Japan Fashion: Accessories

In the winter most of us are prone to wearing hats, gloves, scarves and accessories to keep us warm. Sure most Japanese people will wear scarves, almost men more so than women. But to see then wearing hats is another thing entirely. Especially in winter. Men will wear hats typically, but I feel like it is definitely not as many that would wear them in the states. The beanies, toboggans, berets are all amiss over here. Women in particular are very against wearing hats. It comes and goes with the fashion of popstars, but the recent consensus is that wearing hats, especially winter hats ( in other words NOT sun hats) makes girls faces look large.
Weird right? I don't think I have ever been concerned about my face shape in America. But I suppose it is a bit like saying 'Does this dress make my butt look big?' only instead it is 'Does this hat make my face look fat?' An excessively large number of Japanese women are concerned over the width of her face, and it is often one of the first things they will notice about a new person. I remarked upon how I thought a woman across the street was very comely and the Japanese woman next to me said her face was too big. I am sure I made something similar to one of these faces (o.O). It is super weird to hear Japanese people say anything is fat seeing as they are all so skinny and practically under the degree to which their body mass indexes are recorded for average. It is also weird for my students to tell me I have a small face. Personally, every time I hear that I am thinking about the shrunken heads from the Night Bus of Harry Potter, and get a bit concerned.
But I digress. The point is due to the attention that hats will draw to ones head, many Japanese women will avoid wearing them. Additionally hats will push their hair and any volumizing elements that wear added to it, down flat, mussing their carefully maintained hair styles, and lets be honest, to carry around all those cosmetics just to have a wear head with a hat is just a pain!
But what they might wear is a scarf. Especially if it does not mess up their locks. It is outfit accentuating and very fashionable. Summer scarves likewise seem to be a good accessory for most women. A light breezy one, or even the stewardess ones that tie around the neck. As for the hipster scarf, I swear Japanese people must have mastered the look before it reach America, with the ease that they wear them. And it is just unearthly how perfect their scarf placement looks at all time. As far as I go with scarves it looks like It found fabric and rolled in it and they assume it as a pitiable attempt at clothing oneself.
Gloves are fashionable for winter and for the gothic lolita sort, and primarily consist of a thin material, often a knit or a wool and the primary function is fashionability and not so much warmth. Mens gloves have a greater degree of variance and will be thin or think in mostly darker colors.
Also in winter, I would swear up and down that those face masks are popular, because I see no other point in donning one of those ridiculous and irritating things on. Well I suppose there is no point if you are a mouth coverer whenever you cough, but like I mentioned earlier, it seems that is against most Japanese peoples policies. Though it is really not just a winter fashion. People wear it for pollen too. It just gets to its peak of fashion popularity in the winter.

Jewelry, ah jewelry. What most people automatically jump to whenever accessories are mentioned. Jewelry here is certainly worn. And I would ever fractionally hesitate to say that it is worn more here than in America. The largest difference is rings. Japanese girls and boys do not really wear rings. If you wear them people automatically seem to think that your significant other gave it to you. No matter how it looks or on what finger you are wearing it. It seems to me that they really don't know too much about the significance of rings like Korean do; who will get couple rings to all of their long term fancies and pretend they have lasting significance as promises of marriage to one another. Japanese people do wear wedding rings, but it is more of a recent fashion and I would certainly wonder as to the percentage of married people that choose wear them. It seems to be a younger thing to do for sure. Additionally, they don't really wear them like the married couples of America. I saw a family on the train this morning where the mother was not wearing her ring and it didn't look like she had in a while and the father was definitely wearing his. But she didn't look like the type to be promiscuous or anything for those who were about to suggest...(too homely). So it seems to me that rings, even wedding rings, are an accessory that are seldom worn and not worn with the regularity and meaning that I grew up with.
Necklaces and bracelets are of course worn in plenty. And the shinier the better, or so it seems. Those hipster things with feathers or made of cloth, are not too popular in this part of the world ( though I was told that feathers were in several years back). For men, necklaces are again not too uncommon, but are much more simple. There is a significant abundance of bracelets that seem to adorn the womens (and sometimes a simple thing for interested men) arms here, but a noticeable lack of watches. Even in the men, I find that watches are noticeably less. Though not as significantly absent as with the women.
Belts are worn, but nothing too noticeably different there save for that my students seem to prefer a punkish looking belts and the girls will often get some pretty often shiny or sparkly affair. Not that they need belts. They use them to hike up their skirts.

But the major Japanese accessory, is a pocket towel. Or a handkerchief. Men will often carry them about in their back pockets, and women their purses. These guys serve for multiple purposes. Such as wiping your face from sweat on a hot summers day. I see many a man doing this all the time. I think ladies must go to the bathroom and dab at their sweatiness so as not to rub their make up all around. In the winter, when you have a cold and are in complete absence of tissues, is serves as a super secret nose wipe. Now please note, it is not really polite to do this, but I have seen them do it and know they do it. The thing is, blowing your nose is disgusting to them. They would rather see you sniveling throughout an entire day than clearing your air passages in public. It is considered gross not only to blow your nose, but also to blow it into your handkerchief, but significantly better than wiping your nose, say, on your sleeve for instance. But sometimes, things get a little desperate. So the trick is to do it unseen. Going to the bathroom (which will not always have toilet paper. Especially in public ones) or any separate, vacant room, and hiding from view in one way or another is perfectly acceptable solution to this kind of situation. And lastly, and probably most important, they use them as hand wipes. Not to wipe your dirty icky hands on. More so to use after you have washed your hands afresh and need to rid yourself of the water rivulets running down them. You got it. There is no paper towels or hand dryers in a very large amount of the bathrooms in Japan. In this manner, they can save, money on electricity, trees, and maintenance as well. And, especially at the present, Japan is all about saving some electricity.

Japan Fashion: Doll

There are these people, well women, in Japanese society that I often refer to as dolls. Primarily because they make themselves, or at least their faces and hair to look like that of a dolls.

These dolls are not really spotted by the fashion of their clothes, but more the fashion of their visage. Their faces are highly colored with tanning or whitening and powered to the max. They have bright spots of color that adorn their cheeks and their eyes are a drama all to themselves. They are dark with long fake lashes, with seductive moody glances. They have shadow up top that can vary from natural shades to those that are more vibrant. Sometimes and sometimes more often than that, you will find their eyes heavy with eye liner. And then their lips of course have some shiny colorful sparkly gloss to them.
Their hair is another sort of matter entirely. There is something that a Japanese friend of mine calls 'a Nagoya girl' in honor of their hair. What he means by this is that it is dyed and curled and placed all on top of and really all over their head. It looks like it simply either must be a wig ( which is not a stretch in this culture) or that they spent three hours to get it to look like that. This do can vary from being elegant seeming or extremely trashy and disheveled. But either way it is, curling seems to be the way to go for people of this sort. I suppose it is because the vast majority of Japanese persons' hair is straight that they curl it in order to stick out; as I try to call up a memory of any doll with straight hair I come up empty. Their hair is often dyed to a fashionable brown that is a bit hazelnut in color or sometimes even an orangey color that is clearly the product of trying to reach some sort of blonde. Browns are very 'in' right now, and I suppose it might have been this way for a long time. It is a way to stick out from everyone and not be the natural elegant black of the vast majority of Japanese people.

Their clothes. Their clothes make me think that there simply must be no other explanation other than that they work in a hostess club. They go with short shirts or skirt-like shorts (how modest!) or even dresses. Either way there seems to be a theme about their clothing. Revealing. Accompanying their leggyness, are tights. These range in color from nude colored to tights to accent their sleek legs to printed tight for added cuteness or sex appeal. Their shirts and blouses are also pretty varying. It seems to be a bit popular right now to have loose blouses that leave more for the imagination but still seem to be a touch elegant and a touch revealing if they fall a bit off the shoulders. Also popular is a knit, see through short sleeved sweater blouse. Since the Japanese census is that shirts must have sleeves to be proper, they can wear sleeveless shirts with one of these on top to still be considered proper. These sweaters do nil in the way of warmth in the winter as they are knit such that the holes give you a very clear image to the interior clothes.
But perhaps the most important aspect to their clothing is their heels. You will hear me complain time an again about how Japanese women do not know how to walk in heels. And it is very true, just look at the size of them. No wonder they have back problems when they are older! But you will hear them clunking along the side walk in stilted sloppy paces or tipping their feet while standing on the subway, when they are very clearly tired of wearing them already. There is no moderation in heel size either. The higher the better. In fact, for as many nice moderate heels I see being sold in Kobe (famous for shoes), I see rarely a soul wearing them. I feel like shoes must at least be 4 inches to be properly worn out in public be this sort of folk. And indeed it gives their figures a lovely leggy appearance. As for the shoe design, I feel like wedges are a slight be more popular than the stilettos, I suspect there is a minor comfort difference here. Additionally platform heels are entirely acceptable raising oneself an additional few inches to tower over any fancying men.
Jewelry is not an option. It is a necessity. Hair accessories are the most popular but necklaces and bracelets are not far off. And I feel like the one stipulation to their jewelry requirements is that it must be shiny, for that is by far and large the case more often than not. Rings are not as popular here as they are in the west; I feel like this is because if you are wearing a ring, any ring, and on any finger, you might possibly be married. I know I have a ring on my middle finger of my right hand and my students often like to ask me if I am married or if my boyfriend gave it to me. Apparently rings are often tokens of affection from boyfriends and such here. It could also be the significance that Koreans give rings, where rings are often seen as possible couple rings, in which any couple could be in possession of them and it does not necessarily mean they will get married...just that they are a couple. They seem to be a bit like promise rings from the west, but they are a bigger deal to Koreans. Those are normally more elegant and shiny (especially more so than the one I wear!). Earrings I also haven't noticed as much of, but they are occasional accessories. I get the feeling here that more people in the west have their ears pierced than those in Japan. Perhaps this is because of the view they have on piercings. You will also notice in any accessory shop a lack of earrings, with more significant placed on hair products.

So without further a-do I give you what I have titled in terms of Japanese fashion, a doll:

 And two more here. The left one has a more appropriate look I am trying to describe. The right seems a bit more care free and less in control with her features such as a doll would be.