As we live in an area of Shanghai that is home to an number of Japanese (and Koreans) it is not surprising that there is a Chinese branch of a famous Japanese Department store close by.  This is Takashimaya.

Takashimaya

I like wondering around such places as it gives me a window on yet another culture and you can always pick up ideas for new ways of doing things, some of which are much better than we do them in the UK.  One of these better things is fish.  Fish are prominent in Chinese gardens in the form of large pools for large koi carp.

In Takashimaya the desk of the service counter and help section is made up of a semi-circular fish tank.  I like this idea – it probably aims to calm any complainants before they manage to speak to any of the girls behind the desk.

Plants Above and Below The Water Line

Higher up in the department store they have a whole section devoted to aquaria and terraria.  I like the way that in some cases they make a whole eco-system with plants both above and below the water line, as well as the lushness of the planting.  Also cabinets which would be used as fishtanks in the UK are used to display tropical plants with a shallow fish tank on the cabinet’s shelf.

Lush Underwater Planting

The fish look fantastic against this backdrop

A Fernery With Fish

Corals Glowing Under UV Light

As well as all this there were tanks of corals, displayed under ultra violet light that glowed in a seemingly mysterious way.

Plants Throughout The Store

Plants are also used throughout the store.  Now these may be being used as fillers as the merchandising is not very dense by UK standards, but I think it is a nice touch and it lends a much more relaxed and less frenetic atmosphere to the whole shopping experience.

Elsewhere in Takashimaya there is quite a lot of space devoted to children and their things.  There was an advert promoting

Adverts for Little Gym

Toddler Play Area

the soon to arrive Little Gym that will take over part of one floor of the department store.  Whether it will take over from this child’s play area with its toddler climbing frames and IKEA-style Children’s chairs, I’m not sure.  The Japanese love their cartoon characters:

 and the motifs are used to decorate all manner of items including these child suitcases.  A company was producing these cotton baby clothes which could be packaged in ta tray gift box as shown, as a birth gift, which I thought were lovely, but I wasn’t so sure about these

 dresses with frilly tutu bottoms for toddlers.  They are more like the clothes I used to make for my daughter for dressing-up in and I couldn’t help thinking how mucky they would get from every-day use.  It’s not just Japanese children by the way that like cartoons.  The adults are keen as well.  It’s not all fun and games; once children reach school age in Eastern Asia there is the serious business of education to be dealt with.  This takes over the lives of all school children to the extent that I rarely see any children between about the age of 4 and 18 around Shanghai, unless they are in school uniform and on their way to and from school.  None of them are playing their way through their childhoods.  They are working hard: often until 2am each night and they are at school by 7.30am.  Education is a serious business and the amount of space devoted to the sale of children’s desks in Takashimaya supports this view. Interestingly Richard says that all of the Chinese who work for him are much better at Maths than their counterparts in the UK and they are much better at using numbers to support their opinions whereas in the UK people will often resort to a feeling about something and be wishy washy about their reasons. There is a serious adult cartoon craze in Japan and if I wished I could visit this Hello Kitty cafe in the basement of the store in all its pink gloriousness.

Other things I liked at Takashimaya include these unusual cushions and the tea department with its rows of red tea caddies.

Isetan

The Westgate Shopping Mall

There’s another Japanese department store in Shanghai – in fact there are two branches of this store in the city.  The one I visited is on the east side of the Westgate Shopping Mall, which is an emporium to consumerism in its own right.

I have long admired Japanese craft work, ever since my visit to Tokyo in the 1980s, and I have been on the hunt for this good quality work in Japanese shops in Shanghai.  There is not much of it to be found, but in Isetan there were lovely tea caddies, both wooden ones and floral ones.

I also liked their leather handbags and leather bound notebooks:

and the wooden carved spoons and serving dishes and their table mats

and they had a nice department that sold artificial flowers:

Elsewhere in the Westgate Mall there was another example of excellent Japanese Craftsmanship;  the Issey Miyake shop was selling as usual some fine clothes made from wonderful textured fabrics, which I loved, although I felt that given the weather at the time at the beginning of July and the weather to come in August, they were being rather optimistic showing what were evidently clothes for much cooler weather.  The fashion industry gets itself in knots in the UK – it seems even more ridiculous out here when the weather goes between even greater extremes on a regular basis.
The yellow bag advertised in the window can be picked up for a song at Hongqiao Pearl City – one of a number of shops selling fake goods in Shanghai, as can Issey Miyake dresses in lovely concertina-folded fabrics.

A section of the Chinese community are very good at copying everything, and appear to have no compunction about doing so, although I understand that the President Xi Jinxing as part of his clampdown on corruption has been had his officials target the sellers of fake and counterfeit goods on the the Chinese version of eBay, TaoBao.

I’m not one for buying things because it as been made by some famous brand, so the fake markets have little attraction for me, although because I like the fabric, I may pick up one of the Issey Miyake fabric clothes from Hongqiao Pearl City, where they have restrung an 8-strand fresh-water pearl necklace for me for the equivalent price of £5, less than a 1/20th of what I had been quoted in the UK for the same job.  I’ve got the lady in the dress shop in Pearl City down to half price already, by just walking away from the shop, and if I go and buy I’ll have to work a bit harder on her…….Bargaining is a necessary way of life here unless you want to look a fool and walking away from a deal is a good way of getting quite a bit more off the price.  The rule of thumb is not to aim for half price – you’ve probably got a deal if you start at 1/10th of the asking price.  Only this morning Richard collected a handmade shirt for £10, an exact replica of one he bought out from the UK, although the cotton fabric is not as good quality, but it was the best they had in their many books of samples.

On the way back from Isetan someone on the metro was transporting these green meshed sacks, containing what looked like white stones.  Why, I don’t know.  Why on the metro and not in a lorry, I don’t know.  This is indeed a wondrous place.