Only in Japan

Square watermelon anyone?
Originally uploaded by Gunnella73.

Square watermelon anyone?

Apart from the square watermelons and the 50 £ honey melons one of the things I find thoroughly fascinating aginst my own will is the length they'll go to here to torture their poor dogs. All over the place there are pet shops selling tiny puppies all caged alone in plastic cages. Some shops like for instance the one in Roppongi is open until 5 in the morning so you can imagine the people stumbling in there post partying swooping up a "cute" accessory only to .. well you get the gist.
The poor things nearly never seem to be walked but carried around in knapsacks on peoples' fronts or backs and when it rains they have their heavy raincoats on and lets not forget the wee boots in winter.... Can anyone say substitute....!

Anyways what I was getting at was that although I find this atrocious yet sinistarly mesmerizing, the sheer amount of costumes they have on sale for their pets is astounding, dresses, leiderhosen, leather jackets, clown costumes to name a few but my favorite by far have to be the traditional costumes. Yukatas and obis (summer kimonos and wraps for the uninitiated) abound and now that it's matsuri season (festival) of course you have the Matsuri get ups as well.... even going so far as to include traditional seeimng edo period wigs!!!