Thanks for checking in on part 3 of my series about Hakone Gora Park. If you haven’t checked it out yet, check out my post about Hakone Gora Park overall and also my post about Glass Blowing.
Today, we are going to talk about another craft workshop to experience at Hakone Gora Park… Glass bead-making at Hakone Crafthouse! This was especially exciting because you can incorporate your glass bead into tons of items at the end of this process… a necklace, key chain, bracelet, charm, hair accessory, etc. Hakone Crafthouse is a craft workshop experience inside of Hakone Gora Park that offers activities such as glass blowing, pottery, glass etching, and of course today’s topic, glass bead making.
First, you’ll select your glass color and what type of pattern you’d like to make on the glass bead. The first time I visited, I made a turquoise glass bead with gold accents. The second time, I chose pink with polka dots and gold. They have tons of color and pattern options. Then, you sit down with your instructor one-on-one. They put safety gear on you and set you up in front of a blow torch and some supplies and walk you through the entire process.
First, you begin by heating a metal rod that you will wrap molten glass around to create your bead shape. Then, you begin to heat long colorful sticks of glass over the flame. As the glass begins to melt, you’ll slowly allow it to drip onto the metal rod, as you rotate the rod. This will start to create a ball shape around the end of the metal rod. You’ll keep adding layers and layers of the hot liquid glass over the flame, making sure to shape the bead with gravity as you go.
Then, you’ll roll the molten bead through gold leaf and heat it in the flame again. If you’re adding polka dots, you’ll lay out tiny little glass pieces of different colors and roll them onto the bead you’re creating. At the end, you’ll heat it all up nicely in the flame and rotate it evenly, so that you have a nice round bead. Then, it needs to cool. While it cooled, we took a break, grabbed a snack, and explored the park a bit.
Finally, it was time to turn our bead into an accessory! As the staff preps your bead, you’ll pick your accent beads or charms to add to your accessory. For my necklace, I picked some lovely gold and turquoise accent beads to complement the hand-crafted bead. For the key chain, I stuck with the pink and gold theme and picked cute golden charms and pink beads to match the lovely gold key chain.
Then, you get to assemble the bead and your accents all onto the accessory. In the end, I had a lovely, handmade souvenir that I was really proud of. It’s definitely a conversation starter, and you can honestly say you crafted it yourself in Japan!
This is such a fulfilling experience. Both men and women were doing this activity, especially since they had other unisex items like key chains that even the men could enjoy crafting.
If you enjoyed this post, please check out my other posts about the activities at Hakone Gora Park, including glass blowing. This entire park was a whole day experience that I will never forget. If you’re going to Hakone, this park is a must-see attraction.