CAPE TOWN DIVA: Part with your plastic here...Omotesando in Tokyo...

If you're going to do a spot of serious shopping, parting with your precious plastic to score top end brands you feel you cannot live without, then do it properly and lose yourself somewhere where your surroundings are so beautiful that you won't feel the pain. These places exist in Tokyo, where odes to retail will blow your mind and eliminate any buyers' remorse lurking beneath the surface (otherwise known as your conscience), I can almost guarantee it. You may not even intend to buy, but buy you shall, because your purchasing environment will be so very pretty and too tempting to refuse. Ask me, I know this feeling- I just bought a watch at Paul Smith, Omotesando. Why, I'm not too sure - my 50th birthday present to myself perhaps? Who knows - the store was 2 levels of loveliness and I just could not resist.
Retail architecture ensues, taken to a whole new level in Omotesando, Tokyo - it has it's very own Champs Elysees ...this is uber shopping if ever I saw it, in the East of the world. Do it, if only to buy a pair of socks. I did that too, just by the way.

Introducing the Ted Baker building...