Every year in Tokyo, the changing seasons are marked in special ways. Some are obvious. Others aren’t. There is the arrival of the plum blossom in early March and the cherry blossom three weeks later. The iris garden in bloom at Meijijingu in June. The rituals of hatsumode at New Year, and Coming of Age later in January. The brief explosion of a hedonistic beach life in July, to vanish by September. Fireflies in the Summer. Oden in the Winter. Beautiful red and golden leaves in the Autumn. The Samba festival that crowns Summer at the end of August in Asakusa, and the Xmas lights heralding the gloomy winter, earlier and earlier each year.But one of my favorite Tokyo events is the annual Winter sale at Laforet, and it happened last week. 
Held some three weeks after the other Winter sales, the Laforet Centre – ground zero of Harajuku’s now-world famous chic – is thronged with greedy schoolgirls, pushing crowds, screaming shopstaff…and 70% reductions. Its manic, loud, stylish, distasteful, cute, and crowded. Tokyo in a nutshell. I went on Saturday and the whole complex was full of eager shoppers, snapping up 3,000 yen Tshirts as well as other lesser “bargains”, like nondescript-looking dresses reduced from 40,000 yen to “just” 22,000. Outside a huge “tree” of balloons towered, and inside every shop was decorated in the cute, creative way that only Tokyo can pull of: deer heads doubling as chandeliers, mannequins wearing lion masks, mirrorballs, radios blaring…It was still deafening loud, but it wasn’t quite the riot I had seen in other years – tears, and schoolgirls squabbling over the last embroidered belt for 4,000 yen, torn ribbons littering the floor, shop assistants screaming for attention, dancing on little pedestals, banging cymbals and playing trombones, dressed up as animals – squirrels, chickens, anything to grab the attention of the fickle crowds and marshall them into their stores, to be trapped there by walls of netting, reminiscent of the Planet of the Apes hunting scene . 
It was fun, but it got old fast. I snapped up a few things (unexpectedly – I had only really gone for the amosphere) and got out.
