Tokyo Design Festa November 2007

A few weeks ago, I went to Tokyo Design Festa. Design Festa is a huge event full of over 2,000 booths for local and international artists to exhibit their work. It's a two day event and I only went for one day, which was a mistake because obviously it was so huge that I didn't get to see half of it. But I had so much fun and got to see so many interesting things. So many of the booths were elaborately decorated and sometimes, the artists wore costumes. I love the half-eaten chocolate cake in the picture above. Other booths were minimally decorated and the artists were friendly and explained all of their pieces. Design Festa was very hands-on and most booths had some sort of thing you could participate in. There was a robot-designer who rode around the building in his own red robot. This lamb-lady was very nice and asked me to take a picture with her in her booth that was made up like a miniature house. I think this possibly is the only country in the world where people can get away with this much over-the-top adorable. That lamb outfit is too much! This Anne Frank shoe has pieces of her diary and her image on it. It was completely gorgeous though this picture doesn't look very good. I don't quite know what I think about it but as a piece of art, it was really beautiful and sad. A little bit ironic, but my favorite artists in the entire Tokyo Design Festa exhibition were Canadians called Team Macho. Team Macho is a group of really funny, talented artists and this book is amazing. "Fancy Action Now" was only 2000 yen (20 dollars) and should have been far more. I also got to see friends Deanne and Masao and their Tokyomade booth. Besides being one of the cutest, healthiest couples in Tokyo and having their Tokyomade company that lets you buy locally designed things that can be shipped abroad, they also started Tokyo Hoop Stars and want to become certified hula-hoop teachers. Neat.

This Italian guy makes little stuffed toys and his booth was insane. I walked past it and he threw an animal at me. The first picture is of him with me. Here's a video of he and a volunteer playing some absurd but awesome game with his little animals. Next Design Festa is going to be great fun, too. I think it's in April.