Wednesday, February 14, 2007

V'Day and Harajuku and Zenryaku Prof

Happy Valentine's Day! I don't know how it's celebrated in other places, but in Japan Valentine's day is a day 80% for couples either dating or married. The mainstream tradition here ever since Valentine's day have become recognized as a special day, is for girls to give guys chocolate. Why chocolate, the reason is simply commercial - it's only because some chocolate company one day promoted to give chocolate as Valentine gifts and that manner became the mainstream.
Though today the gift-giving is becoming more two-way especially when it comes to more expensive gifts like jewelry and accessories, the custom of giving chocolate - and giving "returns" on "White Day" a month later - remains strictly one-way.


I said 80% for couples... well, 17% of the remaining 20 is for singles, singles who are committed to "confess" their affection i.e., ask someone to date her(/him) - (I wonder how many new couples are emerging today) - maybe 2% for non-serious, "social" chocolates called "giri-choco" and the last 1% families. Um, the numbers are completely random so don't take it seriously. Anyway, Valentine's Day is a HUGE deal for many girls and boys. Girls being so nervous worrying whether her favorite boy accepts or refuse a new relationship, and boys nervous and excited about how many chocolates they'll get and whether any of them are serious "hommei-choco" (which means that the girl is asking for a date).


Completely unrelated to the above topic, I read yesterday in the paper that the worldy famous fashion and punk and goth town of Harajuku is starting a guide tour for foreign tourists. The guide tour is available as far as I know in English, Chinese and Korean and will go around a dozen or so fashion shops and tourist spots in the so-called "Urahara" (backside Harajuku) district. The group is going to be consisted of 10 tourists more or less depending on the day's requests.

Harajuku is mostly known for the street Takeshita-Dori which is a cool, interesting and exciting spot to be walking around even alone, but the inner and backside areas are as intersting and perhaps more fashionable. I don't see too many tourists exploring the Urahara so I think this is a good chance to let the name spread and a good opportunity for the Urahara designers to dispatch their talents worldside.


The third term in the title for today is a HUGE fad among high school girls right now. I didn't know about it at all but my younger sister who is an 11th grader told me about it one day and later on I searched for articles for research.

Basically it's about having your own profile site on the mobile internet, but the astonishingly unbelievable fact about it is that all the information about you is published on the mobile web (within the Zenryaku Profile) and and basically none of the information you update on your page is protected. There are about 40-100 questions about you, from your real name, address, phone number, blood type, birthday, to favorite talento (showbiz ppl) and so on, and most of the users who are high school students answer pretty much all of these items. It's practically a well-built dating site and in reality, high school couples are being produced through this service. But so far there hasn't been any social issues arising such as fraud, prostitution, blackmailing and so on.

Analysts say that although the service is like revealing on purpose your personal information, the service is actually closed and are used only among teenage students. I can't really understand what this's supposed to mean. It's a service on the internet and no one checks if you're really a teenager or actually a weirdy. I only think it's a matter of time for crimes to happen. The problem for the moment lies in another place, but I will save that for some other time.

Today's update on Japan Mode:
Sakidori Events March VOL.2
There're also webmanga wallpapers and one-day-limited Valentine Cards :-)

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