Fun fact, did you know that you can buy furniture, shoes, and clothes crafted by inmates in a Japanese prison? You can. You see these things? All of them were hand-crafted by Japanese inmates in a prison. Ryosuke took me to one of these markets last weekend. We were walking around in Shinjuku and I was complaining about the price of furniture in Tokyo (Ryosuke’s older sister just purchased a $900 couch for their apartment – we can’t really afford the “cheap” $250 couches at the nearby home store). “Is there any way we can, like, go to an estate sale from someone who passed away or buy furniture made by prisoners? Those would be cheap!” I was going on a tangent. Ryouske stopped and was like “Well, actually you can buy furniture that prisoners carve. It’s kind of near. Want to go?” Of course I did. He warned me the furniture wasn’t cheap. “It’s actually pretty expensive,” he clarified. I didn’t buy it. After all, prison labor is paid pennies to the hours (not very fair). Sure it would be cheap? Turns out, no it was pretty pricey. Where can you buy furniture that Japanese inmates made in Prison? Shinjuku [...]
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