Tomorrow my big suitcase gets shipped to the airport so I won’t have to schlep it. I decided I ought to go shopping today in preparation for leaving. Also, it’s Robin’s birthday and she had a request. I asked one of the young ladies who works at the hotel for suggestions about where to shop. They are very knowledgeable and go out of their way to be helpful. It was a beautiful day, still warm with a blue sky. I probably should have gone to another temple, but the truth is I needed a break. I got to the shopping area about 10:15 and found they didn’t open until 11. Back on the bus to the train station and Bic Camera, a huge electronics dealer next to the station. Robin’s request had been USB gloves, to keep your hands warm while using the computer.
Bic computer is a daunting place. There are seven floors of electronic stuff and every floor has loud music and loud announcements, which I don’t find conducive to the challenge of shopping in a foreign language. I’ve actually managed to purchase two things there at different times: a lan cable and a USB storage device, and failed to purchase a battery for my camera because they no longer carried it. I have yet to find anyone who speaks English there. The battery and the USB device were easy. I just took out the one I had and asked for another. I couldn’t do that with the lan cable since I didn’t have one, making the purchase a lot trickier. This time I was pretty sure would be impossible. How do you ask for something that might not even exist?
I walked around the entire computer floor until I found the obvious place where such an item would be if they had it: a huge case with plastic models of sushi with USB connectors sticking out of them. Amazing! If they had had the gloves, this is where they would be, but no such luck.
Back on the bus, it was lunchtime already, after which I finally went shopping. Most of the fashionable stuff for young women here seems to have at least a touch of that goth-lolita business, making it very hard to find anything I want to buy. I managed to get a couple of things and went back to the paper store where I thoroughly enjoyed looking at all the papers no longer carried by the shop in Tokyo.
Can they ship the papers to you at your home?