The January Sales Breakdown

So clearly the January sales didn't start on December 30th, again I am projecting my post back in time in order to give you filler that's all killer. Or something like that. How can I describe the January sales in Japan? With an image:


I think that what has happened there is that the tussle for sale goods was so violent that somebody punched a fucking mannequin in the face. Hard core. So what you need to know about the January sales in Japan is the following: that although January 1st is one of the most important holidays of the year, it's also fukubukuro (lucky bag) day and all the big shops, department stores and malls open to sell discount bags full of random goods; and that the sales proper start on January 2nd (along with the smaller stores fukubukuro sale). This year, as last, I went shopping both days. I didn't get a lucky bag this year since I have no money and couldn't justify it to myself. I found it remarkably easy to justify the purchase of the following though, part of the Spring Bape drop that came out on the 2nd... I couldn't resist:


I know what you're thinking - but what would Kanye West look like in that? Luckily he wore it in the new Bape lookbook:


Have you seen Kanye's new year post on his blog? I love that guy.

Bad Boyz be Ambitious

"Boys be ambitious" is kind of the catchphrase of Sapporo. It was a phrase coined by Williams S. Clarke, one of the people who established Hokkaido College of Agriculture (now Hokkaido University) and thus made Sapporo into a notable city. It's an incredibly famous phrase throughout Japan too, I've seen it used in puns and on merchandise in Tokyo, and in national newspaper articles that had nothing to do with Hokkaido at all. It's a pretty great phrase too, the full paragraph running:

"Boys, be ambitious. Be ambitious not for money or for selfish aggrandizement, not for that evanescent thing which men call fame. Be ambitious for that attainment of all that a man ought to be."

That's pretty bloody good advice.

Anyway, with the opening of the new hip-hop clothing store Chill In Da House Sapporo's urban trendsetters show that they too, keep Clark's words close to their hearts.


Oh yeah.

Ask the Magic Building

Magic Building, are my new sneakers the total and absolute bomb?

Y'know, you're alright Magic Building.

The Magic Building lives in downtown Sapporo and will give any outfit the thumbs-up.

Free Socks!

This month's issue of Smart came with free Bathing Ape socks:


Y'know, that's pretty cool. Don't mind if I do.

What did you buy over the holidays Alex?

I bought:

A T-shirt that came in a miniature shoebox.

A Batman: The Dark Knight toothbrush with logo embossed cover.

A novelty webcam of Medama Oyaji from GeGeGe no Kitaro.

Friday via Sunday: New Year Shopping

Post New Year has been pretty hectic, so this Friday blog post is brought to you with the blessing of Sunday and the hindsight of two days. Let's begin:


Those are lucky bags - fukubukuro - that are sold on January 1st of every year from pretty much all the big stores and malls. The idea's pretty simple, you buy a bag filled with mystery contents (you can choose the size if it's clothes) worth a lot more than you pay. At the shit stores fukuburo stick around for days into the January sales, but at the popular places they go within minutes of the stores opening. In a couple of stores it was kinda like one of those speeded up shopping montages in a movie where hands a grabbing items off a table until the table is empty. Either that or there are security guard-enforced queues and massive crowds. We got into town just as the stores were opening (nine-fucking-thirty on New Years Day) and Yuki got four of those bags, I got the Adidas one on the far right, and when we opened them up...


Unsurprisingly the ones from the good stores, the busiest stores, were the best ones. One of them was almost a total write-off for Yuki, but one was almost all good and she was happy overall. I got two t-shirts and two hoodies in the Adidas bag, one of each of which is awesome, so I'm happy.

This, by the way, is not the actual January sale, that doesn't start until the 2nd and of course we were there for that too. The crowds were even bigger because some stores don't sell fukubukuro until the 2nd either. I thought it would be unbelievably awesome to get a Bape fukubukuro, but unfortunately so did about a hundred and fifty other people and they were more into waiting in the snow than I was:


They only had 30 fukubukuro which were being handed out in a lottery to some people out of the first hundred in line. After that people were just getting tickets to get in the store because the pre-release from the Spring/Summer 09 line dropped that day. Overall I guess I didn't buy too much which is probably a good thing, but I was fun just wandering around these stores while they verged on riots. My kinda fun.

Sartorial Adventures on a Sunday

Well yesterday was certainly an adventure in wearables. I found:

The world's ugliest hat!

A wall of Spider-man!

The world's classiest jumper!

...and a mask to turn me into a cartoon bear!

Then today I fucked up my arm snowboarding. It is more than possible that my crash was caused by that hat suddenly appearing in my mind like some harbinger of doom. I think if I was making a horror movie that would be the killer's trademark apparel.