Sayonara Sale

Wow, what a surprise. When we moved here in 2004, we had way too many things from the US, so we started paring down our belongings. We asked around to see if there was such a thing as Goodwill to whom we could donate them, but a colleague said that it was rather rare to find such an institution in Japan as Japanese tended to take care of themselves and not rely on anyone else's charity. We then called up our friends to see who wanted what, and after they had their picks, we simply left a whole lot of other things by the alternate door to our complex. We left for dinner and was surprised that an hour later back home, we found many things had disappeared; people had taken most away. We simply put the remaining in the dumpster.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago, when we decided not to bring our entire belongings and opted to do the traditionaSayonara Sale, a sort of garage sale staged by departing expatriates. I took pictures, posted them in an online site, advertised for the sale at the free weekly English magazine Metropolis, and within a day, calls started calling. It was a feeding frenzy, with people wanting to secure certain items, mainly the big ones, such as furniture. Each advertising renewal puts another fresh jolt to the bidding. It was fun to see the process. Had we known how wildly popular this was, we would have done this years ago when we wanted to get rid of some things.


Click HERE to go to the Sayonara Sale site.

Tokyo MidTown

Avoiding the huge crowd since the opening on March 30 of Tokyo MidTown, a new sprawling complex of shops, restaurants, museums, and Tokyo's first Ritz Carlton Hotel, my partner and I finally visited the site on late Friday night, when the shops had just closed. Access to certain floors was still permitted, so we took a quick walk along two floors. First impression: warm and spacious, an antithesis to the cold and cramped Omotesando Hills (although to be fair, the latter had a very limited space to begin with).

We also went up to the 45th floor of the MidTown Tower to the lobby of the Ritz Carlton Hotel. All of the hotel's dining experiences (the Lobby Lounge & Bar, "Forty-Five" restaurant, Hinokizaka, and labels) could be found on this floor, while the lone Ritz Carlton Café and Deli stayed at the ground floor, near the alternative entrance to the hotel and close to the main portal of the shopping complex. Cover charge for the Lounge is currently at ¥2500 per person. High tea is served between 12:00 and 17:00, and offers two main set menus at ¥3900 and ¥8900. All of the dining experiences are non-smoking except for the Bar (just at the Bar, not at the Lounge), which allows it.

Tokyo MidTown is located at Akasaka-9-chome, and is a quick walk from the Roppongi Hills complex, and like the latter, it is also served by the Hibiya, the Oedo, and the Chiyoda lines. Click HERE for Tokyo Metro information.

More on Tokyo MidTown.
More on Ritz Carlton Hotel Tokyo.

New Year in Full Force

Tokyo awoke from her New Year's Holiday. While Christmas in this predominantly Shinto/Buddhist nation is not a big deal, New Year is. Christmas 2006, which fell on a Monday, was not a holiday, but from December 29 until January 4, most offices and businesses closed down. People fled the city or stayed at home to relax.

While major department stores already opened on January 2 with gradually longer hours, only today (Friday, January 5) did most of Tokyoites return to work in full force, and the effect could not be felt more than in one of her busiest spots: Shibuya. Just witness the major intersection with hundreds of people crossing tonight: in the past few days, this spot was almost like a ghost town.

Like major European cities, January in Tokyo means Major Sale Month. Businesses want to dump their inventory by slashing the price up to 70%, but with this city being one of the most expensive places in the world, a sale price here means just a regular price elsewhere...

On the first day of reopening, many stores features "Fuku-Bukuro," which is basically a "Mystery Grab Bag:" you pay for the said price and take a risk in getting a bag with mystery contents. This is a real bargain because the actual price of the content s is much higher than what is charged to the customers, but the risk is there: you can end up with either "treasure" or "trash," which sounds very much like a commercial "trick or treat." The Nike Fuku-Bukuro at Takashimaya, for example, included a jogging suit, a sports bag, and a pair of shoes. I am not entirely sure what happens if one does get what he wants but in the wrong size. These bags sell like hot-cakes, according to one staff member; within less than two hours, they were out of Fuku-Bukuros.

IKFA? What is that?

The picture on the top right says IKFA, but it actually is IKEA. Yes, the company of Ingvar Kamprad Elmtarryd Agunnaryd (of the Elmtarryd farm in the town of Agunnaryd in Smaaland, Sweden) is invading Japan. Again; but this time, the President of IKEA hopes, it is older and wiser. The company apparently had opened before (1974-1986) but to a lesser success than it had hoped. Back then, it did not have "the needed support to adapt products and respond to requests from the Japanese side." But really, all those 12 years???

I thought I had graduated long ago from IKEA-land, but something was pulling me back. That something turned out to be an invitation that my partner and I got from a Japanese friend who had started working for the company a few months ago, in preparation for the public opening on Monday, April 24, 2006. The invitation-only "soft-opening" happened tonight, Thursday, April 20.

The trip from Tokyo to Minami-Funabashi in the Chiba prefecture was quite challenging. First of all, the Tokyo station was sooooo humongous that it had areas I never knew existed. Two plus years of living here but I was extremely ignorant of Tokyo's heart of all stations. Second, the Keiyo and Musashino lines shared the same four tracks, and the signs were rather confusing on where to stand. All four platforms said that they would host the trains going to the same direction; we were not sure until we found out that Tokyo station was the terminus. There were also different speeds (local, rapid, express), which was not news to us, but to exacerbate the situation, all trains were late this evening, and there were platform changes. This meant that the platform for the rapid train (mid-speed) became the one for the local train (the slowest), and so on. We had to run up and down the escalators to reach the platform across our original platform when we realized of the platform change (it did not help that we saw our train pulling in while we were in the wrong platform!!!). We made it and even got seats in that sardine-can of a car.

When we arrived, my partner was intent on doing one thing and one thing only: the IKEA Swedish meatballs. He missed that combination of mini meatballs smothered in gravy, accompanied by boiled potatoes and a dollop of lingonberry sauce. The spanking new cafeteria had 700 seats, the biggest IKEA café, according to the President. The layout reminded me of the one in Emeryville (near Berkeley, CA). Once that was satisfied, we breezed through the showrooms on the second floor (where the café was, too) and down to the Market Hall on the ground floor. We made it out rather quickly, carrying only a much needed floor lamp and inexpensive tea candles. Thank goodness that this was only a soft-opening. We would never have gone had this been a public grand opening, where there would probably be way too many visitors.

Going home, we the town idiots got on the train heading in the wrong direction. Somehow when we just got through the turnstile and saw a train on the platform, we ran inside and checked quickly if we were on the right one. Tonight, both of us were just too tired to do so and checked only after we had passed two stations. Two wrong stations. On the third one, we stepped out and waited for the train going the opposite direction. Fortunately the fair and cool weather was agreeable with us. We told each other that we had done this journey to support our friend who had found his much-sought employment, especially since he had been jobless for some time.


IKEA Funabashi
2-3-20 Hamacho
Funabashi-shi, Chiba-ken 273-0012
Japan
Tel: 047-436-1111
7 days a week: 10:00 - 20:00

Nearest station: Minami-Funabashi (Keiyo and Musashino lines)