So clearly I made my plane to Kyoto, and it was a blast! I hope I find the time to tell you all about it. There are many things I want to post on the blog before I move back to America in 1.5 weeks, but I'm swamped with packing and goodbyes and other silly business so I will just have to squeeze in what I can.
Of course I will be posting about my vacation (many of you will have gotten far too many photos of it in my Snapfish album already, btw anyone I don't know who would like to see 200 photos of Kyoto, send me your email address in a comment and I'll mail you the invite) but right now I want to post a few photos of youth fashion that I witnessed on mainland Japan. I had noticed the bizarre nature of fashion in Okinawa, but it really doesn't compare to what mainland has to offer.
First lets take a look at some boy-hair, photographed by the lovely Deejers/Robyn:
This boy hair is extra-special so it doesn't go in the same group. I saw these kids at the America Mura triangle park in Osaka:
These girls I chased down in the subway in Osaka, about one hour after arriving to mainland Japan. That's when I knew the vacation would be good. I asked them if their style had a name and they looked at me like I was crazy and scary. See the troll dolls hanging around their necks? I wonder if they are supposed to look like those things with their hair?
This girl explained to me that her fashion is a new fangled take on the traditional Japanese summer kimono. It's like hippie/rastafarian meets kimono. She worked in a store full of hand-made clothing/accessories pertaining solely to this style.
This photo is just some every-day lady's fashion, walking down the shopping district in Osaka. Most stylish females were wearing get-ups like this that looked very odd to me but seemed to be perfectly normal there:
Lastly, I finally got a good shot of a school girl. This isn't one of my students, but this is exactly what my girls look like (except mine aren't allowed to bleach their hair. This girl isn't either, but I would bet she goes to a school in the city that is too full of crazy kids to enforce discipline, there are a lot of those). Anyway, here you note the school uniform skirt rolled up around the waist so that it barely covers anything, as well as the big white baggy socks that are popular in Okinawa. I heard these were stylish like 5 years ago on mainland and came to Oki a bit later:
Unfortunately, the absolute best fashion victims that me and Cheryl saw in Osaka escaped us without photo documentation. We stumbled upon a clothing store dedicated to this fashion, and then attempted to stalk a couple going in, and we also tried to take pictures of the women working in the store/the customers in the store but they had a very strict no cameras policy and didn't let us. Probably have tourists coming in all the time and gawking at their customers, like me. Anyway, the fashion was baby dolls. Yes, grown women dressed as baby dolls. Bonnets, bows, puffy sleeved lace up dresses with puff out skirts (like tutus underneath or something), baby doll shoes, pacifiers hanging around their necks, etc. It was stunning. Their boyfriends were all wearing brightly colored striped stockings.
Ahhh, it's begun! My week of goodbyes and tragedy. Blow after blow, they come! Monday lunch was "goodbye" with my pericula girlfriends, Tuesday was the last supper with Deej (since she flew to Shanghai yesterday), and last night was the goodbye you see above (L-R: Amie, Dan, me, Nancy, Jon D., Yvonne). Sniffles, sniffles, sniffles. As a side note, those are little bowls of pig ear that we are eating in the photo. I have also completed packing one suitcase and have rid myself of no less than 3 garbage bags worth of real things. Like clothes. Magnificent.
This thing you see to your left is the miraculous Japanese invention: the pericula: tiny stickers of you and your friends that you decorate on a computer. This particular one is decorated by yours truly yesterday at a goodbye lunch with my 3 best teacher-friends from school. In every video arcade or mall there is an area of pericula machines. The machine is a large rectangle with 2 booths: one large one in which you pose and take your pictures, and one smaller one, where you decorate the photos on the computer. There are usually different booths with different themes. The booth's theme this photo was made in was "pretty pink". There are a daunting number of options when making pericula. You can have the booth take your photo from below, above, or straight ahead. You can pick background curtains that drop down behind you, and choose whether you want the photos to appear as cutouts or plain; ash, sepia, contrast, or normal, etc. It takes about 6-8 photos of you. Then comes the really hard part: decorating. You just want to cry with all the options they give you, and the worst part is that you only have 3 minutes with a clicking countdown clock to decorate each of your 8 photos. You have an electric pen and about 7 menus. Each menu contains different themes in different categories. Example, a frames themes, with different frames you can put around the photo, contains another menu with backgrounds so you can change the background design, or overlay designs, or insert shapes behind the photo. Another category is writing, with billions of different styles and colors. you can write yourself or write with their cute pre-designed alphabets, kanji, or kata. you can insert entire pre-written cute sentences and phrases. You can pick from different designs that flow out of your pen in chains on the photo, like sparkles or bubbles. You can pick many different pictures likes you see in the above photo and just insert them randomly. Plus you can change the size and color options on almost everything. Yes, thoroughly daunting. Don't get me wrong, it's super-duper fun! As good as karaoke? No way. But second best.
Unfortunately, the absolute best fashion victims that me and Cheryl saw in Osaka escaped us without photo documentation. We stumbled upon a clothing store dedicated to this fashion, and then attempted to stalk a couple going in, and we also tried to take pictures of the women working in the store/the customers in the store but they had a very strict no cameras policy and didn't let us. Probably have tourists coming in all the time and gawking at their customers, like me. Anyway, the fashion was baby dolls. Yes, grown women dressed as baby dolls. Bonnets, bows, puffy sleeved lace up dresses with puff out skirts (like tutus underneath or something), baby doll shoes, pacifiers hanging around their necks, etc. It was stunning. Their boyfriends were all wearing brightly colored striped stockings.
That's a man on the right there. Doesn't he have amazing hair? NOTE: this is nothing out of the ordinary in Japan. In fact these folk are probably downright mundane. Look at their footwear as well. Women here ALWAYS wear high heels. With anything and everything. Usually the high heels are plastic and sparkling.
