This post was written in 2008. Some information may be out of date.
I genuinely had nothing to wear (sob), so I went to an outlet. I’m the type who only buys clothes at outlets, and I’d already been to a few, but nothing caught my eye, so I thought I’d try a bigger one and drove all the way out to Gotemba. Gotemba is about two hours from Tokyo, just before Hakone.
This is the place.
It’s just the outlet, sitting out there on its own. You can’t get anywhere without a car. I left at 9 in the morning and got there at 11. Not exactly close. If you told me to go again, I might not. Then again, if I had a car, maybe I would.
Funnily enough, there was even a Godiva outlet.
They were selling chocolate cheap, but I wasn’t that interested, so I just walked on. In Japan, Godiva is a pretty ordinary brand, because there are so many high-end chocolate shops. There were Nikon and Bose outlets along the same lines too, but they weren’t cheap.
Roughly this kind of vibe..
Quite a few decent brands have shops here, but it isn’t super cheap. Suits and shoes are cheap, but accessories cost about the same as at a duty-free shop. Well.. of course the popular stuff is expensive.
Shopping alone was enough to fill the whole day. Well.. that said, all I ended up buying was cheap stuff..
You can see a Ferris wheel too.
Not much point when you’re a guy on your own, though..
Hmm.. it’s surrounded by nature, so there’s really nothing to do except shop. If you were driving around, it’d be a different story..
It’s split into an East side and a West side with a valley in between.
This is the bridge that connects them.
It’s almost exactly like the outlet in Okinawa. I did wonder a little whether I really needed to come all the way to Gotemba.
I liked this brand’s shoes.
But I decided to skip them this time, since I won’t have much reason to wear dress shoes for a while. I’ll buy them next time I go.
The haul wasn’t bad, but it turns out that in April an even bigger outlet opened about an hour from Tokyo by train. Totally crushed (sob). I’ll have to go check that one out in June.