Japan Dreams 5 - Asakusabashi

I adore beading.  I have a vast collection of Japanese bead books.  Their designs are so beautiful.  I subscribe to "Bead Friend", which is a quaterly Japanese beading magazine and I would love to make many of their projects, however where I live on the Gold Coast, it is impossible to obtain the beads required.  Some of them I can order from ebay or on the Kiwa website which is in Japanese and requires the use of a forwarding postal service.  It's not quite the same as browsing through a store and actually seeing the beads for real.

Therefore, I am going to spend a whole day in Asakusabashi, which is a district filled with bead shops- one after another. Bliss!! It also is home to some Japanese doll stores and big craft shops (Bliss again!)

So I have photocopied about 40 different projects from my bead books and translated them to English and drawn up an enormous list of beading requirements.  40 projects = alot of beads!

I do feel a little sorry for my son who will be in tow. Is it cruel to make a little boy spend a whole day in bead town?  Hopefully I will stumble across a model car shop whilst I am there so I can buy something to bribe him.

Have a look here to see the bead shops I will be visiting: http://www.bel-art.co.jp/shop_shop/beadsshop_map.html