Hey, How About a Nice Used Car?

Yutaka Kanagawa is a regular in the thrift stores on the city’s rundown South Side.

Used blue jeans, T-shirts, college sweat shirts, jackets--all go into his cart. The shopping spree continues: sneakers, flannel shirts, baseball caps, even old toasters.

Kanagawa will ship tons of this stuff back to Japan and sell it for at least three times what he paid.

The Japanese may not want U.S. cars or computers, but they’re snapping up old American clothes and kitsch. Teen-agers have built an entire culture around “American casual,” as the used-clothes look is called in Japan.

It isn’t unusual for Kanagawa to pay $2.50 for a secondhand pair of Nike Air Jordan basketball shoes in the States that will fetch $250 back home. He supplies his own store and 10 others. He used to do his shopping in Los Angeles but says L.A. has become too dangerous and expensive.

Kanagawa says NBA caps are hot sellers in Japan these days. The look is most important--not what it says.

“They can’t read it anyway,” he says.