not your average t-shirt shop

Make no mistake Japan is a different sort of place. For even the most jaded of world traveler there is a certain amount of culture shock involved with a visit to Tokyo. It isn’t the sort of Outer Mongolia culture shock where you are dining on goat testicles for evening tea – this is a more subtle sort of cultural experience. Take for example the act of shopping. Sounds simple enough and I thought it would be too until I stepped into the fray and decided to buy a t-shirt. Now remember that almost no one here in Tokyo speaks English. It isn’t the sort of Parisian attitude where they choose not to speak it – nope, they don’t have a clue. So any sort of exchange for a non Japanese speaker involves a lot of hand movements, bowing (always lots of bowing) and muddling along until both sides are understood.

So back to my t-shirt. I was looking through this trendy sort of menswear shop and was having a great laugh at the t-shirt designs. Writing on shirts is the big thing at the moment, either in English or in Japanese. Some of the English ones are great, as they are prime examples of “Jenglish” or “Eng-rish” yes the words are in English, but they may not quite belong together. Take the first shirt I decided to get, it says, “I like sunshine.” I mean who doesn’t like a nice day? But on a t-shirt? It was ironic/cool enough for me. The second shirt had a line of Japanese characters on it. When I was buying it I asked the shop guy what they meant. In his extremely broken English he said that it says something like goldfish farm, but it made no sense. He had a good laugh.

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All of a sudden everything fell into place – the English shirts don’t make sense, the japanese shirts don’t make sense – does anything make sense? Japan is the sort of place where sometimes things don’t make sense at all, but everyone just smiles to themselves and keeps on trucking.

After we went through the process of paying came the part of the transaction where he hands me the shirts. Every where else in the world they would just fire the shirts into a bag and toss it to you as you were on your way. But not here, not by a long shot. Step one was to fold the shirts with a level of precision not seen since The Gap circa 1993. Second the shirts are inserted into the bag with the care of someone transferring the Queen’s soufflé. Then the bag is stood upright (it was a snazzy paper number with ornate cord handles) and taped shut with special tape. Then, as it was raining, a second plastic bag is put over the first paper one like a little raincoat. Then the shop attendant takes the bag with both hands, walks around the counter to me, hands it to me and bows deeply. I have purchased cars with less fanfare then these two, $20 t-shirts! You gotta love this place!

More to come – the next instalment is all about food!
Cheers
Scott