I am in Shinjuku to meet a friend. I instantly regret choosing to meet her at the West Exit of the busiest train station in the world. After ten minutes of searching, we eventually find each other before heading outside to take a free shuttle bus bound for Shinjuku Park Tower. Inside this building are many high-priced restaurants, financial institutes, and the Park Hyatt Hotel; perhaps the most expensive night’s sleep in Japan. We are not here for any of that nonsense though, as in the basement of this building, we have exclusive invitations to an event hosted by French cosmetic giant, L’Oréal.

In the basement, our cards are checked, our identities confirmed, our Quick Response Codes are scanned, our identities are reconfirmed, before we are finally allowed to pass through the first checkpoint. At the second checkpoint, we are searched, our coats and bags are taken, and we are asked to place the possessions we intend to take into the event into a clear plastic bag. For a moment, I get confused and think I am at the airport.

The reason we are here is for a Family Sale; a place to go to buy very cheap products from big-name brands. I am a little confused as to the motivation for such an event, as today, only L’Oréal and affiliated products are on sale, each with ridiculous discounts of up to ninety percent. In the past, whenever I have visited a sale offering such high discounted prices, usually only a select few products hold the high percentage of reduction, but here at the L’Oréal Family Sale, every product is perhaps seventy to ninety percent off. Price down!

We enter the main room, somewhat smaller than I was expecting; a room populated entirely by women. No free samples are on offer, much to my dismay. Somehow, I find myself sucked in by the offers, and take some wax that has been knocked down from ¥3400 to a crazy ¥700; I don’t even use wax. I find it somewhat ironic that one of the most expensive buildings in Tokyo is the venue for discounted goods. I ask to photograph the room, but am told that strictly no photography is allowed. It makes me wonder if L’Oréal is here to promote their company brand or to just offer the rich an exclusive ‘invitation-only’ way to buy cosmetics and save large amounts of money, thus making them richer. With a lack of photography, I instead take a nice photograph from the inside of Shinjuku Park Tower.

As I leave with my wax and head to the cashier, I am told that I can only pay with a credit card. I always thought Japan was very much a cash society, where plastic is seldom used, so this strikes me as odd. I don’t even own a credit card. Luckily, my friend assists me and away we go, back through the checkpoints and out into the chaos of Shinjuku.

Back in Asakusa, we go our separate ways. I decide to head over to Senso-ji Temple to see my first-ever performance of kabuki. Kabuki is a style of theatre that combines music, dance, elaborate costumes, and elaborate masks. Today the show is performed by children, in a style known as Ogano Kabuki. This style boasts two hundred years of tradition, and these days it is the children of Saitama that keep the tradition alive. It is nice to see young people taking an interest in this art form, despite living in a country where the young are obsessed with video games, animated movies, and comic books.

The event starts with an announcer speaking in Japanese for ten minutes before two girls dressed as geisha take to the stage and talk for a further ten minutes. The curtains close, and the announcer speaks about foxes and cherry blossoms; another ten minutes pass, and the introduction is over. All the while, rude people push and shove through the crowds to take a closer look. A rude woman stands on my foot and offers no apology. Eventually, the show starts with a parade of costume-wearing kids.

Traditional music plays, characters kneel down, and dialogue is exchanged with very little movement for what seems like forever. The costumes are fantastic, mesmerising, the music is beautiful, and the characters’ words are almost poetic. If I didn’t know in advance that these were child performers, I would have mistaken the show for a professional production. Despite the professionalism, I get a little bored. The language used isn’t only Japanese, but old Japanese that perhaps nobody has used for hundreds of years. I decide after forty minutes to go and do something else.

Also in Asakusa today, a fashion and art show known as The Asakusa Collection is taking place, so I take to the Sumida River and enter the Riverside Gallery.

Inside the Riverside Gallery, my photograph is hijacked by a wizard wearing high-visibility clothing. I have no idea who he is or what he wants, but after ignoring him for a while, he disappears to ruin the photographs of others. The Asakusa Collection is a free fashion festival that apparently embodies amazing crazy and chaos culture in Tokyo. The show also has a heavy emphasis on innovative fashion without a distinction between Western and Japanese Styles. Amongst the fashion, there is a nice mix of local artists from this area, all hoping to showcase, promote, and sell their work.

Forty-two artists are here, and a mix of photographs, illustrations, ceramics, dolls, bags, jewellery, traditional clothing, accessories, and sheep-shaped flower pots are on display. I stop off to watch a bit of live painting before heading out in search of my favourite artists.

Seeing local works of art is always a treat for me, and I would love to feature the works of each of the forty-two artists here, but I don’t really have time for that. The first display I thoroughly enjoy is the work of Kanbayashi Yukikazu. He creates collage and three-dimensional landscape paintings using a mixture of sand and plaster, finished with oil. His work depicts scenes in Japan, from Mount Fuji to Senso-ji Temple, and was once presented at The Museum of Modern Art in his hometown of Kamakura.

The second artist I enjoy is Ayumi Ogawa. Her work is called ‘Diary,’ and it is contemporary artwork based on calendars and real notebooks. Sadly for Ayumi, the link to her Facebook page reveals absolutely no information about the inspiration or message behind her pieces, yet I am somehow drawn to her abstract modern style.

At home, I realise that I have spent a lot of time writing in great length about topics that are probably of no interest to anyone else; a theme that might continue into my next post, which will be exclusively about anime.