Bringing you yesterday's news from Japan and Asia, today.
fashion (Page 69)
Between their furry coats and ability to stake out the warmest spots in the home, cats seem to be pretty skillful at warding off the cold. But while you can probably squeeze in next to your pets in front of the space heater, you can’t really borrow their coats, can you?
Of course, you won’t need to if you have a cute, cozy kitty pullover of your own.
If you’ve ever visited Japan and fallen in love with its beauty and culture, prepare to be swept off your feet again with the latest ad campaign from Guess.
Shot by famed Chinese photographer Chen Man, the photos take us on a journey through cherry blossoms and tea houses, featuring girls with samurai swords and parasols.
Creating costumes for idol singer groups can’t be an easy job. If you’re going for cute, designers already hit the limit for the number of frills a single item of clothing can hold sometime around October of 1986. Hot pants are an easy way to achieve short-term crowd-pleasing sexiness, but that might interfere with the girl-next-door image the most successful acts cultivate.
So instead of sweet or sultry, you might settle on snappy. That’s what the four members of Korea’s Pritz have been doing in some of their recent appearances, where they’ve shown up in matching black skirts and crisply pressed black shirts buttoned at the collars. Oh, and to add just a dash of attempted systematical genocide to the ensemble, what look like Nazi armbands.
Girls, have you ever been put off from the army because their uniforms just aren’t cute enough? Well here’s your answer: a KanColle-inspired corset that’s made–to–order!
Which is worse, hair in your mayonnaise or mayonnaise in your hair? Assuming you haven’t actually eaten any, hair in your mayo is actually a pretty easy problem to rectify. You either toss the jar out, or you make lunch for any of your sworn enemies who’d accept a surprise sandwich from you despite your less than friendly relationship.
Mayonnaise in your hair, on the other hand, means you yourself are dirty though, and you’ve got to stop whatever you’re doing (such as crafting diabolical plots against your aforementioned enemies) to go and shampoo, right?
Actually, you don’t, according to people in Japan who say spreading a little mayo on your hair is actually good for it.
As an adult, I never really find myself attached to one particular hairstyle. Every time I get a cut, that’s a one or two-month commitment at best before I get to change it around all over again. But for kids, the barber can apparently be a pretty harrowing experience. After all, especially for younger kids, they’ve been rocking the same ‘do for almost their entire lives. Also, it probably takes some learning to overcome the instinctual aversion to sharp objects being brandished near your face.
Not that I have kids or anything, but I’ve heard taking them to the hair salon can be… let’s just say a bit of a handful.
That’s why many Japanese salons have decided to go the extra mile and give kids the VIP treatment:
Hatsune Miku has been portrayed in nearly every way imaginable, from highly detailed Final Fantasy-esque character model to gorgeous anime-style re-imaginings. She’s also one of the more popular characters for cosplaying, with results that range from the adorable to the slightly insane, so if you want to show your love for the animated singer, you’ll need to put in a bit of extra work to stand out. But don’t worry, we have just the thing to help the next time you plan to don a teal wig: A glowing Hatsune Miku skirt!
There are two important things to bear in mind regarding Japanese fashion. First is that, since so many people use public transportation, they almost always need some kind of a bag or backpack to carry their stuff in when they go out. Second, after spending all week wearing a mandated uniform or bland business suit, come the weekend, some people are overcome with the urge to express their individuality to the fullest with their clothing and accessory choices.
With that in mind, just about the fastest route away from your button-down Monday to Friday look is to slip on a backpack that’s the exact shape and size of a tiger’s head.
About a month after I moved to Japan in college, my hair was getting pretty shaggy, so I asked my host dad where I could get a trim. The place he took me to was an old-school barbershop, and I remember being surprised when instead of using electric clippers on the back of my neck, the barber used a straight razor.
Still, that wasn’t nearly as big as the shock some customers get when they walk into this hairdresser’s in Vietnam and see the stylist slicing people’s hair with a Japanese sword.
Let’s say you love looking at the moon. You’re enchanted by its beautifully full and round shape, and sometimes you find it so enticing you’d like to reach out and touch it (with its permission, of course).
But all that ardent admiration still doesn’t mean you actually know anything about the moon, does it?
That’s not too far from the relationship some men have with women’s breasts, according to this list of 11 things Japanese women wish more men understood about their chests.
Once a year, lingerie manufacturer Triumph designs a special bra that highlights social trends in Japan. The company shows off each year’s version at a press event, which always has two models, despite the fact that the bras they’re wearing have always been identical.
This year, though, the two-model system is more than just a way of upping the glamorous eye-candy quotient, since the patterns and color on the 2014 bras miraculously change when they’re close to each other.
Japan isn’t that big geographically, but it’s still divided up into 47 different prefectures. Even though it’ll usually only take you a couple of hours to pass from one into the other (and even less if you’re on the Shinkansen), each has its own unique feel to it. Depending on where you are, people eat different foods, celebrate holidays in different ways, and even like different clothes, as shown by a study that reveals how Japanese women like to dress by prefecture.
Sisters Elle and Jess Yamada from Indonesia do everything together, and that includes making a name for themselves on the fashion blogosphere. The lovely ladies are in their early twenties and have a combined total of nearly 250,000 Instagram followers, write for their popular blog on their website, and run a clothing line called Gowigasa. They’re also apparently really awesome at hulahooping, and won their high school’s hula hoop competition.
But we know what you really want is to get a good look at these two beauties, so read on to find a selection of photos after the cut.
In Japan, black suits are as ubiquitous with salarymen as uniforms are with high school students. Usually, though, the look is pretty unremarkable: black suit, white shirt, subdued tie, black shoes, black belts…and the same thing every day. Suit and menswear chain Aoyama, however, is looking to not only spice up the old suit look, but also help salarymen channel their inner space alien superhero (or villain).
For their 50th anniversary, Aoyama has collaborated with the Ultraman franchise to create a line of Ultraman neckties. In an announcement from Tsuburaya Productions, the company that produced the original Ultraman TV series in 1966, it was revealed that there will be eighteen unique Ultraman inspired designs available for a limited time.
The whole concept of an all-boys high school is kind of cruel when you think about it. You take a bunch of young men who have only recently hit puberty and are practically oozing hormones out of their pores and lock them in a prison-like environment filled with nothing but other males for the majority of their teen lives.
So it’s understandable that at least one Japanese all-boys high school, faced with an utter lack of girls to ogle, chose to get a little creative… by holding an annual beauty pageant to determine the prettiest “girl” in school.
Totoro may be Studio Ghibli’s most iconic roly-poly creation, but he’s not the only corpulent character from Hayao Miyazaki’s animation house. 1992’s Porco Rosso stars Porco, a heavyset seaplane aviator in 1920s Italy who happens to have the head (and build) of a pig.
But while Porco may not have typical leading man looks, he exudes a dashing, gallant aura, which extends to his cool old-school cool shades. If you’d like to copy his style without duplicating his physique, you’re in luck, as you can now buy official Porco Rosso sunglasses.
For a large chunk of Japan’s history, there wasn’t much time to think about the future. Instead, most people’s days were filled with more immediate concerns, like trying to figure out how to survive the civil wars that were all the rage in the country during most of the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries.
Things finally settled down in the early 1600s, though, and ordinary Japanese citizens entered into a long period of internal stability. Finally having enough time to muse about things to come, they came up with a list of predictions about Japan’s future, some of which are nowhere near how reality has turned out, and some of which were spot on.
In perhaps the one case in which broadly dismissing an entire group of exotic-looking people by saying, “Eh, they all look the same to me,” maybe isn’t all that offensive, the 2014 Miss Korea contestant lineup once again looks eerily like a lineup of I, Robot-style doppelgangers.
This year saw around 50 finalists, whom the agency holding the competition saw fit to line up in a photo roster for our viewing pleasure:
In many countries around the world, mandatory school uniforms are the bane of students’ lives, with their unflattering shape and drab color scheme. Their purpose seems to be to help pupils blend into a homogeneous mass of unfashionable conformity, and are often enforced under the logic that they “promote modesty” and “prevent distractions from learning”.
In Japan, however, it’s completely different. The Japanese tend to put a lot of stock in uniforms of all kinds, and school uniforms, which signify the wearer’s youth, are considered a prime status symbol. Now everyone’s favorite mute cat, Hello Kitty, is getting in on the action with her special snowy-white sailor suit for spring!
Here’s a riddle for you: What do Gundam and black holes have in common? And, no, it has nothing to with giant robots or CERN-style technology gone crazy. It’s actually about…fashion.
Well, fashion might be a bit of an exaggeration, but we’ll give you a hint. What’s weird about the way Fumina Hoshino, from the new Gundam Build Fighters Try, wears her skirt?
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Major Tokyo subway line shut down by in-train mobile battery fire
Studio Ghibli adds new Mother’s Day gift sets to its anime collection in Japan
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Virtual idol Hatsune Miku redesigned with look that adds new elements and brings back old onesStudio Ghibli adds new Mother’s Day gift sets to its anime collection in Japan
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The top 10 graduation songs in Japan as chosen by current Japanese high school studentsThe next time you’re feeling stressed out, you could relax on a Pokémon Psyduck chair from Japan
Pizza Hut Japan teams up with creator of one of the country’s best kinds of ramen for ramen pizza
Starbucks Japan unveils new sakura cherry blossom collection for hanami season 2026
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Naruto and Converse team up for new line of shinobi sneakers[Photos]
Starbucks Japan releases first-ever Hinamatsuri Girls’ Day Frappuccino
Japan’s cherry blossom season predicted to start earlier than we’d thought, especially in Tokyo
Starbucks Japan releases a new Cream Puff Frappuccino for a limited time
Survey asks foreign tourists what bothered them in Japan, more than half gave same answer
Japan’s human washing machines will go on sale to general public, demos to be held in Tokyo
Starbucks Japan releases new drinkware and goods for Valentine’s Day
We deeply regret going into this tunnel on our walk in the mountains of Japan
Studio Ghibli releases Kodama forest spirits from Princess Mononoke to light up your home
Japan’s newest Shinkansen has no seats…or passengers [Video]Starbucks Japan releases new sakura goods and drinkware for cherry blossom season 2026
Major Japanese hotel chain says reservations via overseas booking sites may not be valid
Put sesame oil in your coffee? Japanese maker says it’s the best way to start your day【Taste test】
No more using real katana for tourism activities, Japan’s National Police Agency says
Studio Ghibli adds new Mother’s Day gift sets to its anime collection in Japan
We asked our Japanese team of writers how they deal with seasonal allergies in Japan
Osaka icon loses legs, restaurant says famous crab is exhausted
Starbucks Japan opens new Kyoto store in Place of Scenic Beauty
Japan’s budget chain restaurant Saizeriya might just be the perfect first date location
Japanese horror icon Sadako collaborates with Snickers in yummy commercial!
Godzilla hammer from Japan lets you smash nails like a kaiju
McDonald’s Japan goes old-school with new Showa-era Kissa Mac sweets lineup【Photos】
Japanese government says country needs more women’s room toilets to meet modern society’s needs
Who makes Japan’s best moon-viewing burger? Let’s eat as many as we can and find out【Taste test】
McDonald’s Japan to sell Anko Pies this autumn
Sapporo supermarket’s women’s restroom becomes unusually popular with guys last Sunday night
McDonald’s officially reprimanded by Japanese government for misleading “roast beef” ads
UchiPika: New Pikachu robot talks, sings, controls lights and TVs, even when Pokémon isn’t on