Colette

In addition to being caught up in a metro train carriage just like in London, I was also caught up in rain just like in London. Even worse, rain in Paris never stops, unlike London. I forgot bringing an umbrella. I tried to run away into the Louvre, only to find that Tuesday is a holiday for this massive museum. I looked into Time Out Guide Paris and found Paris has got what they call "concept stores", represented by Colette. Thankfully, the Colette store is close to the Louvre.

It's an interesting store. They sell anything as long as it's cool - from iPod accessories to fashionable digital cameras, from cool music CDs to art books on the ground floor. Upstairs they have trendy clothes on sale - I found a very fancy jacket for a man (but with the price tag of 800 euro) - as well as some art exhibition featuring UK (The Evening Standard's news headline posters at newsstands fill up the entire wall... What can be art changes a lot across the Channel).

Here I found an interesting art magazine: ArtIt. This is a Japanese art magazine written both in Japanese and in English. This is what I've been looking for. Japanese words and expressions used to talk about art are often very difficult to translate into English. This magazine tries to overcome this. Even though this is nothing to do with Paris, I had to buy this magazine.

While strolling around Paris, I found quite a few small shops selling and displaying Japanese stuff. Japanese restaurants also abound. I saw an ad poster of a manga school. I felt the fact that Japan is cool is already obvious in Paris. Parisians seem to now try to take it to a next level by treating Japan as one of many cool things they can exploit. In this sense, Paris goes ahead of London.