November 3rd, 2001. Saturday night, Shibuya.

This should be one of the most exciting entries on this site, but it isn't. In fact, I think that this is one of the duller things you will come across here. I made plans with a friend of mine to meet up after I was done work. I hadn't anything in mind, but I figured that just wandering about Shibuya would be entertainment enough. And that's just what we did.

What I hadn't counted on was the rain. It was raining from about midday, and lasted all through the night. Let me tell you, you have not seen Tokyo, until you have seen Tokyo when it rains. The mass sea of heads suddenly becomes a tidal wave of umbrellas, bumping and into each other and going up and down, up and down, like a carousel horse (due to people raising them, in order to let the short people pass).

I was standing in front of the Starbucks, which was the prearranged meeting place, and after about 5 minutes, I was ready to throw some people in front of moving traffic. I don't think that people here understand the concept of spacial relations. That is, when you are walking on a normal day, you can afford to keep a certain distance from someone, without walking into them. BUT, when you are walking with a 3-foot radius umbrella, this distance you have to keep becomes slightly enlarged. Yet people kept walking like nothing was different. The result? You get assaulted from every direction at once.

I don't know what was worse, the downpour or having to dodge sharp umbrellas that came way too close to my face.

This is something you would never have caught me using back home. An umbrella. In Canada, the furthest I had to walk was from the house to the car and then from the car to wherever I was going. Not here though. I have to walk everywhere, hence the necessity of an umbrella. They are cheap as hell here, 500 yen for this one. It has a button release and everything. I am quite proud of it.

So, this is the result of a Saturday night out with my friend (who shall remain nameless, to save him the humiliation). We ended up spending a good chunk of the night at the 100 yen store. What a wild night.

I have a problem with these so-called 100 yen stores. It's not like you will ever spend only 100 yen in there. I ended up spending about 1000 yen. You get in there and everything is so cheap and so useful that you end up grabbing one of each item. Before you know it, you don't have enough money left over to buy a train ticket home.

Let me give you a brief run-through of what I bought. Starting on the left, you will notice two tall, blue packages. They are mesh bags for washing your delicate items (no, I don't have lingerie. It's for my sweaters that I should be hand washing). Just next to that is a shower puff. It's used in conjunction with the apple-scented soap, right beside it.

The other tall package is mild detergent for washing your clothes with. I never thought that I would care so much about my stupid sweaters, but I do. The yellow box on the floor is a stain removal stick, which is useful for getting rid of ring-around-the-collar and other high-precision cleaning needs. Finally, the last item is a package of 20 dust wipes.

Missing from this group shot is a handsome, blue plastic soap dish. It's currently sitting in my bathroom, holding soap. And is doing so quite well, I might add.

I used to think that my parents were nuts for getting happy when they found cleaning supplies for a good price, but I found myself doing the exact same thing while I was at the 100 yen store. These sort of things just creep up on you.

So after we left the 100 yen store, we went to the Tsutaya, which is the same place where I got my video rental membership, only this one was in Shibuya. Ever since I tried listening to my MP3's on my laptop, I have been looking for a set of external speakers. I finally found them. This set isn't much to look at, but it was cheap and it does the job. Jazz without bass just isn't jazz.

So now I have a new tool to annoy the neighbours with. As if being generally loud in the middle of the night wasn't enough. It's too bad that the walls are so thin here, you can't even burp without disturbing the neighbours. I wonder how they put up with us.

I lugged this thing home, all the way from Shibuya and it was damn heavy. Then I realized that I could have just bought this exact speaker set at the Tsutaya near my apartment.

That's impulse buying for you.