The fashonable bookstore in Roppongi

So, it’s Saturday night, we’re in Roppongi Hills, and we stop in the bookstore to find (hopefully) a Dilbert or Far Side collection. Well, it just isn’t that kind of bookstore…

Before you go thinking it was some sort of Japan-schoolgirl-tentacle porno store, you’re wrong. What I mean by ‘wrong bookstore’ is that this gaijin bookstore certainly had a lot of English-language books, but they were all on the following topics:
- art and architecture
- travel
- fashion
- entertainment
- collectables

In other words, this wasn’t Barnes & Noble, it was a bookstore full of cool-looking books to put on your coffee table or decorate your new upscale yuppie dining room. These weren’t books to be read, these were books to be seen. They might as well have been throw pillows.

I was reminded of the Python sketch about the cheese shop:
“Catcher in the Rye”?
nope.
“Plato’s Republic”?
Not today, sir.
Anything by Joseph Conrad?
I’m afraid we don’t get much call for that, sir..

Then I remembered where I was: Roppongi. The most fashionable, fake, gaijin-loving, chiffon-wrapped Rodeo-drive wannabe this side of Maui. We left the bookstore and went to see SWAT in the theatre– now that’s culture!