Written by Stella and Yu Han on May 14, 2017
Before going to Harajuku
Fashion and makeup are a common thing to mention when we talk about Japanese girls. By our knowledge, Japanese girls live an exquisite life and always emphasize on styling.
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| Photo Credit: Fashionsnap.com |
Therefore we decided to first write about fashion as an enjoyable and readable blog for our first topic. As long-time readers of Japanese fashion magazines, Harajuku has became a center of chic fashion in 2010s, and the Harajuku Gyaru style has replaced the Shibuya Gyaru to be the most popular style. It is said that the Harajuku Gyaru girls are really into colorful outfits and wigs, a wide variety of accessories, and any other things that make them cute.
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| Photo Credit: Yahoo Japan |
Our trip in Harajuku
We chose to go to Harajuku on a Sunday that both of us were free, and it took about fifteen minutes from the Senshu University to the Meiji-Shingu Mae station, which was very close to our dormitory. First, we had a nice lunch at a fried chicken restaurant that was near the station, but we had waited for a long time because of the crowded people.
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| Our Lunch! |
Second, we went to the Takeshita street as this is the most famous place in Harajuku that has a lot of people in unique outfits and nice clothing stores. The peculiarity of these people and shops truly excited us.
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| A cat theme cafe in Harajuku |
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| The Harajuku Station |
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| The Takeshita Street |
We did some pre-research on where we can meet them, and went to a clothing shop that was on our research list. Luckily, we found the shop owner who was willing to take some pictures with us and accept our interview.
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| Authors and the shop owner |
We interviewed her about her lifestyle and perspective of the Harajuku Gyaru, and her answer dramatically changed our stereotype.
Rather than our initial expectation of the answer, she told us that there is no specific dress code for Harajuku Gyaru. Instead, you can wear whatever you want as long as your outfit expresses your personal feeling, or you feel that the outfit represents you as a unique individual. According to her answer, the Harajuku style is not something that they do for eye catching, one of the reasons they wear these outfits is for fun.
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| Look at his outfit! |
They choose Harajuku as the meeting spot because they know other people who are similar to them will be here and nobody is going to criticize them because they are against the mainstream. This is the way that they seek empathy and Harajuku is their comfort zone.
Some thoughts on the shop owner's answer
We think that the reason they choose this particular kind of appearance to express themselves is primarily due to the uniform culture in Japan. We were so shocked when we stayed in Tokyo for the first day and saw a group of men who were wearing identical suits in Ginza.
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| Photo Credit: Eco-report.com |
People are required to wear uniforms at the school, suits in the workplace, and this greatly limits their chances to express themselves. By wearing unique outfits and meeting with friends in Harajuku may release their daily social stresses from work or school and escape from the boring daily life.
