Globalization in Japan

One of my friends likes reading magazines about foreign celebrities. She buys some of them every month.
Nowadays lots of young girls are following the latest fashion of American stars like Paris Hilton or Kate Moss. They are also interested in their gorgeous life in LA. I guess the reason such magazines are published and getting popular is that Japanese people, especially girls, have akogare to other countries. They are immitating the celebrities with changing hair color or getting their eyelids double-edged.
We Japanese people also like to watch American TV drama. The DVDs of HEROES or 24 are very popular among many generations.

We can see a large number of clothes with messages in English. One teacher in my high school often told his students that we should be careful of wearing clothes having sentences in another language. Sometimes they are wrong and seems strange to native people. There are a lot of things having English words around us in Japan. The photo below is my sisters' T short.

This site has funny signs in English and some of them are taken in Japan. http://www.engrish.com/

Japanese traditional culture

Today's topic is Japanese traditional culture.
I was trying to find something traditional in my house.

In the first photo, you can see archery in a glass box.
When my younger brother was born, my grandparents bought it.
I remember that my grandfather told me about the archery. When a family has their first son, they get an ornament expressing strength like archery or armor. It means they hope he will be strong and brave. Families with girls get a doll set displayed on the Girl's Festival day on March 3rd. My family used to have one, but my mother gave her sister's family. So now we have only this archery in the corner of a closet. Actually I didn't even know we still have it.

The second photo is a catalogue of "Furisode" for Coming-of-age Day. Coming-of-age Day(Seijin no hi) is the second Monday of January. We celebrate this day to welcome young people who are 20 or going to be 20 in that year as new members of society. This year, my sister has this ceremony. For that day, she had had her own kimono made almost one year in advance. Lately, it has arrived and she got excited so much.

Japanese pop culture

Today's topic is Japanese pop culture.



I think online shopping is getting popular among lots of Japanese people.
Younger people mainly buy clothes on shopping websites. Actually I got a jacket for this winter on a shopping website. Sometimes they sell much cheaper than stores do. I also have some shopping catalogues.



I'm wondering why their models are not Japanese. Though most of customers are supposed to be Japanese people.

These bears are "rela-kuma", and white one is "ko- rela-kuma". "Rela" means "relax" and "kuma" means "bears". "Ko" means "小(small)" in Japanese. They are expeced to get people relaxed and feel comfortable. They have been loved by girls in Japan for a few years. At first I didn't like them at all, but after one of my friends gave me a key ring of ko-rela-kuma, I found them so cute.
Now they are appearing in the TV commercial for TOYOTA.