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Sweets Heaven
28/NOV/2009 on air

Do you like to have fake sweets or do you like to make them?

These preserved flower cakes are not edible. Sweets accessory is everywhere now in Japan. It’s 8000yen for the admission to the sweets fashion show where models had real sweets on their clothes. The show was created from collaboration with famous Japanese confectioners. Now our sweets motif trends are going to be diversified.

Okada-san is a new type of idol called “Nendol”. She can make anything from clay. (Clay in Japanese is Nendo. Nendol is from Nendo + idol) She can make miniature clay foods. Fruit parfait is only 1 cm small. She’s been improving her skills of making clay foods since she was only 6 years old at an elementary school. In a bento box there is a miniature osechi that is also made of clay. Okada-san is now so famous on TV for what she does. She often opens her clay classes at several places in Japan.

She shows how to make a miniature strawberry cake.
1) First, add brown water color into the light clay to make sponge cake.
2) Then put the white colored clay on the sponge cake as whip cream.
3) Next, Add the strawberry shaped clay whose outline is painted in red.
4) Add another white clay to cover the strawberries.
5) Add another brown clay (sponge cake) and then white clay (whip cream) and strawberry shaped clay on the top.
6) Cut it into 6 pieces. Every piece has 3) strawberries observed.

Miniature foods are very popular especially among 20s, 30s and 40s women in Japan.
28-year-old mama is a collector of miniature foods, but she is not just displaying them. She plays with them with other collectors using Blythe dolls! They take pictures to enjoy them on calendar or past cards. She says “We cannot eat so much of sweets at a time. We cannot dress this much or dye our hair this much. The dolls do all these things for us.”

Watanabe-san is a sweets artist.
A department store in Shibuya had an eye on sweets art. Strawberry cake clock is 20,000 yen, macaroon chandelier is 320,000yen and fruits overloaded skull is 50,000yen. Watanabe-san has held exhibitions in Italy, Belgium, or China.
He taught himself how to make food samples after he learned painting at an art university. He shows how to make a fake sliced lemon.
1) First, prepare silicon mold that was created from real lemon.
2) Then put finely-crushed candles over a fire to melt them.
3) Add yellow crayon to color the melt candle.
4) Put 3) into the 1) mold and wait for 1 hour.
5) Take 4) off and paint it in acrylic color.

He uses modeling paste that is often used for acrylic painting as whip cream.

At a 390 years of long-established Wagashi (Japanese sweets) store in Hiroshima, cream puff that really looks like Takoyaki (see Takoyaki photo at my Osaka trip is interesting. Takoyaki sauce and bonito flake are replaced by chocolate. Green laver is by matcha powder. Red ginger is by cherry. They inserted nata de coco instead of octopus.

A bag store in Tokyo also has sweets motif items. A coin case looks like a rice cracker. They have the one with laver!

A whiskey bar targets sweet tooth men.

Cake shaped gifts are selling well at department stores in Tokyo. 500 are sold per month, and their sales are 30 million yen annually. Who’s making these? They are all housewives who work from a small room. The cake is called “Omutsu cake” (omutsu=diaper). The idea is originally from the U.S.

Takara Tomy’s cooking toys are so interesting.

Jozaki-san, an employee and developer of soft caramel making toy shows how to make soft caramel.
1) Put 20g of coarse sugar, 50cc of milk, and 50cc of fresh cream into the maker.
2) Microwave it for 1-3 minutes.
3) Turn the knob softly to mix the ingredients.
4) Put the paste onto the tray and chill it for over 1 hour in a freezer.

Kirin’s opinion:
Miniature foods collectors who play with Blythe dolls look like they go back to little girls!
I liked Watanabe-san’s sweets art, although his works seem to be a bit expensive. It’s interesting that Okada-san’s miniature clay sweets can be that popular. Fake sweets can be business in Japan just like this. How is it in your country? Feel free to comment!

***There are archives of episodes listed under the page titled “Tokyo Kawaii TV” that is just located under the title banner of this blog.
***If you want to know the music that was used in the episode, please refer to this page and help yourself to find it by selecting the date when the episode was on air in Japan.

★craft goods and parts★
ABC craft
address: 3-29-1 Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 160-8455
phone: 03-5919-1511
open: 11:00am- 9:00pm

If you like to do some craft works, ABC craft is one of the places for you to get things such as accessory chains and connecting parts, deco parts (for decoden etc.), rhinestones, clay sweets, knitting yarm and tools, and more. They also have a few collections of craft books such as step-by-step of how to make clay sweets (should be more difficult than Decotti) or how to make decoden with bling-bling rhinestones or with cute clay decorations.

Kawaii competition -Paris project: accessory-
13/JUN/2009 on air

3 professional atrists were picked out for the final battle to win the representative of accessory department of Tokyo Kawaii TV who’s entitled to join the fashion show in Paris.
1: Kaji-san of deco specialist
2: 203gow-san of crochet specialist
3: Kumagai-san of sweets deco designger

They compete for decoration over headphones by their original ways.

Judges are the artists from 11 different countries who have experiences as exhibitors at Tokyo Design Festa.

Kaji-san used to enjoy bling-bling decoration as a part of hobby before she became very famous for receiving custom-order from Paris Hilton.
Paris liked Kaji-san’s jewel decoration. Patricia Field is another customer of hers.
There are also several Japanese companies that try to collaborate with her to produce such as deco mirror or deco clock. Deco jewelry can be even virtual on the screen of mobile phone.

203gow-san is a superstar of crocheting. She has scored top 1 to 4 of the crochet lovers site.
She commutes to a public library from time to time to study picture books for half to a whole day long. She keeps looking at them, imagines how 3 dimensions would be, and expresses them with crochet. She has lately started making books totally made of crocheting.

Kumagai-san, the sweets deco designer uses a tooth brush to make a sort of “baked” touch. She has collaborated with a company of sweets decoration bag that was used for Shibuya Girls Collection. She made a special sweets deco mirror for CIARA in front of her.

Zumreed store offers various designs of stickers for headphones’ decoration.
It’s a cool idea that we can change the images of headphones that fit fashion or the mood of the day. In fact, the sales of headphones have increased since these stickers were available. Mobile decoration is everywhere today, but headphones decoration is still rare. That’s true!

Kumagai-san is so good at decorating fake cakes, then how about the real ones? The truth is she has never baked and decorated real ones yet! “Girls like to try everything! That’s why it’s good to put various kinds of sweets decorations on.” says Kumagai-san.

This episode is an accessory department audition, but there are more auditions from other departments such as men’s fashion, school uniform, Gothloli, etc.

203gow-san or Kumagai-san’s headphones were attractive among the foreign judges, but DJ Kaori finally voted for Kaji-san’s less-decorated headphones, and Kaji-san won the competition. She is going to participate in the fashion show in Paris.

Kirin’s opinion:

Personally I liked 203gow-san’s unique crochet headphones, but that’s only for autumn and winter. I’m so much impressed that they achieved their skills as much as to the level of making business by themselves, and everything was based on their passion and that they really liked doing that as a hobby. Not many people can be so much into something to this extent, but it’s so cool we can be so famous from something we like doing, and these people must be so happy because they can make other people happy with what they love doing. I think that’s the ideal way of life! They would do it for nothing. I mean, they would never have expected to become popular or to get paid for what they do. I just adore their passion and energy!