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Someone send me on a shopping assignment, please

The senior journalist who covered the story of the gold-plated office tap was recently assigned to do one on the best shopping cities in Asia. Wow, she gets to do pretty exciting stuff, doesn't she? I didn't actually read all the articles because they were so long but I know that at the end of it, she ranked Hong Kong #1, followed by Singapore (which rather surprised me), then Bangkok.

Since I didn't read everything she wrote, I'm not sure why she didn't cover cities such as Tokyo and Seoul, but I just want to have my two cents' worth here, since it's about shopping. The BEST shopping cities I've been to are in Japan. Great variety, quality, service, etc. And also very fashionable, trendy stuff, as well as conservative stuff if you want. The best part of it is the prices aren't as high as you think they would be, although the cost of living overall is rather incredible.

For example, electronic products might even be cheaper there, but the catch is that everything is in Japanese, including your on/off button (and all the other buttons), instruction manual, etc.

Japanese cities are really the places to be if you want to shop till you drop, or window shop till you drop (which is really fun too). But nowadays, with no earnings, I will, of course, not be found in any Japanese city... sigh...

You will find shops everywhere -- indoor malls, outdoor malls, underground malls, above-ground malls, etc...





Even a factory outlet (and a pretty good one, I must say) near Kansai Airport (Osaka)

Huge shopping complexes

Shops on a hill leading to a temple

Seoul has huge malls and shopping areas as well, but the stuff isn't as interesting as what you would find in Japan. In fact, I would say that even Hong Kong and Bangkok might be better bets for shopping. And as for Taipei, which was one of the cities she visited for the story, it was much too crowded for me, and the clothes, shoes, bags, etc were just... err... not so attractive.

Aiyah, it really doesn't matter, lah. Especially when you are constrained by how much you can afford to spend not just shopping but flying to a particular place, accommodation, transport, meals, etc. Or when you don't even have a salary.

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