Yes, this is an eyeglasses shop, and, in fact, was where I got my last pair of glasses before leaving Tokyo. It doesn't usually look like this. This was during a festival.
I didn't buy glasses terribly often in Japan, but when I did, I found that every time my visual clarity was not great. It seemed that the optometrists always gave me a prescription that was as weak as possible while still allowing me to see reasonably well. I wasn't sure about whether or not this was my imagination or something askew with the process was actually happening. Seeing an eye doctor in the U.S. confirmed that this wasn't simply my anecdotal experience.
The ophthalmologist who I saw recently, while discussing where I'd gotten my glasses, told me that eye doctors in Asia always give people the weakest prescriptions that the customer can manage to get by with. She said she didn't know for certain why they did this, but she speculated that it was because they felt stronger glasses would lead to progressively weaker eyesight. She hastened to add that this was not true, but they seemed to continue to believe this nonetheless.
For years while living in Tokyo, I got glasses that were so weak that a calendar across the room of the office I worked in looked blurry to me. I squinted my way through mid-range visual challenges for years and figured my eyes were just deteriorating at a rapid pace, but it was actually the case that I was simply not being given glasses sufficient to establish adequate visual acuity. I don't miss getting weak prescriptions because of a superstition that stronger glasses will increase the rate at which my eyes worsen.
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