T A B L E+T A L K Japan: A reader asks for advice on an upcoming visit in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk R E C E N T L Y First descent By Steve Van Beek Rafting where no human has been before (01/20/98) Olympics bound By Gina Arnold A trip to Japan rekindles a life-shaping obsession (01/19/98) Bad trip By Dawn MacKeen Tale of a flight from hell (01/16/98) Remembering an Everest hero By Suzette Lalime Death of an Everest hero: Anatoli Boukreev (01/16/98) Luzviminda By Richard Sterling A tale of lust and illusion (01/15/98) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Wanderlust feature archive - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Your virtual travel agency - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -		BY LAURA BILLINGS | If there is something missing from the American Shopping Experience -- and if you've been to the Mall of America, as I have, you know not much has been overlooked -- it is the act of bargaining. Not buying a bargain, a blandly experienced purchase of an item whose price has merely been called back to our atmosphere (i.e., "I saw these $400 shoes marked down to $39.99 and I had to have 'em!"). No, I mean the act of bargaining, in which buyer and seller come together in the great mambo of marketing, which, in the best cases, makes each leave the exchange satisfied they've ripped off the other just a little bit. Bargaining may be disappearing from our commercial landscape (witness the rise of Saturn dealerships), but it lives on in the rest of the world. This is, in large part, why we travel. Not long ago, a friend called to invite me on a cheap, off-season tour of Turkey. She promised that I would see the ruins of Ephesus and the fairy chimneys of Cappadocia, that I would wake each morning to the sound of the Muslim call to prayer and go to bed each night with a belly full of aubergine. Yeah, whatever, I said, just as long as I get to buy a rug. The truth was that ever since I bought my first car and was introduced to the delirious back-and-forth of negotiating, I had dreamed of going toe-to-toe with the guys who invented the dealer showroom. Since flying carpets were our first automatic conveyance -- and if you've read "The Arabian Nights" or seen "Aladdin" you know this is true -- rug merchants were actually the world's first automobile salesmen. And they're outstanding salesmen, living as they do in the busy confluence between Europe and Asia, a ripe spot for studying humanity and perfecting the first salesman credo: Tell the customers what they want to hear. On my first day in Istanbul, I nearly fell prey to a green-eyed charmer who accosted me in the Kapali Carsi, the famous covered bazaar that holds more than 4,000 shops. (Take that, Mall of America!) "You are a great beauty," he said so wolfishly that it was clear the antiseptic threat of harassment charges hadn't drifted into this pungent corner of the world. "You must be Italian." Actually, I'm a poster girl for the corn-fed Midwestern look, and was so pleased to be deemed continental that I was opening my wallet when my Turkish tour guide dragged me away. After another half hour in Istanbul, I discovered that merchants' flattery flew almost as quickly as the prices they quoted, but it was the numbers I had to pay attention to. At the time I visited, each U.S. dollar was worth about 35,500 lira, a complicated ratio, but one that gave me the heady thrill of announcing, "A million? No prob!" I spent the week learning, but it wasn't until I passed the souvenir stands outside the ruins of Ephesus that I felt I had hardened myself to the Turkish marketing come-on. There, a young man bearing an armful of dolls and a striking resemblance to Johnny Depp deliberately bumped into me. "Excuse me, madame," he said, his voice warm and rich as ripe olives in sunshine, "You dropped something." I looked to the ground and then to him. "What did I drop?" He paused for a moment, searching my face soulfully. "It was my heart," he dripped, but I kept walking. I was finally ready to buy a rug. So we went to Oba, a veritable rug ranch of low-slung buildings and grassy courtyards, just down the road from the House of the Virgin Mary. A hawk-browed Turkish man in a double-breasted suit greeted us and gave a lesson about rug craftsmanship designed to dispel any notions we may have had that a good rug could be purchased on the cheap. He showed us baskets of tobacco leaves, onion skins and indigo used for dying fibers. He showed us the silkworms boiled alive for our textural pleasure -- a sacrifice that Doublebreasted assured us the worms were only too glad to make. Same went for the young girls in the weaving room whose hands shuttled and knotted wool with the fluttering speed of hummingbirds. Doublebreasted promised that the girls got full health coverage, nutritious meals and a good wage, and that they didn't complain when the small-motor demands of rug weaving forced them to leave the work by their late teens. "It is a privilege and an honor to make something so beautiful," he said, but I couldn't stop the piteous look that swept across my face as I watched a young girl squatting and squinting before an intricate Persian pattern. An equally sympathetic look crossed her face as she saw us herded into the carpet showroom, lambs to the slaughter. N E X T+P A G E+| The treasures behind the door - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -