It’s Halloween time again, so time for lots of parties. This year I went to the big party in my local rock club in the style of one of my favorite bands. Unfortunately most thought I was there as an “emo”, but not to worry. Unfortunately visual kei hasn’t really crossed over to here yet. One girl totally recognised my outfit, and made a comment, so that totally made my night! \(^ ^)/. My outfit was a pair of big-soled shoes, skinny jeans, black fitted tshirt, cross pendant and chain, and a band-leader’s jacket, along with blue harajuku/manga/visual kei hair. The look I was going for was アリス九號 (Alice Nine) who are a visual kei band formed by Shou (将), Hiroto (ヒロト), Tora (虎), Saga (沙我) in 2004, playing at the Ikebukuro Cyber. A while ago, I was in Marui in Shinjuku, and saw a video on one of the screens and ran to one of the girls working there and in bad Japanese, asked her who it was. I got her to write it down, so I rushed off to HMV in Shibuya (well, I was heading that way so went to that one) and picked up the CD.
My favorite of their songs is Yami ni Chiru Sakura (闇ニ散ル桜) which is actually quite an old song, from about 2005 IIRC. Obviously they’re all absolutely gorgeous guys, and look amazing – which I guess is kinda the point for visual kei (visual style, or literally “visual system, lineage, group“) bands. I’ve blogged about this before – probably far to many times really – and I love to go on and on about visual kei to anyone who’ll listen, but if you’re unfamiliar – visual kei bands are usually quite flamboyant Japanese bands, normally playing rock, metal or punk, but very often any type of music. It’s really important to have really good style, and most of the bands wear amazing clothes, and have androgynous looks with stunning makeup and hairstyles. Clearly I’m bound to like bands like this! (^_-)-*
One of my other favorite bands is Malice Mizer, with the amazing and enigmatic Mana, but they disbanded a while ago now. I loved their style during the Klaha era, which was gorgeous funeral gothic style – a style still popular in Mana’s Moi-Même-Moitié clothing label.
The good thing is that I get the chance to dress up again as I’m having a Halloween party on Wednesday too – oh, and I get to dress up every weekend anyway (^_-)-*
In one of my blogs about Japanese love hotels, I mentioned about chikan (痴漢, チカン or ちかん) or “train groping”. Japanese transit authorities have done a lot to prevent groping of women on packed trains, such as women-only carriages during peak hours, but unfortunately, it still exists. To combat the problem, Japanese games developer Takahashi created an ‘Anti-Groping’ appli for mobile phones. It was out in 2005, but has recently climbed to number 7 in mobile phone application popularity. The application displays messages on the phone’s screen in bold print to show to the offender; “Excuse me, did you just grope me?”, “Groping is a crime” and finally; “Shall we head to the police?”.
This application shows a lot about Japanese culture (aside from the fact that Japanese are using mobile applications a lot more). I guess in the west, if that happened, then we’d probably shout about it. In Japan, people tend to not want to make that much of a scene, and women are often too embarrassed to say anything out loud. This application allows someone to get the message across to a “train pervert” without having to cause any fuss. Tokyo transit authorities have arrested a large number of people, but it’s estimated that most women don’t report incidents.
I blogged a little while ago about how strange Japanese TV can be, and also mentioned a Naked Ski-slope prank. At the time I didn’t link it, but I think it’s worth linking now
This clip has the popular habit of a superimposed person laughing at the funny parts, which not only tells you when to laugh, but makes it feel like you’re watching the TV with someone else.
Dakimakura (or 抱き枕) are large “hugging pillows” popular in Japan, and some say a new craze. They’ve been around since the late 90’s, but are gaining popularity as covers for the pillows have been given away in a few Japanese magazines, and in stock in a lot more “utaku” shops. Typically they are slightly-smaller-than-lifesize pillows designed to be hugged in bed, and often have screen-prints of popular anime or Bishōjo Game characters. Bishōjo games (or 美少女ゲーム,bishōjo gēmu – game of beautiful girls) are video games, where the player interacts with a cute, anime-type character. Gameplay is pretty much seducing the character, leading to pornographic scenes, but sometimes these games feature characters who will become your girlfriend, and you must then interact with them to keep them happy….or maybe put out (^_-)-* They usualy fall into three categories; dating sim, eroge (Japanisation of “erotic game”) and visual novel – depending on the content.
Although dakimakura are a good way for a keen otaku to get their favorite character into bed, some go that little bit further and opt for the inflatable version, complete with…erm…’openings’. I was in a shop in Aikihabara a while ago where they had a vast range of these versions, along with outfits you could buy for them. I guess the extention to this is the realistic “real dolls” available in Tokyo, and even available to rent!
Interestingly, the idea of sleeping with something like the dakimakura isn’t a new idea, as the chikufujin (竹夫人 – bamboo wife) has been around for a long time as a hollow bamboo roll – about the size of a human – that could be slept against to keep you cooler at night. The air would flow through the chikufujin as you slept against it. Although I’m fairly sure that the blow-up versions aren’t meant to keep you cool at night!
There are lots of dakimakura , available from Mandarake in Japan, and some on J-List too.
One of the major parts of the Japanese fashion scenes is customising clothes, making your own, or matching things together to make a look. CRAFT magazine has a feature on making your own Harajuku punk shirt.
Craftzine also have some designs for punk iron-on transfers you can print out onto transfer paper, but it’s always cool to combine these with acrylic painting etc.
