1) The Japanese are ingenious
People's exhibit a: I stumbled across a way-too-hip furniture store in Omote-sando (think Ikea, but less practical and more expensive). It's not a great place to put a furniture store, because the retail spaces are tiny. There's simply no space to display dozens of chairs and sofas. How to solve? A window full of tiny models. Yup, each piece was carefully re-created in miniature, about six inches high. Awesome! (unless you'd like to actually, I don't know, SIT on the furniture before buying it. Then you have a wee problem.)
Check out the marshmallow sofa.
Exhibit b: There's many things I love about buying clothes, and a few things I hate. One thing in the second category is finding other people's makeup on the shirt I want to buy. And nothing attracts big slicks of foundation like dry-clean only clothes, so once you've shelled out for the shirt, you have to pony up for cleaning before you can even wear it. Can the Japanese defeat this pesky plague? Of course they can! At the Gap, they give you a little "face-cover" (which, to be honest, looks a bit like a Klan hood) made of Kleenex-y material that you put over your head when you try on clothes. You keep your makeup; they keep their clothes from being ruined. Everyone wins, unless you somehow suffocate.
2) The Japanese are tiny
Size I wear at Gap, in the States: XS. Size I wear in Japan: at least a M. I'm not quite sure -- I gave up in horror when I couldn't even button a size S dress around my waist.
3) Demolition is fascinating in any culture
I couldn't help stopping to watch workmen dismantle a building piece-by-piece in the bustling heart of a shopping district. I thought I was being a tacky gaijin gawker -- until I saw a dozen Japanese people filming it with their cell phone cameras.
4) I can read a word!
A lot of signs in Tokyo are in English -- and a lot aren't. I've resigned myself to not ever really knowing what's going on. But today, for the first time, I looked at a sign written in kana and my brain didn't say "random jumble of kana and kanji that makes no sense to me.." It said, "No. Gi. Za. Ka. Oh my god. I know those characters! Nogizaka!"
(Full disclosure: At the time of this epiphany I was standing in the Nogizaka train station, so you don't have to be Elliot Stabler to deduce that the sign above the train station might say the name of the station. But still. I read it!)
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7 comments:
How did the apartment search go?
Yay! Love the observations. Keep it up. When I kept taking photos of the cars, trees, buildings and road signs in Tokyo while with a tour group, this couple from China asked me what on earth I was taking photos of. Guess to them, the bonsai-looking trees and teeny tiny cars weren't any different.
Are you feeling like you're average-height yet?
I'm starting to feel huge! Who the hell can wear the size XXS clothes, I wonder.
But yeah, it's really nice to look people in the eyes instead of the, uh, collarbone.
I had the size freak-out when I visited Stacy and Geoffrey, too. I wear a small at home, but the large fit me in Tokyo. Shocking.
Imagine someone who is big (height wise) being in Asia! Singapore is the same way for me. Shirts are even a dodgy proposition as the shirts mostly run to a size that might have fit me when I was 16. Pants? bwa-ha-ha! I would actually have to get tailored pants I think fromt he Indian tailors in the various malls whom I always ignore when they ask if I need clothes. Shoes, other than sandals I have never found one that came close to a size 12.
But it is their world, not mine. I guess there are less convienient ways to get clothes, btu it isn;t something I thought about till I needed them.
Hey...I am going to Tokyo tomorrow to study abroad, and, as I am nervous and googling information about the city, I just randomly came across your blog. I have never been to Japan and your blog is great for insight. keep it up! :o) -Robyn
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