Oooh the drama.

Omotesando, for those of you who don’t know, is the main street that passes through Harajuku, from Omotesando station. It is known for boutique shopping and galleries, fashionable young things and down near Meiji Shrine, the bridge where all the cosplayers and street fashion creators show off and hang out.

This week, a new complex called Omotesando Hills opened. It’s causing a lot of fuss. Mark Devlin from CrissCross News hates it with a passion, other bloggers and design fans have criticised it too, for not “fitting in” with the rest of Omotesando’s architecture.

But that’s not in the realm of this blog. What will interest you fashionistas is the fashion! There are over 93 shops inside this new mall, and while there are some of the upper end stores, it’s not overloaded with the big names like Prada, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, etc. There’s just a few.

Mainly, Omotesando Hills has small cute boutiques that you can easily spend your salary on. But it’s always free to look.

Links:
Omotesando Hills (Japanese)

There are many websites on the internet dedicated to Japanese fashion and street fashion. Most are trying to sell you clothes or photos or have dozens of pop-ups. This page is different because it’s run by the JFA - Japanese Fashion Association, a registered organisation that aims to promote Japanese (and recently, Asian) fashion to the rest of the world.

Every week there are new photos categorised by the fashion hotspots around Tokyo of Shibuya, Harajuku, Ginza, Omotesando and Daikanyama. Great photos and a great way to watch how fashion evolves in Tokyo. Best of all, it’s in English.

Link:
Tokyo Street Style

Eurobeat music, despite the name, is actually biggest in Japan, thanks to para para. So it’s not surprising that a Eurobeat CD/LP company actually references Japan and some of the subcultures there.

While the ganguro are probably all for a spot of para para, I’m not sure I can imagine some of the alien fetishists in Harajuku in the clubs dancing to cheesy Eurobeat music. Nevertheless, this website has a small blurb and some cute photos of ganguro, Harajuku, Maid Cafe and general Tokyo fashions.

HI NRG ATTACK - A Eurobeat Para Para studio

I made a trip to Harajuku on Saturday to show some tourist friends around, hoping we’d catch some of the kids in crazy fashions that you’d normally see in droves on Sundays. While they weren’t there in high numbers, they were still quite a few. Mind you, even without them, there’s still plenty to see in Harajuku.

Harajuku, as you may well be aware, is the home of crazy Japanese fashion. Every Sunday, the goths, the decorers, the punks, the visual kei fans and the cosplayers go out and parade themselves in front of cameras and the general public.

Takeshita Street is a famous pedestrian street filled with the shops where these people buy their fashions from. So, in amongst all the goth and french maid outfits, I spotted this shop here, which seemed to be just a cheap clothing shop for middle aged women, like you would see anywhere else in Tokyo. In fact, there was a smiling middle-aged lady there to cry out ‘Irrashaimasse!’ to the passers by.

Was she lost, I wonder? Why they heck does she think her clothing will sell well in Harajuku? Perhaps it’s the latest fad and we will see it in upcoming issues of FRUiTS.

Let me make something clear first - I am a size 7 in Australia. That is the smack-bang-in-the-middle-average size there. I do not have a huge size in feet!

I was really looking forward to shoe shopping in Japan, especially after what I saw on offer in the FRUiTS magazines that I love. I already knew that Japanese shoe sizes tended to be small, but I was still pretty sure that I’d fit in the range.

But no, it couldn’t ever be that easy in Japan.

First of all, shoe sizes are (usually) measured in centimetres. That’s not so bad, it’s logical and I could measure myself easily to find out what size I was. Note, however, how I said ‘usually’. Actually, ‘usually’ should be replaced with ‘occassionally’…

In my shoe shopping adventures in Harajuku and Shibuya, I found that shoes weren’t generally marked with 21, 22.5, 23, etc. but rather S, M or L.

Small, medium and large shoe sizes?

What??

After a bit of experimenting, I figured out that L was equivalent to 24cm. Generally, the store staff can help you if you say what your size in centimetres is. But really - Small, Medium and Large? Is there a Medium-and-a-Half size? What happens if you’re 23.5cm?

Not that that was an issue for me, giant gaijin that I am, with a whopping 25cm foot! Oh no, not even a ‘large’ could fit a freak of nature like me!

When you see the damn cool, sexy and sometimes so-weird-that-I-must-own-them shoes on offer in Tokyo, being 1cm too large is enough to break a person.

Wandering around Harajuku a bit more, I noticed that some stores sold “extra large” sizes. The range wasn’t very good though, and many were imports from Europe anyway, not the kooky Japanese fashions that I wanted.

Eventually, I stumbled upon a shop that sold a depressingly-named “Queen Size” range of shoes…

Bite me, Japan! You’re the freaks of nature, not me! What the hell kinda sizing system is S, M, L anyway? Oh, LL! How very generous of you! There’s billions of people in the world with my size in feet, how bout catering for th…..oooh, those are cute! Furry!

Nyaa! They curl up at the toes!

Ha! They fit! Muahahahahaaaaa, they are mine! Mine!

*ahem* anou…kore o kudasai.

Okay Japan, I forgive you this time. But I do not want to resort to buying men’s shoes in the future, got it?

Yves covered the ganguro style in a post a while back but I felt the need to post about it myself because it’s something that….puzzles me.

It is supposed to recreate a Californian Beach Girl look but to me it always seemed like these girls were trying to cosplay Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer. In drag.

Appropriate, given that ganguro literally means “face-black”.

But wait, it gets more frightening. Apparently, one can go further than the ganguro look to the yamanba look. It roughly translates as “mountain hag” or “mountain witch” and the look can be attained by simply adding a few strokes of white lipstick or white eyeliner to your current ganguro style. Quite a lot of white eyeliner, really. Silver hair makes a nice touch too.

But still, the ultimate question remains:

Ganguro….why?

Link:
http://www.livemusicstudio.com/mac/pages/ganguro.html - Good photos and text

Ganguro girls don’t care what you think!

Yamanba style. Scary.

Shoichi Aoki is one very cool 55 year old. I wrote about his magazine FRUiTS yesterday, but he has two other magazines that he publishes monthly.

STREET magazine again follows street fashion, but from the major cities around the world. It was started by Aoki in 1985 in London, and is still going strong today. It’s fair to say that STREET magazine helped introduce street fashion to the Japanese youth.

The cities he visits each issue are printed on the cover, and it is available by subscription (or you can order back issues) from the website.
http://www.street-mg.com

TUNE magazine is a mere 10 issues old. It is based once more in Japan and can almost be seen as a male version of FRUiTS (which isn’t entirely true since plenty of males appear in FRUiTS). The photos aren’t necessarily limited to Harajuku either, the spiritual home of FRUiTS. Nevertheless, if you like your street fashions to be a bit grittier and masculine, TUNE is for you.

Back issues and subscriptions are available again from his website: http://www.street-mg.com

While thse two magazines aren’t as famous as FRUiTS, they are very interesting to read to see where Aoki has come from (STREET) and where he’s going (TUNE).

FRUiTS is a monthly magazine published by photographer Shoichi Aoki in Japan. It started in 1997 after Aoki noticed a new trend in fashion among young people in Harajuku. Instead of a fashion trend that was dictated by designers, this was a trend started by the young people themselves.

Young people would mix traditional Japanese clothing such as kimonos or geta sandals, with Western or local Japanese designs, even with punk clothing. These people were not brand obsessed like most Japanese people are known to be. They developed a “Harajuku Free Style” fashion trend which Aoki wanted to document in FRUiTS.

Since the trend began in the mid-nineties, the street style has expanded to cover many sub-genres, like punk, Decorer, Gothic Lolita or just kawaii.

The trend has died down in recent years – probably due to the fact that Omotesando (the main street in Harajuku) isn’t closed to cars on Sundays anymore, so the FRUiTS kids no longer have anywhere to hang out. Aoki still manages to publish a magazine each month though, especially since the magazine has achieved cult status in both Japan and overseas.

FRUiTS is a great look into the minds and fashions of Harajuku youth and is available by subscription, or in two volumes of books from Phaidon Press.

Links:
The official website
Buy the first FRUiTS book from Amazon and support 3yen.com!
Buy the second FRUiTS book from Amazon and support 3yen.com!