Horiguchi san - a fashion faux pas
Horiguchi san - a fashion faux pas
On the Saturday after we got back from our visit from the States, we had an appointment to look at some houses with our housing pimp: Horiguchi-san.
Horiguchi-san had dressed up for our four-house tour. He was topped by the latest hair style trend. I am very happy to report that he had not chosen last year’s trend wherein 83.62 % of all young people between the ages of 20 and 29 dyed their hair blond. Make that, attempted to dye their hair blond. There is a wide color spectrum to transverse to get from coal black to platinum blond. As a kid I had a dog. (Yes, I am off on one of my side tracks. Please sit back, take a sip of coffee and bear with me. I promise to return you to Horiguchi-san in just a moment. Before I leave the parenthetical, I just want to know if I am the only one still laughing every time I see the name Horiguchi? Just asking. Now, back to our story.) As a kid I had a dog. Her name was Shivers. (Don’t laugh! It isn’t funny! When we brought her home she would sit in the middle of the floor and shake slightly. It looked like she was shivering. Actually, she usually peed after the shiver, and Shivers sounded much nicer than Pee-ers.) Shivers was part German Shepherd and part Collie. She had a beautiful thick whitish yellow coat with hints of blondish-orange and a mature streak of grey down her back. The color of her coat would be ideal for those Japanese trying for a blond dye job. But this is not why I am telling you about Shivers. One of Shivers favorite games was to go into the field next to our house and catch field mice. She would catch one, throw it up in the air and let it land on its head (kind of a sadistic dog version of Little Bunny Foo Foo). She seemed to enjoy the way they would lay stunned or spasm from the head trauma. It would eventually dart off. She would let it run a little, letting it build a little confidence and momentum, then catch it again, give it a good shake and then, weeeeeeee! Back up in the air. Once a mouse could only run in circles, Shivers would leave or occasionally chow down on the dazed morsel. One time though, Shivers ate a tainted mouse that didn’t agree with her stomach. The turning of the stomach and the convulsions in the esophagus, forced the bile and orangish red bolus of her dog food deep into the whitish grey fur of the mouse which came up and out (for one last flight) in a giant yellowish glistening ball of phlegm. That color, the yellowish phlegm with green and orange highlights in the dark grey hair is the color achieved by most 20-something Japanese going for a blond dye job. It didn’t look good on the dead regurgitated field mouse, and doesn’t look good on the young folks here either.
As I was saying, thankfully, Horiguchi-san did not have this hair style. He had the new craze. I know this is the new craze because I see this everywhere including on the three guys that work in the salon where Pam gets her hair done. (Pam picks out salons the way she picks out wine bottles and real estate agencies. If it’s pretty on the outside, it must be OK.) I do not know what this hairstyle is called. I do know I can achieve this hair style effortlessly with 6-8 hours of sleep. I call it bed head. Of course given that Japan is supposed to be the most sleep deprived nation on the earth, no one gets that much sleep. So they must get up an hour early to mousse, gel, blow-dry and contort their mop to look like they just rolled out of bed. Maybe it’s me, but my way seems a lot easier.
Horiguchi san had on a blue and white checkered tailored long sleeve shirt. He wore this on a day when it was well over 90 degrees and about 78 percent humidity. Nice shirt, but clearly not a wise choice. I am well beyond that point in my life were I give a flying do-dah what the hell anybody thinks about how I look. I mean I do comb my hair; it would be rude to go out with bed head hair. I rarely wear a belt…but then again, I needn’t one. I have a suit which I wear to funerals and weddings…given the thin line between those two, one suit seems most appropriate for both. However, I do still cling to one fashion mantra. If you are going to wear a tie, then learn how to tie it. I mean Horiguchi-san needs to be adopted if for no other reason than for me to teach him how to tie a double Windsor: tightly, precisely, evenly. Instead poor, poor Horiguchi-san had a tie on (an old, poorly matched tie I might add) with a knot that covered half his chest.
Surprisingly, on our most recent trip to the States, I had a number of folks compliment me on my walking. This surprised me since first of all I am a Walker. And secondly, because I have been walking for a number of decades now. Apparently, many of you think that it is great that we walk to the grocery store, the train station, the post office, sometimes to and from our daughter’s school. (Those by the way are the short walks.) I pointed out that none of those places are very far away. The common response was, well, I would just drive. It is important to note that if we did have a car, and we did drive to those places, there isn’t any place to park. And if I did drive, I would likely have to walk just as far from wherever I could find parking as I do now when I walk from my house. I point this out, because on this very hot day, we did a lot of walking. We were in a car too. We walked three blocks from the office to where the car was. When we got to the first house, Horiguchi san parked four blocks away. It would have required less walking, if we had walked to the metro, taken it one stop, and walked to the first house. This doesn’t take into consideration the fact that the train would have been cooler and there would have been more leg room. The same was true for the next two houses. Don’t get me wrong. I understand why we took the car. It is just all of this walking meant we had to follow Horiguchi-san.
I wear boxers. Yes, this is too much information. I was going to preface it tactfully but decided to just drop that little factoid on you. Boxers are roomy, and I find them to be cooler, especially on very hot humid days in Tokyo. I point this out in contrast to my bewilderment at the Asian tailoring trend of having a wedgy sewn into your custom tailored pants. Correct me if I am wrong, but no time is a good time for a wedgy. And so I am quite honestly baffled by the seemingly popular trend of wanting to have a permanent one.
Horiguchi-san’s stylishly tacky outfit was completed with his fashion conscious selection in footwear. Tennis shoes remain my preferred shoe wear. Although, I do find loafers to be nearly mandatory here. You just never know when you are going to walk into someone’s house or a restaurant with tatami mats and need to gracefully and quickly step out of your shoes. Not to mention that tennis shoes are generally frowned upon at weddings. In Japan, the current trend among men’s shoes is to wear brightly colored, overly long shoes. Pam and I have names for these shoes, but I am going to take the high road here and simply add: I am nothing short of disturbed to see that Ronald McDonald has become a fashion icon. It honestly scares me to ponder how much time young Japanese men spend fixing their hair, shopping for shoes and picking out a man-bag – of course, he had one! Now, I am not saying there is anything wrong with those things. And I am not questioning which way Horiguchi-san swings. I am simply saying, I think it was a miracle Horiguchi-san had taken a break from all those activities long enough to actually be sitting in the corner of the pretty real estate office when Pam first walked in. And I hope he didn’t miss a shoe sale by taking us on a housing tour.
Written September 6, 2005Buy Skype Credit now to make cheap calls internationally
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