Home » Japan » Deafened by the Roar of Pachinko ... or how to embarrass lesbians without really trying

I was always under what was probably a poorly uninformed impression that Japan was a quiet, understated country. In my few (wasted) years in high school Japanese class I learnt about the culture of a quiet people, who respected tradition and weren’t amenable to the loud, disrespectful ways of us Westerners (hence the trainee Japanese teacher who came on exchange to Maclean High School for a few months and after one period of our Year Nine elective Japanese class she was so shaken by our loud and outrageous behaviour she took off the remainder of the week and steeled herself against any further aural assaults by refusing to come to any more of our classes).

Deafened by the Roar of Pachinko ... or how to embarrass lesbians without really trying

Patrick Gatland
2007-01-23 12:54:33

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aware these much hyped (a shout out to Gwen Stefani) social outcasts dress strangely and hang out at the Harajuku station entrance while locals and foreigners snap up pics of the girls in frilly maid costumes and Disney-cum-goth-cum-punk-cum-clock
work orange get-ups. After having not slept for 36 hours I have to say that it was all a bit of a dream sequence to me and the exploits of these girls seemed so put on as to leave a bad taste in your mouth - but it certainly was some kind of spectacle and surprise surprise the Christians had to come and ruin the fun by singing Xmas carols and asking bemused Japanese if they knew the “real” meaning of Christmas - strikes me as a bit (a) rude (b) naïve and (c) bloody rude, doing this at the gates to one of Tokyo’ major Shinto shrines. However, I can safely report that the Japanese have definitely discovered the real meaning of Christmas - shopping and Christmas carols. It was only in Japan that I discovered that there are no less that six covers of Wham’s “Last Christmas” floating around out there - and I believe that most of them are on high rotation in Tokyo’s shopping centres from November till the end of December each year.

This brings me to the Japanese shopping experience. Shopping in Japan is taken to whole other level. Japan is the first
Asian country I have been to where the vast majority of the population is wealthy and has a disposable income. Like the rest of us living in the world with a lot of money to spare, the Japanese like to spend it. However, the emphases in Japan seem to be on different things. Although fashion is important in most countries (with Australia and the US being generally good exceptions) in Japan fashion and the consumption of all things fashionable is a hyper-reality that is hard to comprehend. Never before have I seen in the one shopping district three shops within 100 metres of each other solely dedicated to selling hats, nor have I seen a dedication so ...