Shopping Season

Currently Reading: The Temple of the Golden Pavilion by Yukio Mishima

CC and I have both been doing a little more shopping on eBay lately. It's sort of a phase we go through every few months. We'll go browsing through all the really cool items and pick up something or we'll get an idea off of TV or a movie or book and go through eBay seeing if we can find items tied to that.

If you've read CC's blog, you already know about her recent artwork purchases. She's always liked that particular painter but what ignited the current interest? What made her decide to buy so many prints? Who knows.

Naturally I'm hardly immune to this sort of thing myself. Usually I go looking for toys or posters or maybe even software. This time I went looking for a keyboard. No, not a computer keyboard. I wanted to see what they had available for my PDA. Yes you can get a keyboard for your PDA, at least I can anyway. It plugs into the same port everything else does and, well it's a keyboard. It folds up for storage, which is nice, but it allows me to do stuff like type a blog entry without having to use the slower interface built into the PDA itself.

I've also ordered a few other things. I was doing a search for Kabuki dolls (don't ask my why I was suddenly interested in that) when I came across carvings done by the Ainu. For those who don't know, the Ainu are the people who originally lived in Japan. They're the Japanese version of our American Indians. Turns out they were REALLY into bears. Their mythology states that bears are the spirits of the dead. Pretty cool I thought. So I ordered an Ainu bear carving from Japan. Should get here sometime in December. Shipping takes forever.

I also have an on-going search for decent, affordable kimono. I really do like those robes. They look nice worn or displayed on the wa.ll. The problem is, they're also very expensive, especially the really nice ones. Well you can imagine my surprise when I came across an eBay store with all sorts of vintage kimono. Ok that wasn't a surprise. What WAS a surprise was the link to the guy's internet store. I went over and checked that out and what do I find in the bargain bin? A set of 3 robes worn under your kimono. The prints on them are really nice and they have the traditional kimono shape so there's a good chance that one of these might end up on the wall and the others used as robes. I'll have to see them when they show up.

CC and I are doing all this shopping and it's not even Christmas. Worse, people keep asking what we want for Christmas and we have no idea. But then, you know, it's not like I can just add Ainu bear carving to my list right? You can't just run down to the mall and pick up one of those :-)