Shibuya 109
Trip Start
Aug 10, 2011
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Trip End
Aug 09, 2012
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Shibuya, Kanto, Japan
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Welcome to the January sales in Tokyo!
In Japan, stores don't generally have regular sales. Though this has changed somewhat in the past few years, thanks to the economic slump, most stores have big sales twice a year, the most important ones being in January. The first of January is a national holiday, so the second of the month is when the fun truly begins.
For the past couple of years, my friend Hannah and I have made a biannual event of hitting up the sales, though we always went to Ikebukuro. This year, we decided to switch it up a bit, so along with our friend Lindsay, we explored Shinjuku's ALTA and Lumine Est on the 2nd, and braved Shibuya 109 on the 3rd.
109 (ichi-maru-kyuu, in Japanese), as various books and websites will tell you, is Mecca to fashionable Japanese girls. It's a ten-storey shopping centre (eight floors and two basement levels) that stands near Shibuya Station, and if you can't find the item you're looking for there, then it's probably hopelessly out of fashion, so stop wasting your time.
At 9:45 in the morning, there was quite a crowd waiting to cross the street in front of 109, but there usually is, so we weren't too surprised. Then we saw some girls actually running toward the doors! Once we'd been funnelled in through the basement entrance, as the main one wasn't yet open, we started to work our way up through the floors.
In spite of its impressive number of businesses, 109 doesn't really have that much floor space. The shops, many of them not much bigger than my apartment (40mē or so), ring a central bank of escalators. Given the number of people there, once you were caught up in the flow, it was nearly impossible to change directions or stop without stepping into a shop or going toward the washrooms (in little side halls beside the stairwell). At times we entered a store simply because it temporarily boasted breathing room, a temporary relief from the crowd.
As you can imagine, the crowd was overwhelmingly female, most of them between the ages of 15 and 25. The few men I saw had most likely been enlisted to help carry shopping bags, though for the most part, they were just as carefully dressed and styled as their girlfriends. I imagine that when they were done at 109, they headed straight to 109 MEN'S.
Apart from the loud sound system in each store -- Lady Gaga and Rihanna were battling it out for supremacy on most floors -- the salesgirls themselves produced the most noise of all. Impossibly thin, with impossibly long nails, wearing impossibly high heels and impossibly thick false eyelashes, these girls, some of them perched on top of stepladders and shouting into megaphones, kept up a steady stream of exhortations to come into their shops. The cry of "TIME SALE!", which sounded like, "Taimu SAAAAAAAAAYRU!" was a constant refrain, though we mostly remained unmoved. An extra 10% off wasn't enough of an enticement to get us to fight our way into the most crowded shops.
The winner for the loudest voice was definitely the girl who was posted at the top of the escalators leading to the fourth or fifth floor. She had what might very well be the loudest voice I've ever heard, and she didn't even have a megaphone! Her flat, nasal bellow of, "EVERYTHING IS 50% OFF!" was truly impressive. My eardrums are still ringing.
Image is very important for these girls, as they act as brand ambassadors for their place of employment (and many of them also model for magazines), but I wonder whether testing the girls for vocal power is also part of the hiring process!
We managed to work our way up to the top of the building pretty quickly, but Hannah wanted to try to get into her favourite shop, which she'd skipped earlier because it had been impossible to enter, crowded as it was. Lindsay and I waited for her near the stairs, out of the way, as Hannah fought her way into the store (five minutes), searched for something she liked (at least another five minutes, which is a long time for her, as she's a champion shopper), then queued up to pay (a good ten minutes).
While we were waiting, I saw the most adorable sight: a family of five, being led by the eldest daughter, who looked about twelve or thirteen and was clutching a floor guide. Mother and Father followed bravely behind, herding two younger daughters, both of whom were looking around them in awe. I wonder what she bought!
We left without having purchased all that much, truth be told. For my part, it was because I'd shopped myself out in Shinjuku the day before, where I'd bought most of the things I'd been looking for, and a few that I hadn't but were bargains to good to pass up.
One thing we did get, however, was the traditional grab bags. "Fuku-bukuro" are a fixture of the January sales; thought I never buy them in clothing stores because the chances of the clothes fitting me properly, or being a flattering colour for me, are rather slim, we always get some cheap ones in accessories stores. They usually yield a couple of wearable things, and the rest of the stuff tends to be so hideous that the amusement factor alone is worth the price.
[Since I couldn't take any pictures inside the stores, here are pictures of my Shinjuku and Shibuya purchases, or "What Y30,000 Can Get You at Sale Time".]
