Wild Wild East

As Matt, aka Harmaceutical has pointed out many times during his tour of duty here in Tokyo, The Big Rice Bowl, you can see all manners of weird and wonderful dress among the locals. There are people wearing kimono... touristy stuff... cosplay and more.

Men in dresses... women in army boots... goth... punk (cute punk)... all pinky people... girls wandering around wearing giant animal jumpsuits, and Hello Kitty toilet slippers. I have seen superheros strutting their stuff... 6 foot tall hair, long hair, short hair, and more.

Of course you can see all the hot young women in micro mini skirts and see-through summer gauzy one-piece dresses dazzling everyone with the amount of skin they show these days, and in high heels and what they call "busa", or booty sandals which are really quite attractive, strutting their stuff... men in business suits... boys in jeans... and a ton (a ton!) of Converse running shoes everywhere you look!

It really is kind of nice to see such variety, even though some of it does seem a little bizzare, and know that those people are not going to be harrassed by others who don't think the same way they do.

The other day I was shopping in my supermarket and there was a ... guy (?), either a guy or an extremely masculine woman, sitting in a chair at the checkout area. The person had a cane so I imagine was waiting for whomever to finish the shopping. He had on some very interesting ... clothes that are rather hard to explain, but looked extremely feminine. The hair was male-short, but no big deal. He had on also, open-toed sandal high heels. Very feminine kind of stuff, and yet  not. I still wonder if he was male, or if she was female. Middle aged as well, probably in mid to late 50s.

I am going to go out on a limb here and suggest that since Japan does not have a religious-based culture, the people here are not hung up with all of the "abberations" that seem to be such a "sore point" of many religions. You can find "Mr. Lady" here (or men dressing as women), sex changes abound (and show up on TV in talk shows), ... there is just soo much. 

Yesterday while I was perusing the shops of Shinjuku after getting my haircut, and after finding a deliciously attractive JPY 500,000 jacket/pants at Ermidgliano Zegna or however you write the guy's name, I bumped into two young women wearing kimonos. No big deal under ordinary circumstances... but in this case they had their faces all painted completely white, had braided a bunch of colourful wool into their hair (the kind of wool you use to knit a wool sweater) so had very long false pigtails and had glued jewels all over their faces as well, making their entire costume seem very unusual, and outlandish. I wanted to ask if I could take a picture of them, but I was shy.

So, I guess what I am getting at, is that anything goes here, and if you really want to try something new, this is the place to get it on without bumping into some fag-bashing, neo nazi, biblethumping, KKK, white trash punks following you down a back alley to straighten you out.

We generally place the Japanese as a conservative race of peoples; however if you ever have the chance to visit Tokyo, you will see that it really isn't so. Not at all. Aside from still wearing business suits in the middle of the killer steamy hot Japanese summers (the only country left over here that still does that!), pretty much anything goes.

Have a great day.

I love you!

Cam

P.S. Check out the link connected to the last exclamation point in this blog, if you have a minute or two.