The Fashion and The Expense

Sleep can be an inconvenient necessity sometimes, like monitoring dietary habits or looking before you cross the road. Generally things that assist in self-preservation, I find a nuisance. Could it be that I am not long for this world? If so, that only increases my desire to by-pass sleep to make the most of everything. Certainly this feeling had no more arresting quality than it did in Japan. Both nights there involved a club so small and frequented by ex-pats that by the second night I felt I was already a seasoned attendee there, downing cup after cup of rum and coke whilst mesmerised by a middle aged Japanese mans dancing, akin to the writhing motion of a snake suffering from irritable bowl syndrome.

We got to Fukuoka by high speed ferry, a "hovercraft" like machine resting on three pin like poles penetrating the sea, cutting three fine lines, directing an inevitable course to the clean streets of Japan. The city was ordered and tidy, full of hidden codes and rules ordinary to the natives, alien to us, so eager to break thorugh to it. The city-scape from afar possessed the same order as street level views. Buildings were lego blocks in construction and placement, but lego blocks with unique modern character. Yellow, beige, pink, peach paintwork. Large panels of squares seemed to be a design of appreciation here; one curved building, a yellow edifice of pale yellow panels, outlined with black lines, something straight out of Blade Runner. All very cool. Then there are the people.

It is Japan, and with Japan came this sense of confidence and pride, a notion of being able to do what it wants, and no where does this make itself felt more than in the easily visbile form of fashion. Everything is extremely individualistic here. Yes, there are always fashion trends, but here trends are also viewed with a pinch of derision. They will wear jeans sown together from different materials, with one leg rolled up and the other down, clothes appearing where you think no cloth has the right to appear. Hair too has as large amount of stage space for their experimentaion to play with. It's hard not to keep on staring at the unique combinations of otherwise incongruous fashion elements. You can understand why so many art shops around the world have books on Japanese fashion. It's all so fresh and inventive.

There was this shop, a veritable forbidden planet of Japanese oddities, a shop selling games, comics, manga, models, anything that can host the label of some animation or film, from steam-punk to japanese animation porn (hentai). It's five story maze of cramped aisles and silver stairs, smacked of the universal law of these kind of shops all over the world; a cheap attempt at sci-fi futurism, or retro-futurism, I'm not sure entirely, read Rob's blog. However here there were things you may not necessarily see all over the world. One floor was dedicated entirely to hentai, suitably pink with men either anxious for anonimity or confidently browsing, head held high. One traditional style of Japanese porn involves monster like tentacles penetrating every orifice of a girl who, of course, is having a whale of a time. I mean who wouldn't if they were being molested by a tentacled beast.

Of course the next day was hard to get going, having just got a couple of hours sleep, waking up in time for the hotel breakfast. It was so expensive that such an opportunity for food must not be overlooked. When discussing it the night before - watching insane Japanese TV with overly enthusiastic presenters, cut by adverts where everything is sung (I mean why say things when you can sing it?) - as I was saying, as we were talking the night before it at all never occured to us that we could sleep through the breakfast period, it was given that we would have to wake up at 9am. I mean Japan is so fucking expensive! One day, before I realised fully the value of the Yen and the exchange rate, I was just about to buy a wicked hat, feather in brim and all, when just before I got to the counter my friend felt obliged to point out my folly.
"Do you realise how much 7000 yen is?"
"Yeah, that's alright. Its a nice hat." I casually responded.
"It converts to about 100 dollars."
I looked at my friend, a newly introduced tilt to my head, acknowledged the sales assistant politely, nodded softly, "mmmm, right, OK", u-turned as casually as possible with the air of someone who just realised that the hat was not quite to his liking (too much feather) and gently placed it back. Nodded again in grave appreciation and slowly backed out of the shop.
"What the fuck! 55 pounds!" At that point I realised I had to be very careful. Nowhere outside of England have I encountered a place as expensive as Japan. We were getting nailed.

A Godzilla model in the shop cost over 600 pounds. It would appear that the only thing Godzilla destroys now is your bank balance. The post-war nuclear fallout has now metamorphised into a commercial goldmine. Never did get to see the beast. I think he lives off the coast of Tokyo.