New "murse"

Lately the newest fashion trend seems to be the mythical "murse". Recently my trusty FLCL bag had started to see some wear and tear and it was time I got a new bag to carry my stuff. As much as I'd like to replace it with this, I figured it was about time I dressed like an adult. I'm not going to go into what's in my bag (see: EDC) but I'd like to talk about my new bag I just got.

Picking the right bag for me had a few major parameters which took quite some time to figure out. Here were some of the basic metrics

-Less than 150 dollars

-Dark or Black leather

-14-15 inches in width

-Sturdy construction

-Unique look

-Compartments for EDC items

While searching high and low I ran into a number of problems. The dream bag that I wanted from Fossil was perfect, but way over my price range. I was playing around with the idea of getting a map case for that nostalgia kick, but I figured most of what I found was way too thin what I wanted. So I found this bag on Amazon which looked promising. I came in the mail last week and I've been using it for a few days now.

Cons:

I was a bit disappointed in the color. I thought it'd be more of a black, but it's actually more of a dark chocolate color. Not an unflattering color, but not what I was hoping for either. Secondly, the description said there was a zipper; however, the bag I got has no zipper.

Pros:

It's the perfect size and fits all my things. It feels fairly sturdy, I don't know if it truly is full grain leather or not, but it should be at least as good as canvas. I really like the fact that it has snap buttons. I don't like the idea of having magnets on a laptop bag, I avoid velcro as much as possible, and buckles tend to be more trouble than they're worth. It fits my laptop perfectly, and is fairly comfortable to wear.

I really like messenger bags. I mostly like the ability to be able to wear the bag and swing it around while walking and pull and put stuff in the bag. Perhaps this appeals to my desire to be more mobile. I've stopped using rolling bags and started packing things in a duffel for my trips. When I go anywhere by plane, I try to reduce everything I need to just carry-on. I think gets my to rethink what I really need in this world and it saves on the hassle of having my checked bags getting lost. (BAD bags are truly the best duffel bags one can buy.) It's a form of fantasy really. I preference mobility over comfort, less material things, and the ability to pick up what I have and just go where I'm needed. I feel we all have these guilty little fantasies in our minds what why we do what we do and how they influence our decisions.

East vs. West

Japan is a very "brand conscious" country. I know more women in the US who have never heard of Vera Wang and Hermes than in Japan by far; and you'd never see a man walk around town in a $800 Yves Saint Laurent bag.

Japundit, has a link to an article on the new Sanrio brand tartan being released. Yamanashi, the prefecture where I lived for awhile was the birthplace of the Yamanashi Silk Center, which was the company the later became Sanrio in the 1970's when the company figured out that printing cute pictures on their clothes sold better. Now that the silk industry of Yamanashi has completely bottemed out in recent years, this connection has long been forgotten.

What I find interesting here from a transnational standpoint was this comment here by Yuko Yamaguchi

Yuko Yamaguchi, the Hello Kitty designer since 1980, said the British capital was chosen as the feline's home because "London was the place Japanese girls admired in the 1970s."

Britain was a nation of fairy tales for Japanese girls who read "Alice in Wonderland" and the "Tale of Peter Rabbit," she said.

The ways in which certain cultures and our association with how we perceive certain nations is a fascinating thing to study. As Ai Yazawa has shown us, many Japanese folks today still admire western fetishes as a mark of cool and trendy things. In her work "Paradise Kiss" many of the main characters take on "western" nicknames in an interest to sound exotic and otherworldly. Many people thought it was really cool that a guy that looked in many ways like a Japanese person, had a cool name like "Charles". On the other side of the pond, many people in the US and the UK see anything Japanese as the height of fashion and culture. Japanese things permeate almost everything in the US to give it "added value" or a flair of the exotic. At the same time in both cases this admiration of a national culture has nothing to do with the nation itself, but our association with being something other than we are. These associations reestablish global bounderies that places like the UK, the US and Japan remain as the other, and keep them as exotic distant lands. Despite cheaper transportation and communication between such nations, the distance between them is still far far away in the minds of its people.

Japanese Fashion

My younger brother is graduating from college in a month, which happens to be during the month of his birthday. I figured I'd get him a really cool gift that he'd appreciate. (Usually I get him a game or something, but this year I wanted to get him something a bit more mature.)

Tokyo Flash is a website based in Okinawa (confusing I know) who sells all kinds of Japanese goods. Most famously for their really unique LED watches. They usually incorporate some unique way of displaying the time. My brother picked out the "Barcode" watch which was probably a good choice being that it was very different looking, but the display didn't seem difficult to learn.

One thing I have to say is that I love EMS shipping. I placed the order on Wednesday morning expecting not to see it till next week, but it just came this morning. I can barely get stuff from NewYork based stores that fast.


The box looks pretty cool, the photo makes it look a little cheap, but there is a cool embossing of of a dragon on the top and photos of "club people" around the sides.


It's a fairly hefty watch, but in a good way. All the pieces feel really solid and would be comparable to a watch by Tag Heuer or Diesel. It's not a fine timepiece by any means, but it definitely looks cool and doesn't feel like a cheap costume watch.

The watch came with batteries and was set to Japanese time. It wasn't too difficult to reset the time. The left most bar represents 5 hours of time, the second bar represents 1 hour. Then two right bars represent the 10's and 1's place for the minutes. A random animation lights up when you press the button on the side then the time is displayed. If you press it again, the date is displayed, then a third time the day of the week is displayed. In the photo above the time reads 10:47 am. The watch can also be set to either 12 hour time or 24 hour time.

This is a really cool watch, and if I didn't love my Skagen so much, I'd be really jealous.