Adventures at the mall
Today was Mama's day out. Well, Mama's 2 hours out, but still.
I had to get a few articles of clothing, so I ventured out to the mall. Now, this isn't just any mall. This is the third largest mall in the U.S. It has 4 stories, over 400 stores, an ice rink, and a ferris wheel. Inside the building.
I'm not a big fan of malls. They are usually crowded, noisy, and overwhelming to the senses. Not to mention being huge temples of materialism! But in this case the only location for a shop I needed was in the big mall. I've tried catalog ordering but for clothing I often have terrible luck getting correct sizes. So, off I went to try things on.
The clothes shopping went pretty smoothly for once, and I had planned on going to a craft store before heading home. As I got off the escalator on the third floor, I saw it and all my plans changed.
There was a Books Kinokuniya.
I had been to the store in San Francisco's Japantown several times. It was a wonderland of Japanese paper products, enormous loads of mechanical pencils and gel pens, and books. I remember it as an interesting glimpse into Japanese culture: beautiful washi paper alongside plastic Hello Kitty stuff.
Needless to say, I did not make it to the craft store. I got sucked into the children's books section (The Very Hungry Caterpillar, in Kanji!), of course the writing implements (sorely inferior the S.F. store) and the books (very weird crochet diagrams).
4 comments:
This is such a coincidence. I was just talking about the children's department of Books Kinokuniya to my friend (I intend to make a trip there soon - perhaps I'd better take money...!)
Kinokuniya was my favourite shop when I lived in Japan. This is a sad admission but I used to travel 1.5 hours across Nagoya on a Sunday to go to a particular church... because it was next to a Kinokuniya stationery store. I'm just so holy! I probably spent longer in that shop after the mass than I did in the church.
I bought a colouring book version of the Very Hungry Caterpillar for Kiko last year. I'll only have to keep it for him for... oh, about five years! I couldn't resist it, though. What is it about bookshops?
When I was searching Flicr for photos to use on this post, I found a whole bunch from a Neil Gaiman signing at the Sydney store. Must be a bigger one than mine!
I've always been interested in Japanese culture (must have been that Shogun miniseries). Certainly I'm a big fan of the food (I made seaweed salad & carrot sushi rolls, and green beans with miso-tahini sauce, for dinner tonight!), the textiles, origami, etc. The fascination for juvenile stuff like Hello Kitty is a little boggling though.
Two of my favorite travel books are about Japan: Roads to Sata by Alan Booth, and A Far Village by Brian Moeran. They both underscore the difficulties of always being an outsider to Japanese culture.
I love book stores, and we are sorely lacking in them in this town. We have the Bible Book store, which is great if you are looking for a source for every obscure Bible and commentary ever published. And we have a small book store that features best sellers and the local book club selections. They are happy to order you any book you are interested in, but browsing is not very satisfactory there.
San Francisco was a great place to book shop.
Well, I have to admit, that of all the things you touched on in Books Kinokuniya, the paper was what grabbed my attention first. I love paper. I have an extensive collection of it that I use to make art cards with. I have spent some real quality hours with young friends of mine engaging in that activity.
I hate malls too.
Healingmagichands: paper is one thing I have to steel myself not to get into. I could go wild, and I have enough craft stuff as it is. They had origami paper with those wonderful traditional white and indigo designs...I was strong, I didn't buy any!
(un)relaxeddad: the scary thing is, that's not the biggest mall in the US. The Mall of America in Minnesota has two roller coasters, an aquarium and a wedding chapel! Good old American "bigger = better" I guess.
Alan Booth amused me because while he had a healthy dislike for many parts of modern Japanese culture, he was still clearly in love with the place. And anyone who can walk that far gets a few points. The Moeran book was even more negative, for good reason, but interesting since he is an anthropologist trying to remain objective.
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