple of the fabric stores I visited

just so you can get an idea of the magic of this place.

If you're a DIY-er of any kind, this place is actual heaven!

In this one trip to Fabric Town alone,

which only lasted a couple of hours,

I managed to go into ten stores before my arms were suffering

from the amount of fabric I was carrying -

Not to mention my bank account!

The number one fabric store that I suggest going to if you only get a couple of hours here

is the famous Tomato.

There are four Tomato stores on this one street,

with one of the Tomato stores having five huge floors of fabrics

in just about any print that you can imagine.

Annika: Wait, there's three Tomatoes!

Kaila: Hahaha, I'm sorry!

Annika: Woah!

Kaila: I thought only two...

Good luck!

Good luck...

Annika: Look what I found

Blue... fluffy... fabric...

So many of you have asked me to recreate the blue fluffy shorts from Make Thrift Buy

Like, episode four

- I can finally do it!

Just had to go all the way to Japan for it!

I'm pretty dedicated, you guys.

And if you're travelling and need to save room in your suitcase,

there's plenty of smaller items like buttons and patches and beads and lace, and all the notions you could want,

that will take up considerably less room on your flight back home

And finally, this!

Here is my fabric haul.

I actually didn't do too badly, this is about two and a half, three kilos

When you go fabric shopping, and especially here, it's good to go with a goal in mind

so you don't just end up with a bunch of random crap.

My main goal for visiting Neppori was to find some particular fabrics

that I haven't been able to get my hands on in either Australia or online,

because Nippori has everything!

So let me show you what I got.

The first thing is:

- Fluff is gonna go everywhere -

Let me show you anyway -

Fluffy blue fabric!

In the end, I decided on a pastel blue colour instead of a dark navy blue

because I'm much more likely to wear this colour than a dark blue

and I have a bias towards pastel colours.

I was also really keen to get some knitted fabrics.

Like not just knit fabric, but knitted--

I'll show you what I mean.

Like this!

I've never really sewn with these kinds of fabric before so I'm really excited to see... how it goes.

So, they were the two things that I "needed"

I also, of course, ended up with some fabrics that I probably, like... I mean, they weren't on my list,

I didn't technically "need" them...

But I *needed* them... if you know what I mean.

Because, I mean, obviously... I needed dog fabric

It's so magical *sobs*

I don't even know what I'm going to do with it, but...

*sighs* I have a metre of the stuff.

Maybe I'll do a video on what you can do with one metre of fabric...

Shorts?

A crop top and short set?

A billion cute dog pouches?

Endless possibilities!

And I guess I was going for a theme here -

Here's my second dog fabric!

French bulldog fabric on a denim coloured background!

And the final fabric that I needed but didn't need but definitely needed:

is polar bear fabric!

It's a comic about a polar bear and a penguin talking about cooking together

It's the best

It's a quite thick, sturdy cotton, so I wanna make a backpack, hopefully, out of it.

Gotta learn how to make them

next year in 2017.

And if I have any leftovers, endless makeup pouches!

And all these fabrics, best that I could tell, along with most of the fabrics I saw at Nippori,

are made in Japan.

Although obviously it was a little difficult to actually ask people because of the la nguage barrier -

But on the bottom edge - the selvedge - it'll often tell you where the fabrics are made

so you can figure it out.

I've been posting a lot of photos and some videos of my trip over on my Instagram,

if you wanna go and see what I've been up to so far!

Thank you so much for watching this video,

and I will see you all next time.

Bye!

A huge thank you to Kaila for meeting up with me and taking me around Nippori!

I have been an admirer of Kaila's work for years now,

so it was a dream to finally be able to meet up with her.

And she was just as lovely in person as she is online.

Kaila's mission is to change the world through positivity and kawaii culture

and she runs the most wonderful blogs and Youtube channel, works for Japan Lover Me,

and helped establish the Kawai Philippines movement.

If you like journaling, definitely check out her Youtube channel

And if you don't like journaling, I promise you'll be addicted after watching her videos.

Annika: Why is there a giant Buzz Lightyear?

*laughter*

Kaila: So random, in Nippori there's a Buzz Lightyear.

Thank you to all my supporters on Pateron for making these videos possible!

To become my Pateron supporter go on patreon.com/annikavictoria!