Always good to stay in style no matter what the profession!
1. This yakuza fashion guide comes from the Nihon Yakuza Chizu (Japan Yakuza Map), a quarterly publication aimed at young males who are interested in the world of organized crime. It has detailed information about all of the 24 major gangs in Japan, explaining their history and leadership, and even includes addresses and pictures of their headquarters in case any of the readers might want to sign up. There are quotations from famous yakuza throughout history, and of course, an eight page full-color photo spread on yakuza fashion.
2. Ya-kore 2002 Haru: Yakuza collection for spring 2002. Yakuza have a saying: "Shiro nara shiro. Kuro nara kuro." It means, if you wear white, wear all white from your hat to your shoes. If you wear black, wear all black." Although the loud suit with white belt and matching shoes "Herb Tarlek look" of the 80's and '90's has died a merciful death, it has been replaced by the equally tacky, "Attention K-Mart shoppers" sensibility seen here. Yaks love faux-designer brands like Castelbajac, Valentini, and Valenza. Bags should be made from the skin of an animal such as crocodile, snake, or ostrich--the more endangered the better.
3. Yakuza are said to be the only group in Japanese society that uses keitai's (mobile phones) more than school girls. Whether they're calling in another ten reinforcements to help beat up an elderly shop-keeper who's a few days behind in his payments, checking results at the track, or reporting to the oyabun (boss), the cell phone is an essential tool and fashion accessory. Daily conversations of three or four hours with gang bosses are very common and yakuza higher-ups are said to carry as many as five or six at one time, preferring phones that take pre-paid phone cards because they are more difficult to trace.
4. Yakuza fashion is changing. In the 1990's punch-perms and colourful fashions were de rigueur, but the trend seems to have died just before the turn of the millenium. Yakuza decided that they stood out too much and were getting a lot of negative publicity in the press so they toned down their image. The Osaka kumicho (boss) of the Yamaguchi-gumi has issued an edict that gang members are to dress plainly so that they do not stand out from the general population. Young people are supposed to dress like college students or street kids and the older men are supposed to look like a salariman. Yakuza no longer wear their gang pins in public and gang leaders who once favoured expensive, antique Zippo lighters are now using the 100 yen variety. Some yakuza, particularly the low ranking ones, still dress like the models in the picture, but enjoy the tackiness while you can because in a few years you probably won't be able to see it anymore.
Thank you Quirky Japan Homepage:
http://www.quirkyjapan.or.tv/
Agano is Beth's stomping ground! This was my first time to visit the wonderful city that Beth calls home - not too shabby!!! :)
The girls hanging out by the lake.
These were all taken at Hyoko Park. It has a famous lake that is known for Swans since in the late summer/early fall they flock there like crazy. Beth says the whole lake is covered with them!
Classy, ne?!?
This past weekend Shanna and I got invited by Beth to join her Eikaiwa (Adult conversation class) she has once a month. Bascially we just talked about ourselves for an hour and 1/2, but afterwards the ladies were kind enough to take us out for a very traditional Japanese Lunch.
This was our waiting room at the Ikarashi House. It's an old Japanese home that was turned into a restaurant.
This was probably my favorite dish! It's a 
liquid tofu heated up with a small burner. You then add a sauce to it and chow down....quite yummy! 
Here's the reflection of the trees lit up in the pond.
The goodness of candy covered strawberries and grapes. Plus, the cute kids hanging around the stand as well.
I've had a weird last couple of days. 
Nana is now one of my favorite movies!!!
Natto is a made by fermenting soy beans and has been eaten in Japan for hundreds of years. Famous for its bad smell and stickiness, it is very much an acquired taste. No one knows exactly where natto came from, but the most popular story about its origin involves a famous general named Minamoto no Yoshiie, who lived from 1041-1108. While camping in northern Japan, probably in Miyagi prefecture, Yoshiie’s army was attacked, and hurriedly packed the beans they were cooking for their horses into straw sacks called tawara. Straw contains large amounts of the bacterium that ferments beans, bacillus subtilis, and when the tawara were opened several days later, they found that the beans had fermented. The soldiers apparently tasted the beans and enjoyed them, and a culinary tradition was born. There are other stories about natto originating in China or during the Yayoi Period (300 BCE to 300 CE), but the Minamoto theory is the most appealing for two reasons. One, there is more evidence for it, and two, it give foreigners a chance to inform natto lovers that the food they are eating originates in rotten horse feed. The horse connection is also the answer to the question of why people in western Japan don’t like natto. There is an almost perfect correspondence between the main type of livestock raised in a prefecture and whether or not its people eat natto. Basically, in prefectures where horses were raised in the past, people eat a lot of natto, and in places that raised more cows, they don’t. This is because prefectures that raised horses produced a lot more soy beans (the dregs of which were used for horse feed) than places that raised cows. Hokkaido, Tohoku (northern Japan), and the area around Tokyo were horse raising areas and people, but as soon as you hit Osaka, consumption falls off rapidly until you get to Kyushu were, once again, people used to raise horses and people can’t seem to get enough natto.
The 'MOS' in 'MOS burger stands for 'Mountain, Ocean, Sun'. According to the official MOS Burger web site, the mountain, ocean, and sun in the name symbolize the company's "infinite love" of both humankind and nature. MOS Burger's love of people and nature is "Grand and noble like a mountain", "Possessed of a spirit as deep and wide as the ocean", and filled with a "passion that, like the heat of the sun, never burns out." And you thought you were just getting a hamburger. Shame!
