"Kawaii" (cute) things in the New Year’s fair in Katsuyama

The weather was gorgeous, on the last Sunday of January, we visited a Japanese traditional New Year's event called “Toshino Ichi” (the New Year’s fair) in Katsuyama.

We arrived there before ten in the morning, there were a lot of people there already.

 

These are lucky charms, cute pinwheels, turning round and round.

The name of the pinwheels are called "fortune comes round and round pinwheels”

 

In the back of this tent, there was “a master in the village”, Mr. Nakamori who kept weaving rush mats and he made these hats out of the rush mats.

These are miniature ones for displaying.

Mr. Nakamori is the only one who can make handcrafted rush hats by weaving rush in Fukui Prefecture.

 

This is also made by Mr. Matsuda, a sacred straw rope with a cute owl on it.

The purpose of this fair used to be for farmers to sell handmade materials made of things around them as a side business.

At the present time, farmers use electric combine harvesters to harvest rice therefore, it is not easy for them to have straw to make things like these.

 

These are the wooden materials such as chopping boards and rice scoops made by this carpenter.

This is one of their main materials.

As a GEN staff in this picture was about to purchase a chopping board, he said “You are pretty, so I will give you a discount” :)

 

These works are made skillfully with netlike patterns made of bags of winter cherries.

 

We maybe have different opinions about these frogs made of cloth that whether they are cute or not.

They look like Hida Sarubobo (monkey baby and it’s a mascot of the Hida Region) dolls, but these frogs have more hand-made feel.

 

There were colorful Daifuku (rice cake stuffed with sweetened red bean paste).

I was getting hungry so I actually purchased a bag of six.

 

T.S