Diwali in Ginza

My mailbox is being bombed by happy diwali mails. I am feeling a bit queasy. HELP !!!!! I should join the shopaholics online.
This weekend will be tough to survive. Last weekend i went to hermes. 150 $ for a tie.The point here is that i have 150 $ !!!!!!
This is a true test of my middle class character. I am sure i will pass. 6 weeks v/s 27 years.You decide.
And to increase the difficulty level, i live next to ginza. In tokyo, in the city you do not have huge areas like bandra or andheri. The whole of ginza is like half of veera desai road. So, if I live at last stop, ginza is somewhere near rajkumar. And the next station will be at the pedestrian flyover at andheri.
The reason i am going on about this place is this. I was talking to a desi I met at an Indian restaurant a couple of days back. He is in Japan for the last 5 years. CTO somewhere. We were having a casual conversion about the diversity of investment opportunities in India and China and the ongoing recession in Japan. (Since when did I start having those dinner conversations??? HELP !!!!! where is my nintendo ? ). I happened to mention how i was surprised than even during this recession in Japan, i could see people in subway trains with luis vuitton and chanel bags. He gave me an intersting fact. He says, 30% of the revenues of all big brands like armani, luis vuitton, hermes, bvlgari are not from japan, not tokyo, but GINZA !!!!
I can't verify this fact for you. But sounds true. I don't trust the guy cos
a) He is from delhi
b) He looks like a punju.
He looked like one of the uncles you could have seen in a punjabi wedding. But good timepass for dinner.
You could check this fact out for me. not punjabi uncles. The ginza story.
Anyways, I was taking a stroll at ginza in the evening. Went to the GAP store first. This is the only brand I find which is relatively cheaper. Not today though. A plain thin black v neck sweater costs around 5600 yen and will not be enough to keep me warm even on a cold mumbai morning. Caps are anyways expensive and I wanted to buy something really nice so I walked out of there.
I was in no mood for window shopping, when I was actually planning to buy something. No point in going to armani or bvlgari. So i walked into UNI QLO, a store I had earlier gone to in Korakuen. It's the cambridge shirts of tokyo, with cheap clothes(realtively) and up to date with the times, unlike cambridge which still sells 80's designs.
The UNI QLO is a chain of stores in tokyo, and the ginza version is four stories tall. I went up to the men's section and found the same sweater i saw earlier in GAP for 3500 yen. Picked that one and a plain white shirt (Japan's national uniform for work) for 2500 yen. The people at work are almost always dresses in dark suits ( mostly black) and white shirts. Feels like attending a large funeral at all times. The shirt was a size 38, and fitted fine. It felt awkward, cos I had never tried anything that fit after I had gained all that weight. 17 kilos lighter, it fit just fine. Hope to be this size as long as I can.
Mostly happy with the bargain, I walked back home.

HAPPY DIWALI AND HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL.
EID MUBARAK .

(Missing the sweets at home and hogging at mohammed ali road in ramzan)