Happy Christmas!!!

Hope you had a fabulous Christmas with lots of nice pressies and mulled wine and mince pies and chocolate Mmmmmm.

Christmas in Japan is quite different, it's not a holiday here so everything is open as usual although they do have decorations and stuff everywhere, and cards etc. Apparently it's like a version of Valentines day where couples go out and celebrate together and eat Christmas cake which is actually a very tasty creamy strawberry sponge cake (pictures to follow).

Here's a run down of what we've been up to on out holiday so far...

Day one - very jet lagged so we started off at our hotel in Shinjuku and had a walk through Yoyogi Park to Harajuku where we ate in Pizza Express(!) and had a look through La Foret before continuing down to Shibuya for a bit more looking in shops and finally catching the Yamanote back to Shinjuku for an early night, zzzzz.

Day two - out to Ueno for a picnic in the park and a visit to the National Museum which has a fantastic collecion of kimono and Kabuki costumes, really enjoyed this. After a wander through the hectic streets of Ueno and the Ameyoko market we hopped on the train out to Akihabara (electric town) for Johns benefit. Then, tired again we headed back to the hotel for yet another early night (I know, this is a poor effort!).

Day three - The results of day 3... coming to a website near you soon! We went bead shopping! On the train again out to the bead district, which you can imagine is like my own personal version of shopping heaven! In the 5 times that I've been to Tokyo, this is the first time I've known that there was a whole district devoted to bead shops and I was not disappointed! We had a great day here, I think even John enjoyed and I'm feeling rather inspired:D

Day four - we went to Shimo-Kitazawa which is a little district of Tokyo not yet flattened by development and covered in massive shopping centres. Unfortunately it looked like development of the area is set to go ahead next year so I was happy to get the chance to visit before this happened. Lots of independent shops in this area which makes for a nice stroll around all the wee lanes and some really amazing little shops where I made some great purchases. This area is great if you are petite and like vintage shopping as it's packed full of second hand clothing shops.
Once we were finished here we were back to Shinjuku as we hadn't really explored the area about our hotel yet, so we looked for restaurants we could go to, found a cinema to go and see Avatar (but tix had sold out so we'll try and do that another night) and lots of fun messing about with the interactive xmas window displays at Isetan.

Today we're off to Kichijoji, one of my favourite areas of Tokyo for some more shopping and strolling around the park...

holidays!

I'm getting super excited about my holiday, only 2 more sleeps - woo! However, it does mean that there won't be anyone here to look after Hannah Zakari which worries me a little, but it's just one of the few bad things about being a one person business. These up coming next few weeks are the quietest time of the year for me so it makes sense for me to take advantage of that but I feel a little guilty if someone has left it late to buy pressies and I'm not here to help them out!

While I'm away the shop will still be open for purchases but nothing will be sent until January 5/6th (it's still a holiday up here on the 4th). There will be free shipping for all UK orders to try and make up a little for the wait and I'll be adding free cute kawaii Japanese gifts to orders over £30 if you ask for 'kawaii please' in the comments box between Dec 20th and Jan 1st =^-^=

Merry Christmas everyone!!

xmas xmas xmas

A big hello to everyone who came to see Hannah Zakari at the Bust Craftacular and We Make craft fairs in London over the last couple of weeks. I had such a great time at both events, it's really nice getting out and about meeting customers and selling things face to face.

I was on my own both weekends so didn't get to do my usual photos and purchases (boo!) which was a real shame as there were some amazing stalls and I'm pretty sure I could have got my xmas shopping done and dusted... As it is I still have it all to do - noooooo!

I'll be having a good think over the next few months about if I can still carry on doing craft fairs in future, they can be super good fun but they take a lot of time to prepare for and things at HZ are really getting a little bit too busy for me to fit all the prep in, especially at this time of year. I found myself wishing a little bit that I was there as a customer rather than a vendor as I could have done with some fun time out of work - I've done too many 12 hour days this year!!!

But anyway, the hard work is almost over 'cause...

...on Sunday I'm off on holiday to Tokyo for 11 days:D This will be my 5th time in Japan but my longest stint in Tokyo as usually we travel around a bit and see as much as we can, but last time we were there we really felt that Tokyo needed some proper exploration. This is the holiday I had to postpone in October as HZ was too busy and Vogue and Grazia x 2 featuring HZ were coming out during the time I had planned to be away - bad timing or what?!

I'll be trying my best to update this blog while I'm away and will be updating over the next few days about what's happening on HZ while I'm away so stay tuned!

Rachael x

Bust Craftacular - tomorrow!

Come along and shop your heart out at the awesome Bust Craftacular in York Hall, Bethnal Green in London tomorrow!