Just quickly sharing some images from the new issue of ku:nel which came out today!! The main copy of this issue is "Favourite Blankets", I LOVE BLANKETS! I've also just added it to my shop :)
A box full of Kami-Fusen arrived last night and I got so excited! Kami-Fusen is the Japanese Paper Balloon which has been a popular playing stuff for children in Japan (or maybe not so these days) and the traditonal balloons have been around for almost 90 years. There aren't so many manufacturers left in Japan today but I hope they will keep making them.
I think Tokyo is a sweets paradise. Not just traditional sweets like mochi, odango with azuki, but the levels and the numbers of French patisseries are getting higher especially in the last few years and we Japanese people are (or maybe just I am) crazy about them! 
And this book called "Kawaii Tokyo Sweets / Douceurs "Kawaï" de TOKYO" is a wonderful guide to the Tokyo Sweets Paradise!!!!! The entire book is written both in Japanese and French so even if you can't read Japanese or don't really understand French I guess you can pick up some information. It introduces many of Tokyo's cool shops/patisseries selected by Parisiennes living in Tokyo, and at the back of it it has pages of Tokyo shop list with addresses shown in English alphabets which I think is wonderful so people who doesn't understand Japanese can visit these not-so-exposed lovely places in Tokyo! 
The latest issue of ku:nel magazine is out now! This issue is featuring on outdoors and forests: cooking in the forest, mushrooms found in the woods, amazing little "mushroom house" in the forest, and outdoor fashion etc. You can get this new ku:nel vol.40 now from my shop!
I have updated my shop today and restocked some items including popular tracing paper envelopes, some masking tapes that had been out of stock for a while.
This time I have some new items such as Cotton & Linen Cloth Tapes. I have polka dot patterned ones that are 100% cotton and the plane ones that are 100% linen. They are great for binding zines, decorating books, gift wrapping and lots more! I just quickly turned my plane notebook I got from MUJI the other day into a cute new look in only 10 seconds with the Cotton Cloth Tape {Polka Dot Red}. So easy.
And the cool sets:
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Japanese Wrapping Paper Pad designed by Kyoto based Japanese stencil artist Mihoko Seki is one of the items I highly recommend from my shop. There are two different design or colours in one pad, 20 sheets each (40 sheets in one pad). 
You can be creative with these papers, you can of course use them as wrapping papers but my favourite way of using them is as book covers. If you buy a book in a Japanese bookstore you often get your book coverd in a paper with the shop logo printed on it. But you can make your own very easily, just fold the four sides to match the size of a book, no glue no scissors so easy! And don't they look cute? It keeps the book nice and clean. (Check out lovely Hello Sandwich's post on Japanese book covers!)
Or use it as a place mat? No glue, no scissors, no folding!!!!
Or perhaps you have some better ideas? (I'm sure you do.) I'm going to have a limited special sale on these wrapping paper pads and it will be $8.80 for a 40 sheet pad while it's normally $10, if you want to try! This offer starts NOW and will end on 6 September. So check out all the 3 different designed pads in my shop: Wrapping paper pad (Restaurant) / Wrapping paper pad (Salon Biz) / Wrapping paper pad (Cafe & Temples)
I updated my shop last night and more magazines have been added! (backnumbers/mostly secondhand)
Also though I don't have it in my shop at the moment "kurashi no techo" is the all-time favourite, it's been going since 1948 and is probably the oldest lifestyle magazine in Japan. It's a really great magazine full of useful and inspiring ideas for quality lifestyle, but it has lots of reading stuff so you'd enjoy it more if you read Japanese. Still it's really worth checking out, if you happen to go near a bookstore that sell Japanese magazines do look for this writing "暮らしの手帖"!!
Random shots of Kyoto from our January trip (finally). We were told that it was the most quiet time of the year in Kyoto when we vi...
