Office supply and stationery store envy

I don't know what it is about Japanese culture that makes it this way but their office supplies and stationery, and the sheer breadth of them, is like candy to me.  I'm not speaking of the gazillion Hello Kitty writing pads and pencil boxes, but the whole line of document protectors, card sheets, high-tech pens, bags, boxes... and yes even the notebooks and pencil bags too.  The variety, functionality, and style just make the American chain stores like Staples, Office Depot, Office Max look pathetically plain and simple.  In fact, I find the American chains utterly disappointing and more often I could just as well go to a CVS or Walgreens.  But even the 100-yen stores or $1.50 stores in the Bay Area like Daiso kick their ass regardless that they sell everything from clothes to kitchen and gardenware.

Why is it this way?  When I go to a Staples it seems like 90% of the shelf space is occupied by reams of plain-ole printer paper, pentax hanging file folders, 3-ring binders, and a rather pedestrian assortment of pens, high lighters, and sticky notes.  The selection is just... blah standard company office supply cabinet fare.  Maybe that's their goal, their target audience, but I suspect not given the areas they setup shop. I find myself going to an art supply store for some my desk wants instead, at least they have a more interesting and varied selection (mostly) and they're slightly more common than a tried-and-true stationery store.  Surprisingly, I don't find Amazon to be all that much of a relief; it's good if you know something rather specific but generally the cool stuff can be difficult to find and a lot of the things I can see at a Japanese store are not available.

There is the oasis of the really good indy or non-big-chain stationery store.  The last really good one I've been to is Bob Slate's in Harvard Square. It's like a closet compared to the square footage of an Office Depot but the variety and quality of items that can be found there is satisfying.  They don't have the cutesy stuff you'd see in a Japanese store and that's actually ok, possibly even preferable in some ways.  But in the end, the Japanese stationery store is the gold standard in my book.  I wish there were more of them out here and I wish their wares or something like them were more widely available in the US.