Adorable Niseko Kids T-shirts with Limited Availability!
With Mt. Yotei poking up in the background, these silk-printed T-shirts were made painstakingly by hand and are an excellent Niseko souvenir for your children!
Originally made in commemoration of Niseko's first hosting of the Strider Enjoy Cup, these adorable T-shirts have really become a huge hit here in Niseko. Not all of the moms and dads who have been swinging by to pick up a shirt had even come for the event! With a truly uniquely Niseko image and design, parents have been grabbing up the shirts as a memento of their trip to Niseko this summer!
Locally Hand-Printed!
If you ask us, it is always better to support local businesses! Sure, we could have gone online and ordered a thousand of the shirts, but what we really wanted to do was make something that was truly special and a reflection of the Niseko summer! What better way to do this, than to keep as much of the design and creation process in the Niseko-area? In the end, the whole process ended up being so interesting that we decided we would share how this uniquely Niseko T-shirt came to be!
We asked local artist Yuichi Hasegawa, born and raised in the Shiribeshi area, for help with the project. Yuichi specializes in T-shirt design and printing and is affiliated with the local artists guild and group, Niseko.City. Yuichi made the final design, hand-made each of the design molds, and personally printed each T-shirt using a silk-screen process. His hard work really shows in each T-shirt!
We were lucky enough to get a chance to watch a bit of the process while Yuichi worked away and learn a bit more about how T-shirt printing is done by hand.
What is Silk-Screen Printing?
The technique is simple enough in theory, but time-consuming work when done so carefully by hand. Silk-screen printing originates in ancient China, but was quickly adopted in Japan. It eventually spread to the rest of the world, but not until around the 1700s. Yuichi carefully created a stencil design (one for each image he was printing) on a sheet of silk stretched over a wooden frame. Ink is then applied to the stencil, set atop a T-shirt ready for printing, and the ink fills in the stenciled area creating the design on the T-shirt!
Yuichi had to carefully cut and design screens for each of the four T-shirt sizes, adding additional difficulty as he had to carefully replicate the design to keep the image consistent across all four sizes!
Applying ink for our brand logo through his custom-made silk-screen.
Yuichi carefully removed the original tags from all of the shirts before printing our company's clothing brand logo in their stead. He said that this is a good practice as it allows him to ensure that the itchy tags won't cause any discomfort for the children who end up wearing his T-shirts. It also helps to add a nice touch of style and quality to the shirts, and it was this kind of attention to detail and craftsmanship that led us to Yuichi in the first place!
One shirt at a time, careful hands remove the tags and make sure none of those itchy bits remain!
350 T-shirts carefully printed by hand and laid out to dry in rows upon rows... talk about a days hard work!
"No More Training Wheels!"
As we mentioned, the T-shirts were created both as a memento of the Niseko summer, but also in commemoration of the Strider Enjoy Cup which had its first successful hosting this summer. That being said, just about any child learning to ride a bike can enjoy and relate to the jubilation of graduating from training wheels! As cycling is such an iconic part of summer here in Niseko, the T-shirt design really felt like it embodied so much of what the Niseko area has to offer over the warmer months as well as being cute and cheeky enough for a kid to enjoy and wear!
Packaged and ready to go!
Bright Colours and a Range of Sizes
With four sizes, all carefully selected to fit children ages two to five or six. Our smallest T-shirts, have a special neck-button at the top to make it a bit easier for moms and dads to help their young ones get in. Sizes are based on the rough height of your child, 90 cm T-shirts aimed at children two to three years old, 100 cm aimed at children three to four years old, and so forth. Each size comes in two different colours, as detailed below:
90 cm: Baby Blue and Baby Pink (with special neck-button)
100 cm: Banana Yellow and Lime Green
110 cm: Natural Beige and Red
120 cm: Black and Violet
Where and How to Buy
All of the sizes and colours are limited in number, so if you think that you might want to buy a T-shirt, don't hesitate to let us know! We will be popping up around the village at events over the course of the summer, but if you are interested and not sure whether there are any events during your stay where we might be, please don't hesitate to send us an email ([email protected]). We will be happy to advise you when and where you can pick up a T-shirt!
Cost
| 1 Shirt | 2 Shirts | 3 Shirts |
|---|---|---|
| 2000 yen | 3000 yen | 4000 yen |
You can pick and choose sizes and colours within the above sets. Purchasing more than 3 is okay, too!
4 sizes, 8 colours, 2 colours per size.
≪Translated by: Matt Kaiser≫
Artist and Producer: Mr. Yuichi Hasegawa
Affiliation: Niseko.City (Local Artists Guild, assists with promotion, sales, and runs a variety of activities and workshops)
Studio Address: North 2, West 1, Kutchan town, Abuta district, Hokkaido, Japan
Website: http://niseko.city/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/niseko.city/
