We love Japan for many reasons, but cute is a big one. They even dress cute. And there are many ways to dress cute. Everyone knows about gothloli – mixing French baroque with little girl knee highs, lots of pink and bows.
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The Japanese are whizzes with paper. Chiyogami for paper crafts; Shojigami for housing fittings; Karakami for sliding panels, clothing and waterproofed raincoats. And they continue to see it as a useful and playful item. Canon is perfect example of that. Look at the brilliant things they have come up with, just with paper and a printer.
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What is too cute, Japanese, fashionable and just a little adictive? Poupee girl! (Poupee means ‘doll’ in French)
This adorable site allows you to create an avatar and then go shopping for her! By uploading pictures of your brand named items you earn ribbons that allow you to go shopping. As if that was not fun enough, you get to suteki (lovely,cool) things by clicking on the things you like, you also get to go into other fashion girls rooms and see what outfits they have put together. It’s a really fun way to get to see Japanese style.
The site itself illustrates the cuteness of Japanese culture. In your room you have a tiny, yellow bird that gives you personal updates, and a little pink pig with a ribbon that updates you on the number of ribbons you have earned.
You have to sign in, and there are a couple rules but it is fairly self explanatory. There are some places that are completely in Japanese, but a lot of it is in English. Many of the names are written in hiragana and so it may be motivating to learn a bit. Careful though, it’s addictive!
From Wikipedia
Amigurumi (lit. Knitted stuffed toy) is the Japanese art of knitting or crocheting small stuffed animals and anthropomorphic creatures. The word is derived from a combination of the Japanese words ami, meaning crocheted or knitted, and nuigurumi, meaning stuffed doll. Amigurumi are typically cute animals (such as bears, rabbits, cats, dogs, etc.), but can include artistic renderings, and inanimate objects endowed with anthropomorphic features. Amigurumi can be either knitted or crocheted. In recent years crocheted amigurumi are more popular and more commonly seen.
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I love getting dressed up in period costumes and getting my picture taken. Through the years I’ve been a Cowboy, Civil War General, Canadian Mountie, Samurai, and plenty of other strange occupations. During my visit to Japan I wanted to make sure that there were plenty of opportunities for touristy dress up pictures.
The one thing I really wanted was traditional Geisha or Maiko pictures, but I was pretty sure the chances of me bumping into any real life Geisha walking the streets on Kyoto was pretty slim. So, with my wife’s permission, I booked a photo session with one of the top studios specializing in Geisha and Maiko pictures.
Please welcome my wife Stacey to I Heart Japan! She’s got a keen eye for all things cute and she’ll be running down the latest trends in kawaii and Japanese crafts.
It doesn’t get much cuter than Hello Kitty. Did you know there is a theme park in Japan dedicated to Hello Kitty! How can you not visit it? (I guess pretty easily, if you didn’t find out about it until you were back home, like me.)
My wife has been excited these last few weeks after stumbling across this ultra cute Japanese cat by the name of Komaneko.
Koma (as far as I know) stands for a single video frame and neko of course stands for cat. Which works well seeing that Komaneko is a stop animation video cat :)
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