I made a short visit to Ireland over the New Year’s Day, and stayed with Colm’s family in Skerries, a lovely town close to Dublin. I usually travel a lot and stay for extensive periods of time in Asia, but am just a tourist in Europe and other parts of the world. The scenery of Skerries was very different from what I am used to — it is flat and full of colorful small houses and tiny shops.
Yes, I see small shops in my hometown in Japan, too. I grew up in Takarazuka, a suburb city of Osaka, but it’s much more populated and spread out than Skerries. Especially because of the gap in the population size, what impressed me most was the availability of good stylish local shops. Colm had to buy a new pair of shoes so his mom took him to the closest shoe store. It was the size of a small convenience store in Asia, yet has a great collection of nice and reasonable shoes. The shop had a sale and was lively. My experience in my hometown is that small local shops often have a crappy selection of expensive, old, and bad quality goods. If you want to buy clothes, you need to go to the center of the city or Osaka. It was also refreshing that people know the shop-owner, so the timing of the payment is flexible. It was not only that shoe store; the town had cute coffee shops, a nice men’s boutique, women’s boutique, a hair salon, and an excessive number of cozy bars.
Back in NY, I am trying to shop more locally these days. It might be a bit more expensive than K-mart or online shopping, but in the end, the benefit seems to come back to the neighborhood. Same for books. I wish Book Culture kept the wide variety of academics books as Labyrinth used to, but as much as possible, I am avoiding buying books online now (believe it or not!).