Father Brian Finn, Edward Norton's sweet priest in Keeping the Faith says of a little Bonnard in the Met - "Sometimes we don't see certain things until we're ready to see them in a certain way." I have been riding past a shoe shop a few blocks from Mihara train station for months now but on Saturday morning, suddenly and for no apparent reason, I really saw the shop and I went inside. It's the kind of shop which would blend in on Diagonal Street or the in Oriental Plaza. The sign that ran across the shop-front lintel was dated and cracked. Shoe carousels made from dry-cleaning hanger type wire carrying non-descript men's brogues cluttered the entrance. Inside I had to walk sideways through the cluttered aisles and mismatched display cases. The walls were lined floor to ceiling with boxes. The place might actually have been made of boxes so that if the it had a closing down sale, customers would literally dismantle it with every purchase.

I didn't know exactly what I was looking for but I walked out with two pairs of it. The stock in was so old and neglected that the shop keeper had to follow me around with a damp cloth, wiping the cakey dust and cobwebs off any model I took an interest in (it would probably only take a day or two for him to clean the entire shop but for some reason, this seemed never to have been done). The first shoes to catch my eye that day were a pair of suede boating loafers. The shop keeper, a middle aged, unremarkable looking man who had until my arrival in front of the boating shoes been smoking and playing solitaire on a yellowing PC, scuttled over and wiped them down. Once they had been cleaned it was revealed that the toe walls were crimson and the upper was navy, the tongue and tassles were brilliant white. They were beautiful retro perfection but not retro because they were not made now with a cursory glance back in time. They were made whenever multi-tone suede boating shoes were decorous. They were the real deal. Tragedy - They didn't fit.

With our first interaction - my reaching for a shoe and his bustling up to clean it and then apologise for it's ill-fit - browsing had changed from something I did to something we did together, the shopkeeper and me versus the shop. He quickly proved himself an invaluable asset - he literally knew our opponent inside out and once he had ascertained what it was I wanted (done through instinct that bordered on the telepathic) things happened very quickly. After the boating accident, I went off to have a quiet cry in the men's Oxfords section. Shopkeeper disappeared but not, as I had initially suspected, back to his solitaire. - While I consoled myself he was rifling and arrived in among the Oxfords and presented me with a pair of shoes and a face which said "Like these?". I could see why he might have thought I would like them, they were like the boating loafers in shape. But they were not in essence the same - they were grey quilted monstrosity booties, a style that is very popular
with little Japanese grannies. Shaking my head politely I said "No" and then "Chotto..." which is an often employed Japanese euphemism,
"Chotto..." - "a little bit..." one need never finish the sentence; if you are lucky a listener will get the point . Ah! A light went on in his head - I liked the boating shoes for their je ne sais quoi, not their gestalt, of course! He rushed off and refined his search whilst I employed the I Feel Lucky approach - which in the shop, like on the internet, was frankly baffling. Rounding a corner a few minutes later I found Shopkeeper extracting three apparently identical shoes from a dusty pile. After cleaning the shoes were revealed as a ruby, dutch blue and tangerine orange examples of a patent leather pump. They were beautiful. A person who wore the boating loafer would so obviously wear these magnificent shoes! All real patent leather, all beautiful. Shopkeeper had struck gold. I tried them all on and spent long minutes examining my
self from the ankle down in a mirror deciding which colour went best with my bottom 30cm. I wanted them all but they were real leather and the faded price tag read 9000 Yen apiece. Shopkeeper sensed my simultaneous lust and trepidation. "Two thousand each" he said. Too Brilliant. I chose the tangerine pair (I will no doubt go back next month for the blue and crimson).

Riding the wave of this retail success I wandered into the athletic section - could lightning strike twice? I picked up an ancient pair of white asics with gold detailing and looked at the contemplatively. I did not intend to try them on (they were clearly far too big). What I was doing was wordlessly transmitting my intention to buy canvas shoes and what kind I liked to Shopkeeper. Yet again he disappeared. Two minutes later he returned with a pair of plain as jane white canvas takkies. Only their shape and slight yellowing belie their age - they will go with anything whilst adding an air of other-timeousness to an outfit. They fit like a glove and cost me 800 Yen. haha!

I'm never going to buy shoes anywhere else in Japan I think. Why bother? Right here in Mihara I have an undiscovered archive of shoes, old but spanking brand new. There is also a man there who can sniff through the dust to unite me with exactly the shoe I want, like a Saint Bernard finding a nearly expired climber in endless drifts of snow.