As I work through putting a proper links page together, I’m running across some interesting stuff. One forum site that I visited is called Japan Forum which has some great user-contributed photo galleries in addition to their forum sections. I know I’ve said this before, but forums like this are a superb way to get to know a place you’ll be visiting without resorting to the sterilized travel guides.

One of their galleries is dedicated to the teenage girls (and guys) that dress up in fashions that range from odd to truly bizarre (though, I have to admit, quite interesting). They tend to hang out in an area of Tokyo between Shibuya and Shinjuku called Harajuku, hence the name Harajuku Girls.

Harajuku Girls

I know I’ve made some references to some of this in past blog entries, but a picture is worth a thousand words and all that. The fascinating thing for me is that even within this subculture exists further subdivisions - specialty groups that tend to cluster together. For example, there are groups of girls that get these super-dark fake tans and dyed blonde hair called Ganguro:

Ganguro

Yeah, I know - WTF? comes to mind. You also get gothic lolitas (kind of like the first picture) and all sorts of other variants. Really, check out the gallery I mentioned to see things that range the gamut, including a Marx brothers thing. Yeah, I shit you not.

There’s another group of people that dress up like their favorite anime or manga characters, which is called Cosplay. Some of these costumes are amazingly elaborate, and there are professional cosplayers that make a living doing it.

Cosplayers

Once again, there’s a cosplay gallery at JapanForum, but be a bit careful in that some of the shots may not be stuff you want to look at work. It’s not tentacle porn (which, really, demands its own post), but it’ll likely generate some questionable looks.

Well, just a little subculture post. Next time: North Korea.

* Images provided by Wikipedia under Creative Commons licensing. Basically, I feel like too much of a perv taking photos of teenage girls so I’ll leave that to others.