Our New Handmade Event Cart by R/D Record Cabinets, and Why You'll Find Us on Nakamise Street at OC Japan Fair

Big news on our end: we'll be back at the OC Japan Fair, October 16 to 18, 2026, at the OC Fair & Event Center in Costa Mesa.

And this time you'll find us somewhere new. Booth N19 on Nakamise Street, the little Japanese shopping street that KIMONO CON builds right inside the fair entrance.

You'll also meet the newest member of our booth. A rolling wooden cart, built by hand in Los Angeles by Paul, Dyanne and the team at R/D Record Cabinets, the same shop that made our wooden boxes and our bar counter.

This post is chapter two of our booth story. Chapter one, how we made the event booth and backdrop from Port Orford cedar, ended with "What comes next? Who knows." Now I know. It has wheels.

The fair hours first, in case you want to plan your visit before reading on:

Friday, October 16	4:00 PM to 10:00 PM
Saturday, October 17	12:00 PM to 10:00 PM
Sunday, October 18	11:00 AM to 7:00 PM
Where	OC Fair & Event Center, 88 Fair Drive, Costa Mesa, CA 92626. Nakamise Street, booth N19
Parking	$15 per car

If you only have a minute, watch this first. It's the whole build of the cart, from the first cut to the last screw, in about four minutes.

The finished cart on the afternoon we brought it home.

Where to Find Us at OC Japan Fair

The fair spreads over three buildings and a big outdoor food court. Nakamise Street is the covered walkway between the Anaheim and Los Alamitos buildings, and you're on it a few steps past the main entrance.

The fair floor plan for October 2026. Nakamise Street is the strip between the two non-food buildings, right at the entrance.

Please see below where we are inside the Nakamise, across from the stage, so you can try out our tea and coffee while you watch the various shows throughout the days. 

I'm excited that I get to see all the shows, from Taiko to Rakugo, from our booth, but I know we will be busy and won't be able to pay too much attention to them;  you know how that goes if you have been to our booth in the past (^^).  

KIMONO CON's booth map for Nakamise Street, Fall 2026. We're N19.

Nakamise Street, and How We Got On It

Nakamise-dori (仲見世通り) is the shopping street that leads up to Senso-ji temple in Asakusa (浅草), Tokyo. About 250 meters (820 feet) of small stalls selling rice crackers, folding fans and sweets, packed with people on any day of the year. If you've been to Tokyo, you've probably walked it. KIMONO CON (着物魂), Saya-san's non-profit, has been building its own version at the fair entrance since 2024.

Back in 2024, Miki and I came to this fair as customers.

We were still dreaming about being based in Los Angeles, and we didn't know anything about how events here worked. The first thing we walked into was Nakamise Street, a kimono shop under the banner, a calligraphy table a few steps on, and half the people in the lane in yukata taking photos of each other. I remember standing there and thinking, "If we ever have a booth at this fair, this is where I want it to be." (Follow me on this one. I know a shopping street is a strange thing to dream about.)

The year we came as customers. Miki at the fair gate.

We did get a booth the following spring, with the brand-new cedar backdrop from chapter one, and we came back twice more. Each time we were in the regular vendor hall, and each time I walked past Nakamise Street, I had the same thought.

What happened next I didn't plan at all.

At this spring's fair, a visitor stopped by our booth, tried the coffee, and bought a bag along with one of Miki's cat art prints. A week later, I got an email from her.

It was Saya-san (Saya Kawai Tsong, the president of KIMONO CON).

She had shared the coffee with her staff at the office; everyone enjoyed it, and asked if Miki and I would like to be vendors at Kimono Ichi & Natsu Matsuri (きもの市＆夏祭り), the kimono market and summer festival KIMONO CON holds with the Redac Gateway Hotel in Torrance.

We said yes!

Our table at the Kimono Ichi market in Torrance in June. The cart was still a drawing at this time.

Then, at the end of summer, Saya-san opened vendor applications for Nakamise Street at the fall fair, and I asked her whether we could be at Nakamise. 

Nakamise Street is organized by KIMONO CON separately from the rest of the fair, and we'd been a regular fair vendor for three seasons, so it wasn't simply hers to say yes to. She asked Masa-san (Masataka Taguchi of JPP-USA, who runs the OC Japan Fair) whether it was all right for us to move over.

Masa-san said yes.

So this October we're on the street!

It feels like a promotion, if I'm being honest. Two people who didn't have to make room for us did, and I'm grateful to both of them. Thank you, Saya-san, thank you, Masa-san, and thank you to everyone at KIMONO CON (@kimono_con) and OC Japan Fair (@ocjapanfair) for having us.

Why We Needed Something New

If you read chapter one, you know the backdrop we use at the event. 

Six panels of Port Orford cedar on steel legs, with a neon sign across the top.

I still love how it looks.

I'll be honest about the rest.

It's heavy, it takes two of us to move each piece, and on an early-morning load-in the two-hour setup is the part of the day I dread.

In the van, it's a game of Tetris, with the eight boxes and the bar counter going in around it. (I enjoy real Tetris over this one more.)

Then, at the spring fair, someone came into our booth at night, after closing, and took products.

They also took the neon sign.

Nothing in the booth could be locked, so there was nothing to stop them. From that night on, "something we can lock" went to the top of the list.

Miki started to draw what she had in mind.

Drawing a Cart

This is what Miki came up with.

Closed up, a plain wooden box on wheels.

From the side: the handle, the pole that holds the box when it hangs over the end, and the storage door.

From the other side, with the box sitting on top.

We sent them to Paul and Dyanne. 

As you saw in chapter one, Paul and Dyanne had already built us the coffee and tea bar as well as the display/carrying boxes,

Paul came back with questions, and they were the questions of someone who has built a lot of things that have to survive other people.

Would it be loaded into a vehicle?
Yes, through the back of our Chrysler Pacifica, which is 36 in (91 cm) at the narrowest point, next to eight boxes and a bar counter.

Would we move it much?
At every event, van to booth and back, which was the whole reason for retiring the backdrop.

Outdoors? Yes, so the top panel had to handle wind. He'd noticed that the box in Miki's drawing was held in place by gravity alone and wanted to add a lip so it couldn't slide off. He wanted the pegboard and the acrylic to fold or lift off, and every loose piece to ride on the cart itself, because a loose panel in the van is the first thing to get scratched. I hadn't thought about any of it.

Then he warned us about weight, and I'm glad he did it before anyone drew anything. In 3/4 in (19 mm) Baltic birch, a cart this size would weigh around 250 lb (113 kg). Regular birch would come in closer to 200 lb (91 kg). Half-inch (12 mm) plywood would be lighter, but in his words, "if someone sat on it, it would break," and a lock set into half-inch plywood can be pried off with a screwdriver. After the spring fair, that settled it. Birch, 3/4 in, and trim weight anywhere it wouldn't cost strength.

Paul's answer to the weight was to think of the cart as three parts: the rolling cabinet, a removable box that sits on top, and a removable upright panel. Each goes into the van on its own, and with the wheels at the two ends of the cabinet, one person can lift one end at a time. The whole thing also got smaller. Miki redrew it at 4 ft long, 25 in deep and 35 in tall (122 x 64 x 89 cm), as wide as the van opening allows with a little to spare.

The revised drawing. This is the size that got built.

CAD Drawings

Here are the CAD drawings made by R/D Record Cabinets.  We were so excited to see these.  We went back and forth a couple of times, but it was so nice of Paul and Dyanne; they always accommodated our every request. 

Page 1, general dimensions. The display panel is 40 in (102 cm) wide and the cart stands 63 in (160 cm) with the acrylic raised.

Page 2, the main cart, with a locking door on each end.

Page 3, the removable box with its sliding doors and the adjustable leg.

Page 4, the pegboard and the folding acrylic "awning".

Drawings by R/D Record Cabinets

In the Making

Paul started cutting panels and wrote that evening that he had "worked through all of the design challenges."

I asked them to film the process as they had for the boxes, because this kind of work deserves to be seen, and Dyanne sent clips all through the build. They're what you saw in the time-lapse at the top. Here they are one by one, in the order they were filmed, with a note under each. The quotes between them are Paul's, from a recording I made on pickup day when I finally got to ask him how it went.

The cabinet is a plain box and the removable box sits on top for the first time. Paul explains where everything will go. Sound on.

A walk around the bare cabinet. No doors, no stain, no wheels yet.

Paul checking a panel on the bench by hand before it goes any further.

Standing up the end panels and screwing the cabinet together.

The cabinet has its shape, and Paul turns it to show the open end where the locking door will go.

"I ended up doing all the building," Paul said.
"To get it out of my head and into somebody else's head can be too difficult, so I just did all of it myself. Maybe that was the hard part." Geoff did the CAD and came in for the finishing on the last two days, and Charlie helped along the way.

Usually, Paul told me, their drawings are detailed enough that anyone in the shop can build from them.

Not this time.
This project was totally new and nothing like what they built in the past; (well, of course- it was what was in Miki's head!)  

CAD pages were three-dimensional views of the whole cart, with no breakdown of each side, so Paul had to work out the layout in his head: cut every panel half an inch smaller to leave room for quarter-inch trim, get the L-shaped piece exactly right so it would line up, and keep every piece fitting the next one.

"Oh, it's off by an eighth of an inch. Having to resize some panels," he said about that week. "But overall it went pretty smoothly.

We're pretty experienced here, so we can figure this stuff out. A lot of it is figuring it out as we go, one step at a time."

Laying out the pegboard. Every hole is measured and marked with a tape and a square before anything is drilled, which is why any shelf fits any row.

At the drill press.

Cutting the 1 in (2.5 cm) dowels to length on the miter saw. These become the pegs and the display rods.

The first test fit: a dowel goes into the panel, and a shelf sits on two pegs.

The pegboard panel standing on its own, with shelves and display rods test-fitted.

I asked whether the solving happens before the drawings or after.

Usually before, he said: find the problems, draw it, build it, and meet a few small surprises.

"This one, the CAD drawings were about fifty percent of the problems solved. The other fifty percent were in the building of it. Challenges we weren't going to know how to solve until we got there."

The raised blocks on the cart top are one of those. He knew we wanted merchandise up there, so he kept it simple and clean. The floor of the box is raised with a lip around it, the box drops down over the blocks, and it can't slide around in the van or while the cart rolls.

Sanding the pegboard panel outside the shop, with the dust extractor hooked up.

Sanding the removable box, inside and out.

Sanding the display panel pieces. There is a lot of sanding in this build, and it shows in how the stain took.

What the clips show is how much of the work isn't cutting.

Every face and every edge gets the orbital sander before the stain goes near it, and there's a whole clip that's just sanding.

Standing in front of the finished cart, I realized I couldn't see a single nail, and asked how.

"If you look closely, there's little pin nails. They're really tiny."

The panels are glued, and the structure is held with pocket holes, screws driven at an angle from the inside through a hole a special jig drills, all on the underside or the inside where you'd never look.

"That way it looks nice and clean from all different sides."

Where two panels meet, the grain carries on across the joint. That's book-matching: the veneer slices come off the log in sequence and are laid side by side like the pages of a book.

The wood is birch with a natural stain, and Paul had a reason for that too.

"The natural stain really pops the grain. It's very pretty, but also kind of industrial, modern. Walnut is very pretty, but it looks classic and traditional, and when walnut gets nicks and scratches it looks worn. This can take a little bit of wear and tear and still look good."

One of the team fitting hardware inside the cabinet.

The display panel with the T-shirt rods in their holders, held up for a test fit. The cabinet behind it already has its stain.

Final fitting on the cabinet, with the box and its sliding doors on the bench behind.

Under the shade cloth outside: Paul assembling the hinged frame that holds the blue acrylic.

The cabinet with its stain on, Paul at the last details, and the wheels waiting on the floor.

The last problem turned up on the final morning.

The replacement axles were too long, so Geoff cut them down with an angle grinder, with a fire extinguisher standing next to him "just in case," and sanded the cut ends smooth.

The pieces Geoff cut off the axles that morning.

"I've got a good team here," Paul said.

"They know how to solve problems."

The morning of pickup day. The last pieces going on, a few hours before we arrived.

And the one that matters most to us at six in the morning: every loose piece, the shelves, the rods, the second stand, the chocks, goes inside the cabinet. "All these pieces can fit inside here." The box lifts off, the panel lifts off, and one cart rolls into the van with nothing left on the floor.

Pickup Day

"We've got the cart almost finished. It should be done by noon tomorrow." We were at the shop in Glassell Park at three the next afternoon, and the cart was standing outside the door with the panel up and the shelves in.

The finished cart outside the workshop.

Below is a video of Paul walking us through it piece by piece, and I filmed it. (Six minutes.)

I wouldn't have thought to ask for most of what he showed us, and that attention to detail and care, I think, separates the good from the great.

 

The removable box with a sliding door open. The doors lift out of their channels when you want full access.

One end door open. This is where every loose part lives when we travel.

Pickup day. Miki with Paul and Charlie, who helped on the build.

By that evening the cart was standing in our living room with tea on the shelves, because of course we had to try it.

Same evening. First products on the shelves.

First Day Out, and the Months After

Two days later the cart was at its first event, the Los Angeles French Fry Festival. It rolled from the van to the booth on its own wheels, and for the first time in years we didn't carry anything heavy.

The cart under our yellow canopy at the French Fry Festival, its first day out.

Nine seconds from that morning: our booth on the grass, then the festival banner.

Miki with Mitchell Cote-Sawyer of Bucketlisters, who runs the Los Angeles French Fry Festival. He is so nice.

Everyone who stopped by asked about the cart before they asked about the tea, which is exactly what happened with the cedar backdrop the year before. I take it as a good sign.

It was a French fry festival. We did our research.

Same cart, after dark.

I know I'm late posting this. It has been months since that first day out, and this article has been sitting on my list the whole time. You know me. (Sorry Paul and Dyanne!) So here is where the cart has been while I wasn't writing about it.

Two weeks later, it went to the Summer Market in San Diego, hosted by Tsugu-san of We Share Records. That's the market where we first met Paul and Dyanne, so in a way the cart went home. Thank you, Tsugu-san.

The cart at the Summer Market in San Diego.

Inside at the Summer Market. Miki at the cart with customers.

Then, Little Moon Event at Kado. Thank you, Harvard-san and Mizuki-san, for having us. 

Little Moon at Kado. Miki pouring, the bags on the shelf, and a wave from the table out front.

Taberu Market in Little Tokyo has become our regular. Thank you, Saori-san and Chuck-san, as always.

Taberu Market, Little Tokyo.

In late September, the cart was back in San Diego for Taste of Shogun at Embolden Beer Co. Thank you, William-san of Embolden and Rocky-san, for inviting us! I also got a photo and a short chat with Mr. Hira. Takehiro Hira (平岳大) plays Lord Ishido Kazunari in FX's Shōgun, and he was the festival's guest.
Embolden even brewed a lager with him, The Warrior, directed by Rocky-san.  The beer uses Shikuwasa from Okinawa and so tasty!

Taste of Shogun at Embolden Beer Co., San Diego.

Me with Takehiro Hira, Lord Ishido in Shōgun. A very good day.

And this month the cart took its first road trip, to JETRO's Japanese Food Expo in Phoenix, Arizona, and set up indoors for once, next to Miki's T-shirt rack. Thank you again, Rocky-san!

The cart indoors at the Japanese Food Expo in Phoenix, its first trip out of state.

Seven events in three months. Nothing has loosened, and I've stopped checking.

What Changed at Setup

Setup is still a lot of work. We still bring the eight boxes and the bar counter, Balmuda Brew, the Kettles and the grinder, the tea and the coffee, and whatever T-shirts and artwork Miki has made that month. We still arrive early.

The backdrop isn't retired, though. For a three-day fair like OC Japan, where the booth is bigger and the crowds are larger, we'll likely bring it as well, so you may see the cedar panels and the cart standing together on Nakamise Street. 

About Paul, Dyanne and the R/D Team

R/D Record Cabinets started in 2016 and builds custom vinyl record cabinets in their Los Angeles workshop, with a team of fabricators and woodworkers and, by their count, more than a thousand cabinets shipped across the country. Their work has been in Monocle, Wallpaper*, Interior Design and Hypebeast. We first met Paul and Dyanne at Tsugu-san's market, where one of their cabinets stopped us in our tracks.

For us, they've now built the eight carrying boxes, the bar counter, and this cart. Paul built this one himself, Geoff drew it and came in for the finishing, and Charlie helped along the way. If you need something made of wood that has to survive being loaded into a van a hundred times, I know who to call.

You can find them at rdrecordcabinets.com and on Instagram at @recordcabinets.

Thank you, Paul, Dyanne, Geoff, Charlie and everyone at the shop.

We love it more every time we use it.

See You on Nakamise Street

October 16 to 18, booth N19, OC Fair & Event Center in Costa Mesa.

We'll have the cart, the bar counter, and samples of our Japanese green tea grown in sugarcane soil and the Sumiyaki charcoal-roasted coffee from Japanese Coffee Co. Miki has a stack of new T-shirts, and, as always, a surprise.

If you've been following us for a while, please come say hi and tell me which chapter of the booth story you liked better. I have a feeling I know the answer.

And if you can't make it, follow us on Instagram, follow Miki, or join the Green Tea Club below. That's where we announce the next event first. And maybe another gear (^^)