You haven't truly experienced Ginza, Tokyo if you haven't lost yourself for hours among the seven floors of ITOYA. You can't miss it -- it's that shiny, sparkling building with the cheerful red paperclip over the front door, just between Tiffany's and Bulgari. ITOYA has been a mecca for connoisseurs of fine stationery products since 1904. In addition to the entire Kolo product line, at ITOYA you’ll find 5,000 kinds of washi paper, Japanese calligraphy supplies and traditional karuta cards.

Happily, ITOYA has several other locations in Japan, too, a few of which will hold Kolo photo album events such as this one shown above, a popular annual event at ITOYA.

Some of you who have contributed photos of your Kolo projects to this Koloist blog might spot one of your masterpieces in the horizontal Koloist poster above the Kolo display in the bottom photo, above. That’s Koloist Contributor Steve Light’s wooden monkey and organ. He carved it with a jeweler's saw for the cover window of the Organ Grinders book that he illustrated in a Kolo Lux Cortina photo album. (If you wish to contribute photos of your Kolo projects, just click on “contact” top right to send us an email about it first.)

Thanks, Kyoko, for sharing the photos.

More photos of this event are here.

If you can read Japanese, you'll like this ITOYA web site. To find ITOYA products sold in the USA go here.

-Ugo