Like the Day After Thanksgiving

This morning, my wife and I awoke at 5:30 AM to do some shopping! And we did some shopping alright... this afternoon.

The reason we woke up so early is that the low price clothing store Uniqlo had a special sale starting at 6:00 due to the parent company's 60th anniversary. They were selling men's socks for 10 yen a pair! (For those of you in the U.S., that's about 10 cents.) I needed some socks, and we like Uniqlo, so we woke up earlier than we do on work days.

It takes about ten minutes to drive to the nearest Uniqlo store. However, our car never made it that far. We became stuck in a line of cars stretching at least four long blocks from the store (this at 5:40 AM)! We waited in line for another 20 minutes, moving only one block.

At 6:00, my wife got out of the car with my wallet and walked to the store. After 10 minutes, she came back with the grim news. What Uniqlo had failed to mention in the advertisement we saw, both on the Internet and on the morning news show we watch, was that the first group of customers at the store would be given tickets that would allow them to buy the items on sale. Without those tickets, you would not be able to take advantage of the sale, and that is what happened to us. They had already run out of tickets.

So my wife hopped back in the car and we headed back home to our still-warm bed. It was about 6:30 AM.

I did end up buying the socks I wanted at Uniqlo later in the day. However, I paid 990 yen for six pairs. (That's about $9.50 US.) A far cry from the 10-yen sale that morning.

I guess you can say that the day's events didn't really blow my socks off.

Cool Cats

Today we went to a "neko cafe" (neko means cat in Japanese). Basically, you pay money to be in a room with a bunch of cats for a predetermined period of time. It was better than I thought.

We walked in, paid the money, and sat down on one of the benches in the room. There were about 15 cats scattered here and there around the room, and a few of them were friendly. Of course, all of them were friendly when we bought a small pack of fish to feed them.

We paid for 90 minutes. During that time, we sat and petted a few of the cats, took some pictures, and just watched the cats do what cats do. Some of them ran around the room, some fought each other, and others slept in the corners. But surprisingly, it was quite therapeutic. There's something peaceful about watching cats go about their business. It helps take one's mind off of the more stressful parts of life. It was money well spent, and I would definitely go back there.


As I write this, my wife is already talking about going to a rabbit cafe! Of course, the closest one is in Nagoya, so that would involve a long drive...

Anyway, if you are interested, we went to a place called Neko no Jikan in Amemura, near Namba in Osaka. The web page is in Japanese.