A Bevy of Baubles

      While most shopping is fun for most people, there are three types of retail therapy that are especially dear to a girl's heart: clothes, jewelry, and bags/shoes. And from those three, there is one that each girl loves just a tiny bit more than the others. For some it's the satisfaction of the heft of a new handbag that perfectly complements their latest peep-toes, for others it's the joy of falling in love with a dress, finding the last of their size on the rack, and zipping it up in the fitting room to find that it looks perfect on them. But as for me, it's all about the jewels. 

     Of course, by jewels I mean cut glass, faux diamonds, and silver rather than gems and platinum, but I love them all the same. I love my clothing collection almost as much, but I think that if I were to lose, say, one of my favorite cardigans, I would be distraught for maybe a day before managing to find another one that was just as amazing-or even better-than the lost article. But losing my favorite faux pearl cluster bracelet or my silver stag-head ring? Unbearable. 

The effortless display that took me like 30 minutes to arrange.

     As for shoes, I admire them from afar, but any girl who has feet bigger than size 9 has long learned to say goodbye to pretty, delicate footwear. I have two pairs of silver ballet flats, two pairs of flat sandals for summer, three pairs of basic low-heeled pumps for work (black, nude, and grey), and two old pairs of the SAME knee-high suede boots (one black, one brown) that I have been desperate to replace for the past two years. In fact, shoe shopping is one retail activity that I truly hate. I hate the disappointment of seeing a gorgeous shoe and finding out that it only goes up to a size 8 even more than I hate the embarrassment of seeing the shops assistant's pitying look when they find out my size (some even insist that I try out a size 10, which, unless it happens to be a very generously cut sandal, just mortifies me further).

     So for me, it's all about the bling, whether or not it's real. The only "real" jewellery I have is my engagement ring, which is just fine by me since I can find more than enough gorgeous costume jewellery here in Tokyo. My favorites come from a few shops in Shinjuku, one of the busiest areas of Tokyo in which millions of people work, eat, and shop. Most pieces cost between 10 and 20 dollars, though a few are between 20 and 30. My #1 favorite costume jeweller is mayglobe (no website, unfortunately, and even if they had one, most Japanese websites are crap anyways), which is actually meant to be named maygrove, but due to the unfortunate local habit of mistaking l for r and v for b, it didn't quite work out. Oh well, mayglobe works fine; at least globe is actually a word! I've seen worse. Waaaaaaaaay worse.