I found my shopping gene again!

I was in a retail wonderland today, full-on amazement, and absolutely dumbfounded at the sheer level of it. Disbelief. It was 100% goosebumps today, hitting Shibuya for a spot of shopping. I thought I should go to some gardens today and get some nature, escape the frenetic pace, but then I needed a new pencil so I thought I'd pop into Tokyu Hands first, and I'd heard there was a really good shop there, the original one.
Let me tell you, that's not all they have in Shibuya! It is awesome, with more people than I have ever seen, just masses crossing the streets from all directions. These are the customers that the shops provide the choices for, and the place was retail mega-overload. I just couldn't take it all in! No way! I went round and round the massive pedestrian crossing like a big dummy, just for the thrill of crossing with so many thousands at once, in so many throngs and such magnitude it was akin to going to a (large) demonstration and marching the streets with your fellow sympathisers abreast. But this was for shopping! By evening it was even more intense, way more, as the workers were arriving to do more shopping! I thought London was full-on! Here there are so many screens so many images, so much sound blaring form everywhere, and yes, I saw the light-box trucks, advertising their shit...I couldn't leave, I kept on thinking, just one more shop! I saw the most fantastic displays I have seen in the whole world. I touched the softest things that exist on the planet and I bought some books from an English bookshop. Oh, it was SO cool. Each place I went into was selling way out useless acquisitional things...I wanted so much! It's quite terrible really.
I really detest mass consumption, it is such an issue on our planet, but here it is so full-on, so all-encompassing...such choice, such a entire range of everything...I don't know, my purchases were just small and discrete, I could've lived without them, but I kept thinking, hell, I might as well! Whens the last time I got to go to Tower records? When will I ever be in Tokyo again? I don't need any thing!
I am thinking about the sense of fulfillment that comes from shopping and acquiring newfangled goods. I see couples shopping, debating over items that they are going to have in their lives. I have never had much money, so I have always had second hand, or made my own. But even at Tokyu Hands (a DIY superstore), so much is ready-made. In buying something, anything, I log myself into the maelstrom, and become one of the tribe. My money is accepted even if the sales people don't like the cut of my Gib, so to say. I recall in NYC the attitude of some of the salespeople, it was off-putting, but if you had money you could go and show them, 'fuck you I can afford to buy this! And I'm gonna!' I wonder how many people feel their lives are quite empty without their purchases. I felt sad in one superstore, buying just one great thing and taking it home would make all your home look impoverished. You needed to have everything in the store, that's how it was laid out. 'This is you'. Well it was me, but nothing fit and the scarf I looked at was like $500, so no. I will have to just copy it, using my ingenuity and keen eye for forgery.
But it's the choice that I see that really engages me. I need earplugs, they don't just have 5 types to choose form, there are 50 different ones, if not more! In Australia, the market is so tiny, yes we Sydneysiders feel its very crowded, but the fact is the city is built for only a small populace. I see Tokyo as too small to sustain this mass, but it just works, I guess it has to.
I finally found some real muesli, now that I needed.
My feet are so tired, my whole body aching from the intensity. Big yoga tomorrow, and truly I shall find some gardens and do like Buddha, but I am in awe.
The funniest thing was at the end of my visit there, trying to get into the train station, I got stuck in a throng of Westerners all stopping to look at something. It was the famous dog statue, just that, like the bloody dog on the fucking tuckerbox causing this serious people jam of gawkers! I laughed so hard I had to run and get away from them.
I really miss having someone to share this all with, in real life, can't wait for darling Fiona to come in just a couple of weeks! Have I got some things to show you!!!