Japanese Anti-Fashion

I flew into London today and arrived at the same time as a huge plane from Tokyo. To my misfortune, I ended up in an insanely long passport control line with a bunch of Japanese. (My misfortune, not because I was in line with Japanese, but because I was in line at all. It's like traffic, but on foot.)

One of the things I noticed as I was sizing up the hundreds of people in cue is that, according to my observations, Japanese have no sense of fashion. In fact, it would appear that their idea of fashion is a statement of anti-fashion. It literally looked like they fell out of bed into a pile of non-matching clothes and decided to go with it.

Now I realize that I'm generalizing here, but I feel like my observations of a percentage of the population are no less scientific than the Gallup poll. I also acknowledge that critiquing fashion comes across as a bit gay, but the offense was so blatant, one could not help but notice.

And so it is official: if you live in Japan, chances are you don't read fashion magazines, you purchase your clothes at a 1980's thrift mart, and your mother dresses you funny. You should be embarrased to go out in public.