Today I walked past some of the shopowners in the area where I live and some of them were hanging up Christmas lights to light up the shopping arcade where they work.
Later, when I went into Shinjuku, I went near Takashimaya and saw their decorations. Simply incredible, not only in design but in scale. I kid you not, they had two 10 foot tree decorations made out of ... teddy bears. Well, not true plush teddy bears but they were like toy bears wrapped in silver and gold foil. Quite a bizarre site. Cute in some respects, but really odd when you think about it. Look closely and you see the bears staring back at you!
Some of the other boutiques have their Christmas decorations out. Christmas is not celebrated as a religious holiday here, but it happens to coincide with the winter bonuses that regular corporate employees receive at the end of the year. All the shops, whether they be clothing or electronics, are competing for that hard-earned money, and so sometimes the sales are fantastic. Today I walked into a shop to get a new cell phone and they gave back basically 5000+5000yen = 10000yen back in rebates, when the phone itself was only about 20,000 yen after factoring out subsidies and calling charges.
It's a consumer's paradise here in Tokyo. Just be careful not to be trampled by the weekend crowds! Yikes!
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