Paul D wrote:
> On 2006-10-25 22:12:30 +0900, Dan Rempel <drempel@islandnet.com> said:
>
>> Paul D wrote:
>>>>
>>>> It's always strange when foreign people try to do a hatchet job on the
>>>> Japanese like the above article. Many of the statements in it are
>>>> untrue or plain silly. Anyone who knows a cross-section of Japanese
>>>> people would easily be able to come up with counter-examples for very
>>>> many of the statements in the article. In fact a good exercise would
>>>> be to hand this article out to a bunch of Japanese and see how many
>>>> surprised reactions you can get.
>>>>
>>>> Many of the other statements would be true in any other country. I
>>>> remember once reading an article by a Japanese woman who lived in
>>>> America about how, in Japan, Japanese women were all required to dress
>>>> nicely for the sake of conformity. She then went on to describe how
>>>> free life was in America, where "everyone wears jeans". It immediately
>>>> struck me as being ridiculous. Nobody in America would think of having
>>>> to conform! Everyone is so free and so wildly individualistic in the
>>>> USA, because they *all* *wear* *jeans*! There's obviously nothing
>>>> conformist about everyone wearing the same type of clothes.
>>>
>>> Heh, the first thing that struck me (well one of them) when I came to
>>> Japan was that the Japanese actually expressed more individualism in
>>> their dress and hairstyles (when off-duty) than Canadians did — contrary
>>> to the dearth of individualism I'd been warned about. In much of Canada,
>>> and I suspect the US as well, putting too much care into your appearance
>>> is seen as effiminate, but the Japanese have no such prohibition.
>>>
>>> Maybe Japanese women do all dress nicely — because they want to look
>>> nice! And a very nice change it makes too from back home, where sweat
>>> pants were considered everyday clothing.
>>
>> In Tokyo a couple of weeks ago I was struck by the variety of women's
>> clothing styles, work as well as casual. I especially liked some of the
>> fashion disasters: spectacular rather than simply idiotic.
>
> I heard someone call this the "closet explosion" category of Japanese
> fashion.

I'll refrain from making the obvious comeback.

Dan

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