Lactose

The large buckets used a 0.75 cubic foot bag of soil and the smaller ones on the bottom used about half a bag each. I drilled holes in the bottom of each bucket for drainage. The buckets are just held up by their lips, no screws.

Materials List

(6) 2x4, 8’ long

3” outdoor screws (48 used in total, I bought a 1lb box)

Equipment List

Miter saw

Tape measure

Marking tool

Drill

The cut list/layout:

I use cutlistoptimizer.com, its an extremely useful site for planning out cuts.

Assembly Directions

First I assembled (3) boxes and used (4) screws per side.

Then to each box I attached legs to one side, then attached them all togther.

Things I would change

I would increase the length from 36” to 42” to accommodate the larger buckets. It fits the smaller buckets perfectly but leaves a frustrating gap with the larger ones. The updated cut list would look like this and use (7) 2X4’s:

The first part of the day we went to Ueno zoo and then we headed over to the fabric district. From the Ueno zoo it was about 10 min ride and from Tokyo station it would have been about a 20 min train ride. The Nippori station is a JR line station and unfortunately we didn’t get a stamp there. However the zoo had its own stamps.

ニシ =Nishi= Western

ローランド= Rorando= Low Land

ゴリラ =Gorira= Gorilla

If you didn’t know, all JR line stations (along with a ton of other places) have a unique stamp for each station. I would suggest getting a pocket notebook that’s at least 3” wide for stamp collecting.

We got to the fabric district later in the day around 4PM. Most stores around closed at 6PM but some were already by that point. It was also Christmas Day and a good chunk of stores were closed from then until after New Years. But a lot of the larger stores weren’t.

All down the street, they had these signs marking it as the fabric street, so it was easy to tell when you were in the right place (if the shops of fabric didn’t clue you in).

Some stores had multiple locations along the street that sold different things. For example, the main Tomato store was serval stories tall and had the majority of their selection but they had a smaller two story store down the street that had wool, suiting fabric, patterns, and yarn.

Most fabric ranged between ¥300 to ¥800 per meter (~$2 to 5.50, as of April 2025). Everything there was very reasonably priced and there was a ton of different options. I went in wanting cotton patterns that I wouldn’t be able to find in the US. I didn’t have any particular projects planned out for the fabric, so I thought cotton would be a good thing to have on hand for what ever I decided to do.

In total, I got 22.2 meters (24.25 yrds) of fabric.

What’s a little bit hard to capture on camera is most of the fabric have shiny metallic part of their patterns that makes them look absolutely beautiful in the light. All but three came from a precut bin that Tomato had at the front of their main store.

Unfortunately since we had gotten there later in the day, we only stopped by in a couple of stores. I don’t think that seeing the whole street would have been an all day activity, but definitely an earlier in the day thing.

One other sewing related item I got on my trip was this pattern book : ちりめん 遊び/chirimen asobi or “Silk crepe play”. I’m sure there’s a better way to translate the title but its a pattern book about traditional silk toys.

I got it at Book Off for ¥750 (~$5.25, as of April 2025). Some of the patterns I got are a little too big for some of these but others might be good for accents.

Some of the patterns are dolls and toys, while a good bit are little pouches in fun shapes. The crane is definitely on the top of my list.

Its definitely on my places to go back to if we ever visit again. The trip really inspired me to start learning the language. I had done French in middle school and highschool, but it never really felt like a useful or interesting skill to learn. Learning Japanese has been challenging so far but its been very rewarding to finally be able to read one or two sentences in a row (in children’s books lol) .

Next I’m planning to do a write up on Kappabashi Street, the kitchenware street. We spent a lot more time looking so I have a lot more pictures and in total we spent a lot more there. I would highly recommend it gift shopping.