It’s funny how culture criss-crosses the globe, never stopping at such laughable things as national borders as it flows to any place it can find a home in peoples’ minds. You wouldn’t think that a country as far removed from the West both physically and culturally as Japan is would have its own burgeoning hip hop and reggae music sub-culture, or that what’s playing in clubs in Jamaica is being closely followed from Japan, but the world is an amazing place. Just as Americans and Europeans are interested in the unique ideas and general “otherness” found in anime, manga, JPOP and other forms of contemporary Japanese culture, people here are open to taking in music from outside Japan and remixing it into something unique that’s all their own. A quick glance into any fashion magazine shows that Japanese are keen to embrace hip fashion from the West, too, to the point where it might be difficult to identify where one influence ends and another begins. Sometimes the Japanese embracing of American fashions can get a little ridiculous — some years ago, the red and blue bandanas worn by the Crips and Bloods became all the rage in Tokyo’s Ikebukuro district. That’s taking things just a little too far…
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