Japanese Fashion

We are home from our Japan trip now and we're trying to get caught up on laundry, grocery shopping, and getting back to Pacific time zone which is always fun when traveling abroad. While getting back into our normal routine, I noticed in the newspaper and in my emails that the Nordstrom Anniversary Sale is coming up July 21 through August 6 (although the pre-sale is going on right now for card holders so I've already ordered a few things...) which brings me to my thoughts on how different the fashion was in Japan. I noticed it right away and started snapping photos of trends that I haven't seen in the U.S yet. Maybe it's only a matter of time. I started categorizing the women's fashion into five types; sort of like a game. There was the "school girl"-look, which half the time, they actually were school girls since students wear uniforms all the way through high school.

Here is an actual school girl but I think the above are just girls hanging out at the mall.

The "school girl"-look was anklet socks with shoes and a dark, usually navy blue skirt and white blouse. Here's another school girl:

Maybe because they wear this look for so long during school, they just gravitate towards this look in life, too. This leads to my next look which I call the "flight attendent"-look. At first, I thought I was just seeing flight attendents walking around all over the place.

The women wear pantyhose in Japan, too, which you don't see in the U.S. much anymore. And lots of anklet socks worn with shoes or sandals

and sometimes fishnet socks.

You see lot's of skirts and dresses because it is so hot and humid so I'm not sure why they wear pantyhose. Japanese are just more formal and proper, I guess.

They still wear long sleeves even though it's like 85 degrees out and humid. Japanese women are into white skin, just the opposite of U.S women who get spray tans to look darker. They even had these arm covers that were like long gloves only no hand part to protect from the sunlight. I don't have any photos but they sold them everywhere, too. The trend that I liked the most were the wide-legged pants. These were so much more popular than the skinny jeans you see in the U.S. and I never saw any capri pants.

They look so cool and compfy. They are like the old-fashioned culottes. Are they coming back in style? They sure are in Japan.

The cropped pants were everywhere and even the longer pants were the baggie style.

These wide leg pants are also popular as jeans. There were some skinny jeans and leggings around but the majority of women were wearing these wide leg pants.

I haven't had a pair of these type of jeans since the 70's. I did see a pair sort of like these listed at the Nordstrom Anniversary Sale that they called Slouch Jeans but still not quite the same.

Union Distressed Slouch Jeans

I actually like these Eileen Fisher pants and ordered them today so now I can be like all the Japanese women.

Organic Linen Crop Pants

The thing about Nordstrom is you can return anything so easily in case they don't work out so nothing lost. But since Japanese fashion is so fresh on my mind, I want to try these. When you think of Japan, you probably think kimono. Well, we saw plenty of those, too.

We even saw men wearing them.

They will wear kimonos when going to a festival and there are plenty of festivals all summer long in Japan.

Nick and Sachiyo each have a kimono and hope to wear them this summer when they go to a festival.

I can't forget one of my favorite looks - the "team mascot"-look that I spotted when we went to a baseball game.

I'm not sure what he's suppose to be but the team was the Yokohama Baystars.

Nick pointed out a fashion trend that he called the "John Lennon"-look. Round glasses are all the hottest thing in Japan right now.

Nick says people will just wear clear round glasses just to look cool. We tried to talk Bruce into getting a pair while cruising Harajuku, a trendy shopping mecca in Tokyo.

Nick explained that you must wear them down low on your nose a bit, not up close to your eyes.

We had a lot to learn and it was an endless education in Japan but we had fun trying to stay on top of it all.

Trader Joe's Gluten-Free Oatmeal, Peanut Butter and Chocolate Chip Cookies

I don't have very many gluten-free cookies on my blog because quite frankly, I usually don't like gluten-free. But occasionally, I do find a good recipe and this is one that is from the back of the Trader Joe's oatmeal and it's a good one. My friend brought some over to our house last weekend when Nick and family were here for our birthday celebrations and we all loved them. My friend lives a few blocks away and we walk the neighborhood together on weekends. We can easily go 5 miles in no time, talking non-stop. She loves exploring our neighborhood as much as I do and we discover so many favorite little spots. We even found a property with a horse (or more like a pony, I should say.) The views are always quite lovely, too. Bruce and I had our thirty-ninth wedding anniversary on July 18th and I made a point of walking past the house where we had our wedding reception. I told my friend, "Thirty-nine years ago today, t...

Meatloaf by Mark Bittman

Once again, I turned on the television yesterday and saw that Mark Bittman was on the Today show and was making his version of meatloaf . This must be meatloaf season. It was surprisingly similar to the Pioneer Woman's version who was also recently on. I was a little surprised of his version because Mark Bittman is into healthy eating and has lost a lot of weight and improved his health by changing his diet which he writes about in his book, Food Matters . His meatloaf recipe also included bacon and cheese! I must be doing something wrong. The thing to remember, which he writes about in his book, is that you can eat healthy without going extreme or changing your whole life. If you don't know who Mark Bittman is, he is a food writer and a four star chef with multiple cookbooks who loves to eat but changed his food philosophy to improve his health. He tells his story in Food Matters and provides ...

Top Pot Doughnuts

I just returned from another weekend in Seattle and for the first time, I actually went to a Top Pot Doughnut shop. I've had their doughnuts before because they serve them at Starbuck's and I've seen their shops in Seattle when I visit because there is now one right across the street from our old house in Wedgwood. Now, our daughter, lives in another old neighborhood of mine on Capitol Hill and right around the corner from her house is a Top Pot. There were not eateries like this in my old neighborhoods when I lived in Seattle. And our daughter literally lives steps away from my old house on Capitol Hill where I lived when I was her age. There are so many more luxuries and temptations lurking around the corner in Seattle neighborhoods more so than when I lived there but I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Being that I'm one that mostly gives in to temptation, it's probably a good thing they didn't exist when I lived there. ...

Sylvia's Scenario

Search This Blog