Japan Day Two: 3 – Shopping

Continuing taking you with me on my recent Textile Tour to Japan…….

We were asked if we wanted to go to the street with all the famous designer shops, but none of us were very interested in that, so we just drove through it past all the big names like Dolce and Gabbana.

I would have been interested to look inside Vivienne Westwood’s shop,

as V.W.  is one of my all time heroines and it would have been fun to see what goes down well in Tokyo.

Instead we chose Tokyo’s equivalent of Carnaby Street in London and walked through it, standing out as European tourists of a certain age! (You don’t see many grey haired people out and about in Japan.)

and enjoying the weird and wonderful

I can’t help wondering why the Japanese aren’t all overweight with pancake shops like these doing a roaring trade.

All the samples on display are plastic and wonderfully garish.

Look what’s on the menu: ‘Strawberry Chocolate Brown’, ‘Blueberry and Whipped Cream’,’Custard Chocolate Special’ and yes, of course, ‘Tuna Curry’!

I wish I had tried that strawberry one now.

A mountain of candy floss anyone?

And this, can you believe it, is a boutique for dogs!

I was surprised to see a lot of English signage around. It pleased me too as it made me think that Japan is a place I could go to without going in a group, I feel confident I could find my way around.

When I needed to go to a camera shop as my camera was playing up I could communicate via a translation App on my iPad and the shop assistant replied to me via a translation App on his phone – brilliant!

‘Moshi moshi’ means ‘Hello’ especially when answering the phone, or trying to get someone’s attention.

I love this wonderfully mad clock – would love to make one!

After this wander through the shopping street – no time for shopping, just looking! Our wonderful guide, as usual, assembled us all on the pavement and call up the coach driver to come and collect us.

The pelican crossings in Tokyo all had electronic bird sounds tweeting as you crossed – (ours just go beep-beep here in UK) – one even sounded like a cuckoo – sweet!

back in the coach watching the modern city go by.

and off to a craft centre ……….