Fashion

A) Umbrellas - you can find many women twirling their parasols all day here. If it's not battling rain it's fighting the sun. This mans that the umbrella is a major part of any outfit and usually matches what their wearing (sometimes down to the patern ... frightening.)








B) Contemporary san wear - "highly fashionable" business casual has arrived. In a regular mainstream sort of department store, the outift you see here (without shoes) costs over 60,000 yen (about US$600).









C) Yukatas - What I thought was simply a cheap hotel robe turned out to be a traditional summer outfit for men and women. (Although, the yukata I was seeing was a cheap hotel version.) Supposedly you can wear them anywhere. But I suspect that this may not be entirely true, and instead Aki told me this so I would walk to dinner in mine. Just in case, I made him wear his too. Emblazond with "Hotel Central" on us, we took the yukatas down the block to get our rice and curry.

D) America - Yes, it's still ridiculously popular here to look like a US high school sophomore. The shirt I call "the liberty whip", which features the Statue of Liberty holding a book saying 'love & peace' while whiping pink stars, is very popular now and all of the shirts on that table were only US$20.