Andrea's Rambling Notes - once from Japan, now from Canada

::Andrea's Rambling Notes - once from Japan, now from Canada::

My notes and my memories: sometimes about a mom - sometimes about a wife - sometimes about a woman - sometimes about our life

::Author::

Name::Andrea
From::Small city/town, B.C., Canada
I am a short girl from the west cost of BC, Canada and I am a proud Canadian. I went to Japan in 2000 because my Dad told me I would regret it for the rest of my life if I didn't. He was right. I lived a good life found my husband from the other side of the world and have a beautiful daughter. Basically we lead a pretty normal life filled with normal ups and downs. We both come from different cultures: me Canadian, him Chinese. Living in Japan was a real eye opener about who I am and about the people I associate myself with. I lived and loved in Japan but the time to move on came upon us and in May of 2006 we left and moved to Canada: a huge move for us all. We are now trying to start up again, remodel our lives and create our future for our family. I now feel like a tourist in the country of my birth, my eyes see different and my life will be forever changed. This blog is my notes and observations of our life, our changes, our adventures and new beginnings. Welcome.
View my complete

::Recent Entries::

::Personal Links::

My Japanese Culture Teaching Notes

::My Family's Sites::

Alisha - a site set up by friends and family of my little sis

Phrax - my step-brother

Blue Mountain Stable

::Index::

An Index of past posts - the Japan Years

::Archives::

::Image Event Album::

My Image Event Photo Album

::My FlickR Photos::

www.flickr.com

::Tech Sites::

Tech2all

Blog Flak

::Extra Internet Info::

Canadian Atlas

National Geographic

Wikipedia

World TimesZones - please check this BEFORE calling me!

Currency Converter

eigoNavi - a pretty good language converter

The Samurai Appliance Repair Man - a funny repair site for N

::World News::

Generation Woman

Japan Times

Counter Punch

Japanese General Union - a must! read before working in Japan

::RSS Feed::

Blogarama

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Monday, November 07, 2005

YES I am one of the Japanese fashion freaks

Everyone who comes to Japan ends up becoming addicted to an animation character whether they like it or not.
You can buy literally ANYTHING, including toilet paper, with your character of choice on it. It is quite shocking what you can find. It is even more shocking which animation character you will see.
Anything Disney is obviously there, Winnie the Pooh (Pooh-san) is huge, and Little Kitty is everywhere (my friend hates her but buys her just so he can deface her eyes and change the Little to Kill. It is a shock thing.) I recently opened my fashion magazine and just about passed out when I saw a two-page ad selling Care Bears on everything.
YES!! CARE BEARS!!
I cannot remember the last time I have seen one of those. Then there was another page selling Fashion jeans with Cinderella embroidered on the ass.
Hmm
The jewelry section is always a form of entertainment. The scary thing is that the Little Kitty watch contains real bloody diamonds.
I have unfortunately never found Opus, cause I loved that penguin, but Popeye is alive and well.
There are also all the Japanese animation characters that range between the cute and loveable, to the down right obscene. If you step into the Hobiyon Gift shop it is almost animation overload, but oh oh oh sooooo much fun. You can spend a lot of money if you are not careful.

My addiction is Snoopy.
I always loved that pup but it came out as a slight craze when I moved here.
I used to have a wallet with a gold Snoopy snap, I have a Snoopy rice bowl and spoon (there are perfect Chinese kanji that sound out as Snoopy), Snoopy salt and pepper shakers, Snoopy hand towels and JiXiang even has a Snoopy on a musical rocking horse.
I once went totally mental a few years ago buying a hell of a lot of Pepsi just so that I could collect all of the Snoopy coasters and bottle caps they were giving away. I have kept them all. I used to have them displayed on the door ledge of my old apartment.
Told you:
CRAZY.

Then there is the fashion craze. The main fashion craze here is Louis Vitton bags and to put it mildly they now drive me a little batty. THE ARE EVERYWHERE! And are stupidly expensive. Li is always bugging me that I should get an LV bag or wallet. It is a standing joke between us as we both think that it has been done to the point of overkill, and they are not at all special anymore.
Basically if all of the woman in my office put their wallets down on a table they would never be able to pick theirs back out of the pile. Stupid.

I have fallen for the fashion craze but I have gone the Gucci route.
Yes I like Gucci, mostly because the logal resembles a horses snaffle bit. I have always liked that.
So to take this one step farther and join the ranks of the Japanese insane we got my mother-in-law to pick me up an imitation Gucci purse. Hehehe. I am not so insane as to buy a real one: the imitations are done pretty damn good these days.
I actually went through a few fashion magazines and ripped out the pictures of some Gucci purses that I liked and mailed them to her.
She got me a purse with a matching wallet and one other handbag that also matches.
Should be in the mail soon.

Yes I am a freak but I am enjoying every minute of it.

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Posted by (Top)Andrea::11/07/2005 :: 10 Comments:

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