One thing we always do in Japan is clothes shopping.
This is not because I’m a sad person with nothing better to do* but because I’m ‘below average height’ in Germany and it takes some searching to find something that I can use to wear and not, for example, as a tent.
So off we went through the endless strip malls to a massive clothes shop perched next to a rice paddy. I’m pretty sure that last time I went past here, it was a rice paddy.
The shop was almost entirely white inside with the with conditioning apparently on high. It was a bit like being in a giant fridge. A fridge with large photographs of moody Europeans wearing chic clothes on the walls. But the clothes fitted, and better still by the changing rooms was a member of staff with a sewing machine so they could adjust your trousers to fit, at no extra charge. Why can’t we have something like this in Europe? It’s not like it’d break the budget of the average clothes store. I think heads should roll, frankly.
We probably spent too much but we were shopping for the next two years. Honest.
In the evening I finally tracked down a bike -two in fact- that are potentially ridable after I’ve taken them to the bike shop for repairs. Mobility beckons…
*I mean, I probably am, but that’s not the reason.
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August 10, 2011 at 10:37 am
northmark
Crazy as it sounds, one additional full-time employee can determine whether a shop in a Western country is considered profitable or not. The individual shop managers themselves are rarely rolling in money. Just like in the drug scene, most of the money is made at the very top.
I was very fascinated by how Japan, a technologically advanced country (duh…) still has an enormous number of independent craftmen and artisans, non-chain traditional hotels and by how most manual work was performed by members of the indigenous population. I realize there are “castes” among the Japanese, invisible to foreigners, but this does not explain everything. In Western countries “dirty” work has been farmed out to ethnic minorities, and semi-skilled work has almost disappeared. I would really want to know what Japan is doing right.
There is, I imagine, clearly a link between my belief that “small is beautiful” and my love of bicycling. Do more with less, and do it yourself.
August 10, 2011 at 10:56 am
Andy in Germany
Hi Northmark… thanks for the thoughts.
There is an ‘untouchable’ caste in Japan called the Burak. There was some probable Burak housing near here and yesterday I drove through it for the first time in a couple of years to see all but tree houses were gone and those were abandoned. The remainder were empty plots and each one had a big notice saying ‘government land, keep off!’ which is unusual. I have a sneaking suspicion they were moved because the land is very valuable: there’s a freeway nearby and new housing developments are cropping up around the corner. Maybe they never owned the land.
I’ll ask around and see wht could be behind the many small craftsmen. Certainly there’s a lot of very big companies about, and you’d think they would crush the small hotels and craftsmen.
The other side to this is that possibly it’s a low-wage economy a the bottom. I’l ask about that too…
I agree with you on ‘Small is beautiful’. I love the way a bicycle is a simple thing that cn be repaired by an artisan with very few tools
August 11, 2011 at 12:44 pm
northmark
Here’s some jewellery I bought for my wife in Kanazawa, made by a small shop that had made needles and fish flies since the 17th century. 21 generations in the same business!
I asked why they hadn’t been put out of business by Chinese factories. The manager said the Chinese absolutely could probably make just as good fish flies cheaper and in larger quantities. “But they wouldn’t be able to respond to customer opinion. Those anglers, they always come by and tell us which flies work under which conditions and which ones don’t.”