Towards the end of my time in Japan, I visited an old paper store in arashiyama. The elderly woman manning the counter noticed my eyes wondering to the spools of silk hidden in the corner, along with a ziplock pouch of fluffed up cocoons, and a drop spinner poking out of my bag. In an instant she jumped off her stool. And with the brightest beam on her face, she marched right over, poking around my bag and saying a million things that all about resulted into ‘what the hell is this girl doing with these?!?’ I answered as best I could in my broken Japanese and her smile got wider and wider. She grabbed my hands and swung me over to a tiny shelf in the corner. “Do you know what this is?”. It was shifu. Small, decoratively woven fabric with threads made entirely out of paper. Something id only ever heard of in the books back home. She could obviously see the excitement on my face and immediately beckoned me with “Dozo, dozo, dozo”. She walks straight past the growing line of customers, straight out the door, and straight into a huge storeroom full of rolls of paper, and fabrics, and paper fabrics bigger than me. Now starts the obligatory test. A curious point in any direction and a quizzing “kore wa…?”. I finish her sentences and she leads me to my reward. A sharp yank of a swift drawer reveals a treasure trove of fabrics. Mostly shifu, but dyed and decorated in all kinds of ways. The pristine weaves are gorgeous and experimental in some. I ask if it was her who made these, but she bashfully declines and explains how it was rather her son. While I stand there gawking, she rustles around the workshop and pulls out a large roll of washi paper. She hoists it up onto the table and starts to unroll It, and cut. I watch closely as she folds, slices, crushes and twists, all the while she’s rapidly describing her actions in Japanese. She knows I can’t understand at least half of what is being said but it doesn’t matter, the message isn’t one of words this time. At the end of her lesson, we return to the store-front. The line at the counter is going out the back, and my own visiting mum is right at the front of It. She grabs a thread spool, wraps it in a few sheets of washi and a bow. She shoves it into my bag and tells me to get to it. We depart with some kind words and bow our ways apart.

The sheer generosity of the people in this industry never ceases to amaze me, and is something I wish to reciprocate when I can. The store is called 紙と織 嵯峨野工房 (Paper and Weaving Sagano Workshop) and its in the north-western part of Kyoto. If you’re in the area, which i highly recommend, then check it out. They have an amazing selection of handmade papers and brushes. The quality has no faults and is comparatively cheap to anything you’ll find in the UK. And if you want to learn a thing or two, all you have to do is strike up a conversation with our favourite store manager. That, you can’t really put a price on.