Black Friday, err, Saturday

When we went shopping on the Friday after the American Thanksgiving, we didn't expect a crowd and we weren't disappointed. What we didn't expect to see when grabbing lunch at Jusco on our way back from the airport was a HUGE crowd. This was the Sunday after New Year's and the store was crazy with people and SALES!

Apparently New Year's Day is the big sale day in Japan. They had practically everything there on sale. The highlight were bags that contained many items for some even price. I looked at one that had 6 items of clothing (for a toddler) that could mix and match into various outfits for 5000¥. That struck me as a pretty good price, but I refrained from buying. (Even though I think I know what Roo's size is right now, she has tons of clothes and I have no idea when I should expect her to be in the next Japanese size so I can't pre-buy for the next year.) There was a bag of various Legos for 3000¥. They even had bags of clothing for adults that were less than 10000¥. Interesting concept.

Anyway, Chrys and I pondered on this disparity in economic trends. While Christmas isn't a big holiday in Japan - even though they give gifts, no one gets the day off - New Year's is huge - most things were closed through Monday, if not later. It's also an interesting concept to have your biggest shopping days be the first days of the year which puts you in a nice position to assess what is necessary for the rest of the year to achieve success. In America, many retail companies can't give a good prediction of their year to year trends until after Black Friday, at which point it's really too late to clean up if things aren't looking good. Conceptually, the Japanese way makes more sense to me and it certainly seems more in line with their way of thinking. Wonder if the American economy will ever succeed in making the New Year enough of a holiday to warrant that switch in shopper mentality. Probably not in my lifetime.