Boutique

Boutique is ARI’s second-hand clothing store. It is open for 45 minutes each Thursday. The store offers clothing that has been left behind by prior participants and volunteers or has been donated by businesses and organizations. Pretty much everything costs 100 yen (about 65 US cents).

Participants use it to supplement their wardrobe, as they arrive in early spring and stay until winter, so it is impossible to bring all the necessary clothing. Plus many of them have no cold-weather clothes anyway, because it does not get cold where they live.

Everyone uses Boutique to get their first “Japan clothes”. We have chickens, goats, and pigs at ARI, and quarantine rules prohibit working around the livestock in clothes that have not been in the country for at least four months. Recognizing that everyone from outside Japan will need some livestock wardrobe basics, participants and long-term volunteers are given an allowance of five pieces of clothing from Boutique before being charged for everything else.

We snagged some real deals in our first foray to Boutique. In the picture above Chrys is wearing a worker’s shirt from I-Line, which appears to be a defunct company. A lot of people at ARI wear I-Line shirts, hats, and jackets, so the company’s failure must have been a boon for Boutique. Scott is sporting a worker’s shirt from Toshiba, which he thinks is pretty cool.