muji meal!

¥683 for the meal(the soup was ¥150 extra)
The corn looks so good!


I've always loved mujirushi's clean, simple products; but did you know they had a cafe? I go to muji meal in Yurakucho about once every two months and I always order the same thing. The food is so delicious that I wouldn't mind going there everday. Since I'm leaving soon I better try the other dishes before its too late.

muji meal

paper bag pants.

I would like some baggy high-waist paper bag waist jeans, got it?

sunday best and my best scrunchie!

This outfit has been in heavy rotation since spring.

overalls: apart by lowrys
blouse: rojita(109)
scrunchie: lowry's farm



I am loving this new velour scrunchie I bought the other day(you can also see it in the picture in the post below). I love the mustard yellow color, velour fabric and most of all the big bow. I am definitely noticing a scrunchie comeback in Tokyo. All the girls wear their hair loose these days and the scrunchie fits that relaxed mood. The scrunchies I have been seeing come in nice subtle fabrics with crafty details like pom-poms sewed on. Also the great thing about scrunchies is that they don't pull your hair back too tightly so you can still wear it down later without hair-tie dents. Scrunchies are back!

necklace, necklace.

Jen and I made these heart necklaces last night. We were inspired by a similar necklace we saw at a shop in Parco. The two of us combined had a momentum that is hard to muster when one is alone. We decisively purchased our materials and set off back to my house, where we proceeded to sit and sew for three hours. All in all it cost us under 1,000 yen each much better than the 6,000 yen versions we saw at the shop.

super sweet!

I like super sweet outfits like this Manoush dress and Marc Jacobs flats combination. I have a weakness for overalls and jumpers and I would totally wear this kind of set-up everyday if I could. But to balance out the sweetness I would add nerd nuances like heavy bangs and black frame glasses.

suddenly sunday.

This week flew by. The temperature went up to 40 degrees. I could not deal. So this is my second "Sunday best" outfit. I didn't mean to make it a back to back thing. It really is a humbling and bumbling thing to try to get a flattering picture of myself. It took a lot of shots to finally get these two. I'm channelling my best ye rin mok impression.



dress: vintage
hair tie: flower

sunday best.

I like those blogs were people document their outfits each day. I don't think I can realistically come up with a fantastic photo-worthy outfit each day especially because I repeat outfits, alot. The one day of the week I am consistently dressed up and wearing distinct outfits is Sunday. I always try to dress nicely and comb my hair on Sundays. So I hope to make this a regular feature called: sunday best.

The only problem is the picture. Today I was only able to get these shots before my camera died. I have a feeling this section is going to help me learn how to not only take pictures but pose better(suck it in, chin down, eyes open, etc.).


This is me not getting back in time to pose.

cardigan: betsey johnson
jersey dress: betsey johnson
necklace: claire's
pin: miss van

saturday sketching clothes.

I was a highschool student in the the later half of the 1990's. I remember sunflower accessories, Dr. Martins and babydoll dresses were high on my list of coveted items. I tried to be fashionable in my own way and thought I knew a thing or two about what was "in". However, I remember being stumped when I saw Liv Tyler in Seventeen magazine wearing a long floral spaghetti strap dress over a short-sleeved striped thermal shirt. I remember being so confused as to why she was purposely clashing; it hurt my brain to try to figure out the logic of florals with stripes. I just didn't and couldn't get it.


Thirteen years later, I find myself wearing striped shirts under patterned dresses. The logic of the mismatching patterns finally clicked. It makes everything more casual and free. In the case of Liv's outfit the seemingly mismatched stripes play down the femininity of the floral dress and add just a little bit of quirkiness. A floral dress worn in the conventional manner can seem like a wedding cake: overbearing, sugary and formal. Don't get me wrong I like feminine outfits, floral dresses, I just don't like to feel provocative or dressy every time I show some leg. The stripey shirt makes me feel tough and independent even though I am in a floaty dress and is a way of weeding out the bonehead crowd who'll hopefully think I'm weird and leave me alone, which
is especially helpful when I'm sketching on a Saturday.

puri puri puritty.

I had the pleasure of shopping in Shibuya with Linda a couple weeks ago. She was in Tokyo researching for Burton's new high fashion line B by Burton. After going through several stores our final stop was the game center where we took print club pictures, otherwise known as purikura. Puri is taken from the first two syllables of print and kura from the first two syllables of club; put them together and you have purikura. When I first came back to Tokyo two years ago, I was a year and a half out of college and feeling kind of serious and blue. Naturally, I shunned purikura. To my regret, even when my dear friend, Christina, came to visit me all the way from Los Angeles, I neglected to take purikura pictures with her because of my negative sentiments toward it at the time. I considered it a juvenile form of entertainment exclusively for teenagers. Indeed I have little file books filled with page upon page of purikura from when I was a little pawn caught up in the popularity game of highschool. Also I thought it was vain; I mean have you been inside of one of these machines it's filled with blinding white lights to block out all your flaws and there are full-length mirrors outside to fix your make-up and outfit. Having said that I had forgotten one thing maybe the most important thing about this self-conscious assessment of one's looks and social standing: purikura is really FUN, hilarious and FUN. Yes, I was a joyless sourpuss that forgot how fun and bonding purikura can be. Making stupid poses with someone you just met is an interesting way to get to know them and decorating the freshly taken pictures with sparkles and rabbit ears cements that new bond like nothing else. Where else can you do that but in a print club booth. I mean I can still say more negative things than positive things about it but I can also say that about ice cream. But who doesn't love ice cream? I don't want to become one of those joyless people who don't eat desserts. It's not like you eat it everyday. So I say hooray for ice cream and purikura.



purikura: 400 yen
time spent: 15 minutes
not taking yourself too seriously: priceless

particularly puffy.

Speaking of marketable sexy, cute Japanese women when did Ami and Yumi of Puffy fame land this gig? Are they mainstream in North America? Or is this Gap trying to be one step ahead? I am too biased to know for sure, maybe it's a little bit of both.

These are some paintings I did for the Charm School East "hello, bye, hello" show back in March. The title of this series of paintings is "japop, pop". A lot of Japanese words use onomatopoeia which is "the use of words whose sound suggests the sense"(Merriam-Webster). Often these kinds of words repeat the same sound for example: pata-pata means rain falling and is literally an imitation of the sound or shiku-shiku which means crying and is also an imitation of the sound of the action. Hence, "japop-pop", the other members of the show Aya and Kew also named their works in a similar fashion: "ring, ring", "heart, heart", etc.

Anyways, for these paintings I was thinking about how popular Japanese pop culture is, Japan's culture of cute and the perception of Japanese women. Japan Inc. has many products and I was thinking about how in a sense Japanese women are products, too. I'm thinking specifically 18-24 year olds and 25-31 year olds. They are marketed/seen as cute and sexy playthings and marketed/catered to by all kinds of companies as hyper-consumers. So for me these cartoon characters and the image of the sexy, cute Japanese woman are equally iconic and symbolize what I see as a popular image of Japan, particularly overseas.

how cool collaborations are threatening to ruin my credit.

I haven't had a credit card for the past three years. If I absolutely need a credit card to purchase or pay for something I give my dad cash and use his credit card. It's just too easy to get into serious debt buying useless things. I am so tempted to order this cell phone strap. It's not the price; in fact it's cheap, under ten dollars, but it's the addictive element that is dangerous. One cell phone strap here, a pair of shoes there and before you know it you used half your paycheck. (Do the calculations everybody!)

Anyways, I'm not trying to be Suze Orman here. I just wanted to say that I am a sucker for these kind of collaborations, and by these kinds of collaborations I mean anything with Hello Kitty.

This one is so great cause it's street(space invader) and sweet(Hello Kitty).

But just to be fair I won't let my bad credit history hold you back from this wonderful piece of molded plastic.

Click here for more strap-happy goodness.

zine zen.

Aya and I are making a zine. We had wanted to do something together and had been talking about it for awhile but were exhausted from working, putting on an art show, the weather, etc. Also we had just had a conversation about how it's difficult to do satisfying collaborations and how tiring it could become if you are not totally into it. In my opinion many collaborations look like a visual war of clashing mismatched aesthetics. Although the overall effect might be cool I feel that artistically it can easily become a lose/lose situation if you end up giving up or losing a lot of control. Even so I still enjoy seeing them and doing them. But for this project I really just wanted to do a collaboration that was connected but basically free....that's where I got the idea for this zine. 5things, straight and simple. Aya and I chose 5 things to draw and we each did our own interpretation of that thing. Five of our own pages on each side corresponding to each topic until we meet in the middle and do a mini(stress-free) doodle session.

We spent one Saturday afternoon at the freezing cold shoebox size Kinko's in Shibuya putting the main part together. Aya is sewing the binding(maybe even as I type this) and I have to do the cutting after that. We'll be finished soon. I can't wait to post the drawings. :)