As November grows chilly, I warm up with an urban hike to hunt out seasonal gifts for friends and family. Tokyo is a bastion of creativity and craftsmanship, and shopping the backstreets is like touring a gallery of desires you never knew you had. I exit the Ginza Line¡¯s Gaienmae Station, and trot off toward Harajuku.

At the first busy intersection, an algae-green plastic tank brimming with teeny medaka (killifish) catches my eye. Shigeharu Oku a 45-year-old employee at the nearby Inose Liquors, wanders over. It¡¯s his aquarium. ¡°I started off with only two fish,¡± Oku tells me, ¡°and they liked each other. Now I have lots.¡± As I watch, he gingerly nets the plumpest of the fry, and flicks them into a bigger tank of clean water, filled with marbles and colored rocks. ¡°Look at all these babies,¡± he says, pointing to a third tank of fry the size of pinheads. ¡°You can take some, for free,¡± Oku offers. Procreative killifish make tricky gifts, I think, so I demure, but thank Oku before continuing down the backstreet at Inose¡¯s corner, known as Kumano -dori.

When I pass the clinically pristine Tokyo Hearing Care Center, I recall that a family member needs a new hearing aid, so I duck inside. To my surprise, the center doesn¡¯t sell hearing aids, per se. Instead, it offers a rarefied brand of see-through earphones called Just Ear. The three basic models ¡ª Monitor for composers, Listening for music enjoyment and Club Sound for heavy bass dance music ¡ª cost ?200,000 per pair. Company Director Satoshi Sugano explains that fully bespoke sets are ?300,000, but they¡¯re handmade by a series of experts who custom fit, tune, engineer and sculpt them to the customer¡¯s needs. Sugano deftly twists a Club Sound set deep into my ears and hooks me up to a player. I have to admit, I¡¯m ready to rave. The sound pounds. A dream gift for a music-lover, I think, taking note and thanking Sugano before moving on.