today was "first sale" day (初売り), where a lot of the shops in sendai get rid of last year's merch or otherwise put stuff on sale. apparently sendai's is the biggest in japan. some are really huge sales, like 50% off EVEN items that are already discounted; others are 10%, or 30% "if you buy 3", and some other shops (like all the traditional japanese goods shops, and the 100 yen shops) have no sales at all. a few places, definitely not as many as i were led to believe, have grab bags but there's always photos of or a store attendant telling you about what you're going to get inside the bag, so it's not actually a mystery. the grab bags i saw included candy, shoes, women's underwear, tea, and prices for them usually ranged from 3,000 to 10,000 yen.

if you bought something at certain shops you got a ticket; if you get 5 tickets you get chance at spinning a lottery/raffle wheel or something... i can't understand the ticket so i don't know; we only got 3 tickets anyway. a few shops were giving out "free services" (= gifts); i'll post a photo later but at the yarn/crafting shop our free gift was new year's kitchen sponges and a new year's hand towel; at a traditional japanese shoe/purse shop i got a new year's dog charm and another (much uglier) new year's hand towel. you're supposed to carry around hand towels in order to wipe your hands from water after using a public bathroom, since they basically never have hand driers or paper for that purpose.

know what seems semi-popular right now? native american patterns! they like "normal" american stuff too (mickey mouse, pacific northwest "lumberjack" and "hiking" stuff, and i've seen a confusing number of vietnam war veteran jackets - yes, american ones, in english, worn by old japanese guys) but i've seen jackets, socks, etc with the patterns i grew up seeing all around me... i saw a jacket with the same traditional pattern that was my family COUCH. so i got pretty excited and bought a jacket, photos later!

honestly speaking, japanese fashion (here at least) seems to be exactly the same as it was 10-15 years ago. figure-skaters seem to be stuck in the 80's.

my japanese usually fails me when i'm out and about talking to shop staff, and my wife's japanese is relatively speaking nonexistant, but it always works out. they're basically always super happy to sell to foreigners, but most especially if you show that you can speak even just a tiny bit of japanese.

when i was buying the jacket, the only one in its colour/fabric was on display on a mannequin - so i waited around for a store attentant and when one passed by me saying いらっしゃいませ "welcome!", i asked これが欲しいですが、ありますか？ "i want this, but are there any?". probably bad japanese but she understood immediately anyway - looked on the rack for me, then went to ask someone something (probably if there were any in the back), then came back and told me to wait for a sec, then went away again (probably to ask if she could sell me the one on the mannequin). then she took down the mannequin, asked me "it's size M, is that okay?" and i said "it's probably okay", and i got the jacket.... AND the jacket was already marked as half off (1,900 yen) compared to all the other jackets (4,000) just because it'd been on the mannequin!! on top of that, it was a "buy 3 items get 50% off your purchase" major sale, so my wife got 2 things and i got the jacket.

now one thing i've noticed is... okay, in anime, there's always ex. that guy who goes into or is looking at the women's underwear section and everyone around him goes "eww gross what's he doing over there" etc. but in my experience that's completely not the case (neither here nor in any other country i've done this kind of thing in); if they start to think anything weird at all about it, everyone just assumes you're getting it as a gift for a girl. like, this shop is ONLY clothing for women and no one said anything to me; i also saw a couple other guys wandering around alone in there. when i was at a shrine yesterday i bought a pink hello kitty "protection charm" for my wife (...who didn't like it and doesn't want it), and no one said anything there either - they just told me what it was supposed to protect against.

i was a bit scared about buying "tatami shoes" (the technical term is zori i guess) because they're so japanese and everything (i know it's stupid but i WAS raised with the american "wearing clothing from cultures/skin colours not your own is BAD!!" mindset) but all the three shopkeepers (1 old man, 2 old ladies) were SUPER SUPER happy that i bought something.

i was looking at the shoes and the lady came up and was looking at me, i she asked if i wanted to try them on and i said yes (but although i did understand what she meant, i was still slow in the head so i didn't get that she meant i could try them on literally right there without moving anywhere else). i wanted to ask how well they'd hold up if i wore them around town, and i ended up asking "if i wore them outside, how would it become?" which she didn't get (obviously... as due to context it sounded like i was asking if i could try them on outside the shop!") so i said "street... on the street..." and then she got it. apparently they'll do just fine on the street BUT if they get wet they'll start to break down so avoid rain and stuff.

at the clothing shop where i got the native american jacket thing, my wife also got some clothes and when she was looking at a sweater the lady came up smiling and said "似合っている！" (that looks good on you!), my wife didn't understand and i only understood after a moment. then i went off somewhere, the lady apparently asked my wife if she wanted to try on the sweater, my wife didn't understand so the lady just took her by the hand and led her to the changing room while laughing. then when my wife was done trying it on, the lady asked if it fit and my wife said "it's a little tight but i like it so i'll buy it" and the lady was surprised she could speak some japanese, and laughed some more. seemed like she had great fun with a foreigner!! at the other clothing shop, it was full of really fashionable (in the "current trend" sense) young ladies working there, and when they asked my wife if the clothing fit, she answered "just barely (ぎりぎり) but i like it so i'll buy it anyway", and the lady there laughed too. probably you're not supposed to say ぎりぎり about yourself.

then we went down to the grocery store at the bottom of the department store or whatever "AEON" is considered to be; a lady was calling out about dried sweet potatoes, but no one was buying them. i passed by them (i am, after all, making my own at home) then doubled back to get some since there was no other real snack we could buy at the time anyway. 800 yen for a bag i THOUGHT it said, but i wasn't sure so i asked the lady "欲しいですが、どうしますか？” (i want one but how do i do it?), which i'm pretty sure is wrong japanese but she understood me anyway. so she told me, just take a paper bag, take the one plastic glove laying there, and stuff the bag full of dried sweet potato. so i did that, a bit slowly, then showed the bag to her (she was waiting with a plastic bag)... and she went and, even slower than me, stuffed the bag full even MORE!! to put this into perspective, i probably got 3,000 yen or more worth of dried sweet potato for 800 yen. though my home-made ones are better.... it's cheap man!!

the actual shopping district is a series of long streets FULL of shops, in some cases shops on top of shops even. EVERYWHERE, even inside 2-3 of the shops we went into, they were playing the same one koto song: i recognized it as one of the ones played by kimio eto on youtube. on one street they had super loud traditional drumming (huge drums, half-naked men hitting them), in front of another shop they had a "chinese new year's dragon"-like costumed person who was fake-biting the heads of customers. only saw one person in kimono, but it seems like "one a day" is the norm for that area.

it's really sad that none of the traditional stuff is ever on sale (i'm not even sure if the shoes i bought were on sale, but they were still relatively cheap - only 1,800 yen). at the craft shop they have one really nice "quilted" traditional japanese fabric, which i instantly wanted to turn into one of those "kimono jackets" (i think they're called 半天 but the google results i'm getting are much less colourful than what i've seen sold...); but all the traditional-patterned fabric itself is pretty expensive, so it's annoying.

i don't have time but IF i feel like i have time, i'm hoping to sew some stuff and sell them on etsy or something... that way i can earn money to buy the really nice fabric for myself haha. i was thinking of starting by making coin purses, if people buy them then i can move on to something a bit bigger... i figure there's SOMEONE out there who wants "really japanese fabric", "authentic-patterened tabi socks" and stuff like that just like i do so...