Back already...

Our internet connection wasn't great while we were in Japan, so I didn't manage to do the daily updates of all the great new Japanese products I was discovering...Besides I was also too busy eating so much "healthy" Japanese food I seem to have gained about 5kg...

Unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures inside the trade fairs, so I can't show you the new things on order - yet. And I was extra disappointed I couldn't get a photo of an incredibly ugly tea cup we saw that cost wholesale price about AU$1500.00. I didn't even want to ask how many were in a carton, or whether there was a matching teapot.

Wandering around stand after stand of gorgeous ceramics, piled on fold up tables as if they were in a garage sale, but with price tags that seemed to have a few too many zeros (even for yen), it really brought home to me the importance that Japanese people place on design and particularly on ceramic wares.

A typical Japanese kitchen will have cabinets filled, I mean literally stacked to the brim, with bowls, plates, and cups in an absolute jungle of designs, shapes and sizes. A Japanese Mum will know just where to find the perfect bowl for each particular dish, and it is quite likely that none of them will match at all. Yet once they are on the table it all seems to work together.

When they are out shopping they might spot a particularly beautiful bowl and just buy it. No thought to what it might go with, or what you might put in it. It's just beautiful, and once it's in the kitchen there will inevitably be something you can use it for.

I must admit I do have a white dinner set in the cupboard, and I do use bits and pieces of it at meal times. But thanks to a growing collection of ex-samples, slightly faulty glazes and odd bits from broken sets, my kitchen cupboards are beginning to look more and more Japanese. Besides that I have a mini collection of tea cups, mostly hand made, and mostly a bit wonky, that I've picked up from visiting local potters all over the world. I love the textures and the glazes, and if everyone sitting around my table is warming their hands on a completely different tea cup - all the better!