Looking back 3

Smoking. No matter how you look at it, the Japanese make it look good. By this, I mean the packaging. Cigarette vending machines are almost (but not quite) as abundant as vending machines with drinks. They are now installing ID requirements in the machines, but they are still pretty much accessible to anyone walking by. There are cigarettes that slide out horizontally like a match box, packs that split in two for women with limited space in their purses, cigarettes made to appeal to a more masculine crowd, some of them even come inside little plastic ashtrays. People carry around their own portable ashtrays so as not to litter the streets carelessly. There are little ashtray stations situated on some streets so you hardly see anyone walking and smoking at the same time. I think they mostly just walk to walk.

Speaking of packaging, so much care goes into presentation. I love that. At most stores we shopped at, they would wrap purchases without asking or even charging extra. We stopped a couple of times at this 100 Yen store which is the equivalent of our dollar stores. It made sense to me that at the end of the registers there was a ledge and a basket full of newspaper to wrap your more fragile purchases. I imagine the place was always crowded and people always had baskets full of trinkets. I think it was pretty efficient. Even this store filled with frugal goods still gave the feeling like you weren't exactly buying cheap things. One store we found in Harajuku had shelves upon shelves of T-shirts in plastic tubes. On the outside was a label with an illustration and a picture of a model wearing the shirt that was inside. It fascinated me. The floor had Manga drawings covering it. It had the feel of a store you'd hate to walk into without money.

Along the streets outside of many of the restaurants there were glass cases displaying their menu in wax replicas. Imagine food too perfect looking to eat. Not that anyone would feel compelled to bite into the wax. This was perfect for us foreigners who can't read the Kanji below the figures anyway.

Presentation, particularity, precision, perfection. They care how things that represent them look. They care how they look. You can just tell.