アリス九號 (Alice Nine)

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 (^_-)-*

Lolita, Zoku and the Western Confusion

Japanese fashions – not unsurprisingly – are really inventive, creative and categorised. In the west, we have the goth scene, which people sometimes mistake for the gothic lolita scene in Japan. In fact the goth scene in Japan is relatively small, and doesn’t have anything to do with the gothloli scene at all. The gothloli term is used to describe a fashion that’s not “gothic” per se, but rather cute and pretty Victorian style. Hair is worn in styles such as bangs, a fringe, ringlets etc – and with a head dress or top hat. Parasols, are often used, as are frills, lace and detailing. Pale skin is preferable, but not required. Generally clothes are black/white, with petticoats, knee-length stockings and ruffled Victorian blouses that are quite prim and proper. The Gothic Lolita Bible is important reading for fashion tips and clothing patterns – as with most other creative fashion scenes, customising or making clothing and accessories is common. There is a fashion scene; “ero-loli” (erotic lolita) but this isn’t gothloli, as this is generally more sexually provocative – at odds with the gothloli cuteness. Similarly, gothloli style is different from “sweet loli” style, which tends to turn up the cuteness a lot. Oh, and it’s perfectly ok if you want to wear lolita fashions if you’re a boy, but as long as you take steps to fit the feminine style; shaved/waxed legs, (tasteful) makeup, lipstick, and mascara.

Some different types of lolita fashion styles are; Ama Rori 甘ロ (Sweet Lolita), Hime Rori 姫ロリ / Ouji Rori 王子ロリ (Princess Lolita & Prince Lolita), Classical Kei Rorita クラシカル系ロリータ(Classical Lolita), Panku Rori パンクロリ(Punk Lolita), Ero Rori エロロリ(Erotic Lolita), Kantori Rorita カントリーロリータ (Country Lolita), Gosu Rori ゴスロリ (Gothic Lolita), Gero Rori グロロリ (Grotesque Lolita), Wa Rori 和ロリ (Kimono Lolita), Itai Rori 痛ロリ (Hurt Lolita) and huge amounts of other sub-sections, such as pirate, aunt and sumo lolita. Often these sub-sections are all placed under the “gothic lolita” category, but as you can see there are a lot of different lolita fashions. Also, often, Lolita fashion will be termed “cosplay”, but the serious lolita fashion follower who wears this fashion every day will tell you that they’re not cosplay.

Often Decora fashion is mistaken as lolita fashion too. Decora or Decora-chan is another street fashion, but uses colourful accessories, traditional Japanese clothing and plastic accessories – often pop-culture toys. This is sometimes incorrectly called “fruits” or “fruits-style” from Shoichi Aoki’s Fruits photographs, published in magazines, and a series of books.

One of the biggest differences in western and Japanese scenes are that generally Japanese fashions are based on visual identity rather than music/literature tastes. Of course someone is more likely to listen to punk music if they wear the Panku Lolita style, but what is “punk” in Japan is much more broad than in the UK. We’re just as bad for categorising music as Japanese are for visual kei (visual style) as there are defined and definite genres of music, but in Japan a band might have on their album a mix of j-pop “boy band” style and doom metal styles tracks. The desire to preclude types of music outside your own chosen genre doesn’t really exist in Japan. People are open minded, but this is because of the emphasis on visual identity. Much the same as most sub-cultures, it’s about identity and belonging to a “tribe”. Zoku (族) is the term meaning tribe or clan, and used to describe Japanese sub-cultural groups and phenomena such as; Bara-zoku “Rose tribe” (gay subculture), Dobunezumi-zoku “Sewer-rat tribe” (company employees in dull clothing), Hashi-nashi-zoku “Chopstickless” (foreign tourists who cannot use chopsticks), Shinkansen joso-zoku “Bullet train girl-tribe” (crossdressers), Hotaru-zoku “Firefly tribe” (smokers/office workers on their smoking break) and Sumaafu-zoku “Smurf tribe” (obscure Japanese specialty workers) along with countless more.

As with everything, it seems on the face of it that the Japanese fashion scene is something otherworldly and strange, but of course it’s just belonging to a group – something which we all do.

Baby, the Stars Shine Bright in Shinjuku

Staying in the spirit of just going to places I like now, I was in Shinjuku again today. To be honest, I woke up at about 9:30 and felt so dead I didn’t think I’d bother going for breakfast, but I went down anyway. Although I walk a lot at home, I really don’t do this amount of walking and definitely not in loads of heat. I think yesterday was quite a hot day too as most of it was spent outside, and not in air-conditioned trains/buildings. After breakfast I checked mail etc, then went back to my room and had some sleep. After lunchtime, I wandered down to Shinjuku as I wanted to pop into Kinokinuya Books, and into my new favorite store; Marui, although you’ll notice it from the big 0101 logo on the modern building. I’m really enjoying knowing where things are now though, and with the help of the most useful book you can buy coming to Tokyo; the Tokyo Metropolitan Atlas, I’m finding places ok. Lots of people say that Tokyo is a nightmare to find places in, and it is true that a lot of places are very small, and you can find them only if you can read the kanji on a little sign outside telling you that’s it’s on the 5F or down a tiny staircase into the basement. Normally people think Tokyo is hard to navigate, but it’s generally because maps are mostly shit.

Japan uses a good system for addresses, which is a series of three numbers, and a district. For example, Onejuku’s address is: 3-18-1 Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo. So the “Tokyo” part is easy to understand, that it’s the city. Next comes Shinjuku-ku, which is the ‘ward’. The next part is an area in that ward, sometimes called a “cho”; like Kabuki-cho for example. The three numbers at first look a bit weird, but they’re (from left to right); the sub-area, or “chome” (“ko-may”), the city block, then the building number in the city block. So the address is the 1st building in the 18th block of the 3rd chome in Shinjuku in the Shinjuku ward. See – it’s easy! (^ ^). Most of the buildings have these numbers on them if you look hard enough, but the best part about getting a Tokyo Metropolitan Atlas is that it shows all of the block and building numbers on there. Don’t worry about looking like a tourist with a map, lots of Japanese need maps to get around – it’s a huge place! One way Japanese find where they’re going is to phone ahead and get the shop etc to fax them a map.

Anyway – enough of the Tokyo city planning (although there often doesn’t seem to be much planning at all sometimes).

Marui have a few different buildings in Shinjuku, like 0101 Young, 0101 Men, but I headed to Onejuku as it has a load of floors of gothic, gothic lolita, punk and other fashions. I have to admit I was totally blown away by the gothic fashions. I even own a bunch of clothes in that style, but I was really stunned at how gorgeous some of the clothes were. I just stood open-mouthed at them all, and wandered around probably the most amazing clothes shop in the world….in my opinion of course. Some come here to go to Gucci, Prada, Lois Vuitton etc – this is my designer shopping! The 5F is Gothic & Mode, 6F is Punk & Rock, 7F is Punk & Gothic and 8F is Lolita style. The gothic & mode and lolita concessions are my very favorite. I just love the clothes so much. In fact so much so, that I’m going to get my sewing machine out when I get home as I’m so enthused by it all. I have so many ideas now, but the problem is that I won’t have a load of stores like on Takashite Dori to get all the accessories etc. You can check out the floor guide, but here is a English Google translated version (although auto-translations sometimes are a little weird of course). Marui carries brands such as; Baby the Stars Shine Bright, Metamorphosis, No Future, Peace Now and my very very very very fave; Moi-Même-Moitié (the fashion label of one of my heroes – Mana, singer of Malice Mizer) [official Mana site link]. I think I’m going to *have* to buy something from M-M-M…just because I do (^ ^).

I also realised that Playstation 3’s are about ¥60,000 (about £250), which is almost half the price in the UK – so I think I might look into getting one. Just have to check if it’ll be ok to use in the UK though. Let me know if you know about that kind of thing…flyingjelly1 at gmail dot com…..thankyew…