One interesting aspect of the Japanese is how concerned they are with how they appear to foreigners, especially from the U.S. and Europe. The other day I caught a show called “Cool Japan” which essentially consisted of a circle of gaijin from countries like America, Canada, Germany and China discussing how they perceived certain aspects of Japanese culture, in this case the extreme fashions that can be seen in Shibuya and Harajuku. During the show, a camera crew followed a man from Sweden and a woman from Russia as they walked around the more fashionable parts of Tokyo, giving their impressions of what they saw. “Why are you dressed up like this?” the woman asked a particularly interesting gyaru with overly tanned skin and blonde-dyed hair. “It’s because I wanted to stand out and not be like everyone else,” the girl replied, apparently oblivious to the fact that everyone around her was dressed in a similarly unique way. Later the foreigners learned about Tokyo’s “Deco Boom” in which just about everything you can think of, from fingernails to cell phones to H1N1 health masks, are covered with lavish decorations. The show is interesting because it brings a lot of cross-understanding between foreigners and Japanese, and it also says a lot about how Japan wants to be viewed by the rest of the world (i.e. kakko ii, meaning cool or good style).
How does Shibuya fashion culture look to you? Japan wants to know.
