Today we left for Tokyo, Japan in the morning and arrived there in the afternoon. We booked a hotel near the main train station Shinjuku. The reason why we chose this hotel was that we wanted to have a very convenient located hotel so we could explore Tokyo easily. It was our first trip to Japan and we were very excited. I don’t want to write too much, but show you our trip in pictures:

our hotel room in Shinjuku. The hotel was really nice, but hotel rooms in Tokyo are very small.

after our arrival we went to the nearby shopping mall Takashimaya Times Square

First we checked out Tokyu Hands which we heard a lot about before

Tokyu Hands had some really cute bento boxes

they also had a huge collection of cute stamps

after our shopping we went to have our first Tokyo sushi dinner. We love eating sushi in Hong Kong.

the sushi was SOOO good, we were surprised that it could be so much better than Hong Kong. I even like sea urchin (the yellow thing in the left corner of the box)

our sushi chef, he made us some really delicious sushi and we were even more excited to be in Tokyo.

We received our first order of Japanese Lecien fabrics today. They are really adorable cute fabrics with very brilliant colours and prints. This is our first cooperation with Lecien and we plan to stock more of their Japanese fabrics in the future. Please let us know if we should stock a specific Lecien fabric. As we are working with Lecien directly together, we are only able to get the newest fabric collections, not 2 year old prints. Sorry. Below you can see some of the new Lecien fabrics available in our shop now:

black Japanese fabric with many donuts, cupcakes, ice cream, lollipops, macaroons and strawberries

pink Japanese fabric with many teddy bears, donuts, cupcakes and hearts

turquoise Japanese fabric with many white kitties, cherries, hearts and dots

black Japanese fabric with many strawberries, decoration and glitter

We booked tickets for Tokyo, Japan today! We will be in Tokyo from 16th April till 19th April 2010. Alan, my husband, and I are going together and it’s our first trip to Japan. We do have some Japanese suppliers but we do all our business over the internet. Therefore, we never had to come to Japan to visit them in person. A few suppliers we know in person because they visited us in our office in Hong Kong, like for example our contact person for Kamio, Crux, Q-Lia and more. Our plan is to do some sightseeing, see the beautiful cherry blossom and eat lots of good food. We are big fans of sushi and eat a lot of it in Hong Kong. But of course, we also plan to check out lots of shops and products to see the latest trends in Japan and find new suppliers. I will definitely write a blog post about our trip including lots of pictures when we are back from our trip. I can’t wait to go!

Our bento boxes are selling really well and are very popular with our wholesale customers as well. Therefore we had to restock sold out lunch boxes and also order some new designs from Japan. Today they arrived at our office. They are perfect for bringing your lunch to work/school/kindergarten. Our staff brings her lunch with such box to work every day. It is very useful because the bento box can be closed airtight, the foods stays safely in one place and even keeps the food a bit warm. The bentos are microwave safe, so just remove the lid, put the lunch box with your lunch in the microwave and you have a ready made meal. We even got some cute thermo bottles so you can bring your coffe/tea/soup to work and help the environment. Have a look at the pictures below, they are just so adorable! You never have to feel embarrased again for bringing pre-cooked food to work to safe money on restaurants.

pink bunny with cupcake bento box

cute small lunch box with hedgehogs

baby-blue bento box with white polka dots and ribbon

triangular-shaped bento box set for rice

pink thermo bottle with small donuts

We received some really special cute flip flops from Japan today. They will be perfect for the coming spring/summer on the beach or for the city. The sandals have some really cute prints like bears, cloverleaves, hearts, bunnies, frogs and many more. Have a look at some of the cute sandals:

cute Flip Flops from Q-Lia Japan 1

cute Flip Flops from Q-Lia Japan 2

cute Flip Flops from Q-Lia Japan 3

Today we had a visit from a Kokka employee because they wanted to show us the newest designs they just released. That’s so super convenient when the suppliers come to your office to show you their newest collection. I must say, I LOVE LOVE LOVE their new collection. There are so many adorable, cute, kawaii, lovely fabrics, it will be really hard to choose which ones we will order. Unfortunately, I cannot order all of them because there is a budget limit Below you can see some of my favourite new fabrics from Kokka. I hope we will get them for our shop soon.

Matryoshka Fabric from Kokka

monkey with black kitty Japanese fabric

pink hearts with glitter girls Kokka fabric

pink Japanese fabric with cupcakes, candy and more

Today, we got our new order delivered from Japan. We ordered lots of Q-Lia items including bags, flip flops, bento boxes, memo pads, stickers, chopsticks and notebooks. They are also super cute and so kawaii! My favorites are a Alice in Wonderland notebook, the blue bear bag and some capsule stickers with a pudding with faces on it. Super CUTE!!! I took a few pics of some of the items after we opened the boxes.

cute Q-Lia bags from Japan

kawaii bento boxes, chopsticks and stationery

super cute Japanese flip flops

Today, we received a delivery of almost 40 bolts of Kokka fabrics from Japan. I was waiting for them impatiently because I couldn’t wait to see all the new cute patterns. We got Kokka fabrics with Matroshka dolls, kittens, Alice in Wonderland, toadstool, peach blossom, deers, monkeys, skulls and many more.

We had some fun in the office building a fabric pyramid with all the fabric bolts and took some pics.

Alan sitting on our self-made Kokka fabric pyramid

me sitting on the Kokka fabric pyramid

Today we had a visit from our supplier from Japan. He represents all the popular fancy stationery brands like Q-Lia, Kamio, Crux, Poolcool, Mindwave, Kutsuwa etc. from Japan. His responsibility is exporting these items overseas. We are working with him for just a short while, as I wrote about in an earlier blog post: New Fancy Japanese Stationery Supplier. He was visiting a trade fair here in Hong Kong and we set up a meeting so we could finally meet in person and discuss our future business collaboration. It went really well, he brought lots of new catalogs (he sends us new catalogs every 2 weeks from Japan) with the latest collections and some samples. We are going to place another order shortly as the Japanese stationery items sell really well. I can’t wait to get the new cute stationery items. It is always very exciting to open those parcels

Our Kokka fabric wholesale catalog is finished and ready for all our wholesale customers now. Only companies get access to this catalog, so please contact us by email and we will send the Kokka catalog to you. The orders are shipped either directly from Japan or from our office in Hong Kong. Below are some more cute Kokka fabric swatches.

Kokka fabric Alice in Wonderland

Kokka fabric Christmas deer