The next day Al and I awoke to an interesting sight: we were a bit groggy from the festivities the night before but we got up fairly early because we were in Tokyo and wanted to see all we could in the day. As we roll out of our hotel and walk a few blocks, we find ourselves in front of a building in a literal sea of cute young women- probably aged 16-30… they not only were pouring out of the building, but they filled the sidewalks surrounding the building, and they were going absolutely nuts tearing open shopping bags, and frantically trading these brand new clothes, laughing, crying, shrieking… Al and I couldn’t make heads or tails of the whole scene, yet we were enjoying it all the same! I mustered up the courage to ask one of the girls what was going on and after much discussion with her friend, out stumbled the word, “Sale!” Ah ha! I had forgotten the 1st and 2nd were the famous “Sale” days in Japan. What happens is they have these “surprise bags” that you can buy for a flat price without first seeing the contents. These bags are usually cheaper than the sum of their contents, but stores often sprinkle around some merchandise that doesn’t sell well, just to get it off the shelves. Well these girls were going crazy for these things and this explained the chaos that Al and I now humorously found ourselves within the midst of.