During Golden Week 2012, from Saturday 28 April through Sunday 6 May, Yebisu Garden Place planned to turn its plaza network into a colour laboratory for families. The anchor IP was Little Pink & Brokiga (リトルピンク＆ブロキガ) — a Swedish picture-book series already popular at home — imported into an outdoor-and-indoor program titled FUN WITH COLOURS.
Shibuya Channel published the preview on 18 April 2012, roughly ten days before opening day. The festival is long finished; hours, guests, and installations below are historical.
The book world behind the event
Little Pink & Brokiga comes from illustrator Stina Wirsén, working in a bright, playful visual language. The stories follow Little Pink and the Brokiga crew through explorations of numbers and everyday discovery — framed as an upbeat educational picture book rather than a single gag strip.
FUN WITH COLOURS used that universe as scaffolding: not a static character photo spot, but a set of stations where colour becomes something you test, mismatch, mix, and wear. The pitch balanced child imagination with adult aesthetics — “sharpen sensitivity while parent and child share time.”
Three zones across the Garden Place campus
Yebisu Garden Place spreads across sloped promenades, clock landmarks, and a central event square. The 2012 program mapped activities to those natural zones rather than one tent only.
Clock Square entrance — welcome signs
At the Clock Square entrance, visitors would meet the event title board plus seven welcome signs, each featuring Brokiga characters in a different colour. The goal was immediate immersion: before workshops or queues, you already read the brand as a rainbow cast rather than a single mascot.
Promenade — ten-box colour quiz
On the sloped promenade, staff planned ten colourful boxes, each tied to a hue. Every box displayed black-and-white images of objects related to that colour — but one image deliberately did not belong to the box’s colour family. Visitors played “Ten-Colour Match Quiz Boxes,” hunting the mismatch while walking the hill.
The design is gentle pedagogy: colour is not only decoration but a sorting problem you solve with your eyes and arguments (“that one is really yellow, not red”). For Golden Week foot traffic — mixed ages, mixed languages — it keeps engagement without requiring a ticketed seat.
Center Plaza — stage, dress, and collective decoration
The Center Plaza hosted the main spectacle. A costumed Little Pink character would appear in a custom pink dress made from plant-derived materials, produced by apparel brand ECOMACO. On stage, guests could join Little Pink to hang flower motifs cut from fabric scraps on a tree — a craft-action photo moment as much as a performance.
ECOMACO’s involvement signals the event’s tone: Scandinavian kid lit meets Japanese natural-materials fashion consciousness, at a venue known for corporate-cultural programming rather than only playground rides.
Hands-on workshops and play structures
Beyond the three anchor zones, the preview listed interactive layers aimed at “curious children” — which, in practice, also means adults supervising and occasionally participating.
“Colours of Feelings” rotating cylinders
One installation placed characters on cylindrical play equipment visitors could spin. Rotation shifted perceived colours — a literal lesson that colour depends on movement, angle, and juxtaposition, not only pigment on a page.
Monochrome mural wall
A large black-and-white Little Pink & Brokiga mural invited free colouring and drawing. Framing emphasizes autonomy: children choose palettes and coverage, not a pre-printed sticker sheet.
Tataki-zome and nijimi-e craft tables
Craft programming included:
- Tataki-zome (beat dyeing) — a textile technique associated with pounding natural pigments into cloth, used here to extract colours from nature in a demonstrative way.
- Nijimi-e (bleed painting) — watching pigments spread and merge on paper, making the moment of mixture visible rather than only the dried result.
Both workshops fit the FUN WITH COLOURS title literally: colour as process, not swatch.
Talks, video, and Golden Week extras
The event week added media and celebrity programming typical of major Tokyo commercial complexes in the early 2010s:
- Special video of author Stina Wirsén, newly filmed for this run, screened on Center Plaza monitors.
- Talk show featuring LiLiCo — known in Japan both as translator of the Little Pink & Brokiga books and as a film commentator — connecting the literary origin to a parent audience.
- Seminar with Masako Oka, ECOMACO representative and natural life coordinator, covering dress production and workshop materials tied to Little Pink’s costume.
- Pamphlet-based colour-hunt game distributed on site.
- Free download of event-exclusive mobile phone wallpaper — a period-perfect perk when feature-phone customization still mattered in promotional bundles.
Together, the list targets a full Golden Week day: stroll, quiz, craft, stage photo, sit-down talk, takeaway digital souvenir.
Event facts (2012)
- Title: Nordic-born mischief-makers — Little Pink & Brokiga in Yebisu Garden Place / FUN WITH COLOURS
- Dates: 28 April (Sat) – 6 May (Sun), 2012
- Hours: 11:00–17:00 daily
- Venue: Yebisu Garden Place facilities (whole complex)
- Address: Ebisu 4-20, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo
- Phone: 03-5423-7111 (Yebisu Garden Place Information)
- Organizer reference link (historical): gardenplace.jp
Ebisu, Shibuya Ward, and the Shibuya Channel map
Yebisu Garden Place sits in Ebisu, still Shibuya-ku — close enough that Shibuya Channel covered it as part of the wider ward leisure calendar even when the vibe differs from scramble-side fashion drops. Where central Shibuya sells density, Ebisu sells elevated plaza space, brewery heritage, and weekend family programming under glass and open sky.
Readers tracing geography from live views can start at the Shibuya Crossing live camera and ride one stop on the Yamanote Line to Ebisu Station, then walk the Garden Place complex. FUN WITH COLOURS did not require Shibuya Station itself, but it shared the same municipal footprint and the same Golden Week audience spillover — families who might shop Shibuya in the morning and camp an afternoon event in Ebisu.
Travelers stacking Shibuya culture stops with a longer outing can compare options in best day trip from Tokyo.
What to expect if you search today
Little Pink & Brokiga remain a published world; Yebisu Garden Place still hosts seasonal installations. This specific 2012 layout — ten quiz boxes, ECOMACO dress staging, LiLiCo talk day, 2012-only wallpaper — will not repeat verbatim.
If you plan a contemporary visit, check Yebisu Garden Place’s current event board rather than the April 2012 hours above. The value here is documentary: a moment when Nordic children’s illustration, natural-dye workshops, and commercial plaza programming overlapped for nine days of colour-chasing in Ebisu.
