Discovered this treasure of a store in Yoyogi Uehara.  It has stationary, books, stuffed figures, and art of Murakami, Yoshimoto Nara, Yayoi Kusuma, Chiho Aoshima, and other Kaikai artists.  I left with a giant puppy king.  You will get to meet him soon.

Over the weekend, I went to the Miu Miu store in Aoyama.  I dunno why, maybe to torture myself because I want to own everything in the 2010 spring collection but couldn’t possibly afford it but may as well look and drool, yeah?  I can’t say anything that hasn’t been said about it before, it’s girly and a tiny bit ridiculous but in a really sophisticated way with wonderful prints like kitten, puppy, sparrow, and naked ladies.  It is what I would wear every day if I were rich.  The girls who worked there were painfully cute and sweet and the clothes were SO BEAUTIFUL in person and I couldn’t help myself, I asked to try on a pink sparrow print dress.  My facial expression in the photo is a little creepy maybe but I didn’t have the luxury of taking many snaps, and God, it’s so MySpace to be holding a camera in a picture, but there was no way around that.  This is my first time being one of those people that takes pictures of themselves in the dressing room, but having a picture of myself in a Miu Miu dress is the closest I will ever come to owning a Miu Miu dress, so.  Instead I got myself a cute pink kitty cat collar which I can see myself wearing with everything- I am loving the idea of wearing it with plain, cheap clothes, and have them suddenly looking well put together.  Oh on my way home a lady was walking her pet rabbit– a perfect ending to that outing.

fake rayban glasses: koenji
pink kitty collar: miu miu
sweater: american apparel (on super sale)
denim shorts: levis (also on super sale)
grey tights (the ones i wear with everything yeah)
silver flats: dillards
tea strainer: franc franc (please tell me i’m not the only one who uses a tea strainer as an accessory)

You might have heard of Spank! fashion from fashion haley, or sushizume, or zipper magazine, or the crappylovely livejournal community.  There are tons of youth culture fashion trends here that come and go, but at the moment this one hits the spot for me because of the pastels, neons, and nostalgia factor.  Spank!’s used clothing store specializes in clothes with that so-tacky-it’s-amazing 80’s feel and the decor is pinks, greens, lavender, and those old toys you forgot you ever owned.  Heather and I went to their store in Koenji a few weekends ago and felt like we had been transported back to kindergarten.  Pilly flannel PJ sets like the ones you used to get at Target.  Sweatshirt and sweatpant sets adorned with puffy paint- somehow styled to look darling.  They also sell used clothes embellished with more bows and ribbons, pastel and neon heart and bow shaped jewelry to match.  Gothic lolita is refined in a tea-party sort of way, FRUITS is the modern art of clothes, but Spank! fashion has zero sophistication, just 100% pure 6-year-old-girl-from-the-most-ridiculous-decade-of-history unabashed dressing glee.  That’s exactly what’s so charming about it.

I’d like to interject that maybe my favorite thing about the store was the smell.  It smells like a cake from a scratch and sniff book, the most delicious, fake sugary smell you can imagine.  If spank! sold a perfume, it would be in a bottle shaped like a fake princess wand with a heart-within-a-star on top, and I would buy 50 of them.  Heather said “It smells like my childhood!”

The store staff is the cutest!  The girls have huge eyelashes, high waisted skirts, colorful hair, and sweet soft voices.

I picked out a pale aqua sweater, a high waisted pink/yellow/white printed skirt with a huge bow on the front, and fake white rayban glasses.  I plan to wear them when i go to Tokyo Disneyland!  which, might be a bit heretical because spank!’s head owner thinks disneyland is tacky :/

To get to spank! go to Koenji station South exit, take the street on the right that is lined with stores.  Walk for oh, maybe 5 minutes, and you’ll see a building with a sign in front that says “Spank!” and a bunny on it.  You can’t miss it. It’ll be on the 2nd floor and in front of the building. Also, walk a bit further down the street for their other store “Ticket to Darling”.  That store is a bit more pastel and less neon; besides clothes and jewelry, it also sells some vintage carebears.  Yeah, carebears have been back for a while.  But these are the original thing.  Their eyes are set too close together.  They are a tiny bit filthy and a tiny bit creepy.  I want birthday bear, with the cupcake on his tummy. And this rainbow unicorn.

Basically the lesson from Spank! is NEVER get rid of any of your old stuff, however hideous you think it is at the moment, because one day you will think it is beautiful, unremoveable taffy residue and all.

If you aren’t in Japan you can put a huge silly grin on your face by looking at these cutesy photos.   (That’s Spank! staff Eric’s blog. Somehow I think she’s the cutest of them all! And she was working the day we went~) Unfortunately I can’t find an e-bay store dedicated to these kinds of clothes but searching for 80’s dress yields some great finds like this freaking amazing dress!  haha

(Okay, this miiiight have been a tackiness/neon/pastel/girliness photo overload but, I couldn’t pick favorites, and I just got my camera back so, humor me kay? :) …because I will be photo-happy over the next few days, as I have tonsss of pictures to offload)

My dSLR camera is dead!  It is so sad.  It exists in a state between on and off, displaying to me on the viewfinder that it’s “busy” and not letting me take pictures, transfer pictures, or anything else.  Edit: now it won’t even turn on at all.

I’ll have to bring the camera in to see a doctor, I guess.  I’ve been postponing it because the Canon service center once told my parents that it would take 2 weeks to repair their camera.  2 weeks of not taking pictures!  Ugh!  Well, I guess I have my point and shoot.  Boy, am i spoiled now.

I have a memory card full of pictures of the stores I visited, food I ate, and night-time cherry blossoms I saw this past weekend.  Hopefully I will find some way to transfer them soon.

The Walmart-equivalent store near where I live now closes at 10pm instead of 11pm.  This is such an inconvenience!  Again, how spoiled am I?  Today there was a 105 yen sale on the first floor.  I thought to myself, “Yay, tacky stuff!”  For some reason i’m really into tacky things lately and imagine decorating cupcakes with creepy, disgusting (but very clean) tiny plastic figures (1 atop each, surrounded by sprinkles).  Though one tacky thing that i still cannot get into is the clipart that comes free with Word.  Gross!  But anyway, instead of being cheap and tacky, all of this stuff was rather amazing!  My finds included a princess crown, heart-shaped balloons, Keroppi bubbles, a kit to make a beaded strawberry, paper balloon, and Keroppi chopstick case.

So instead of pictures of my weekend, I leave you with a low-res picture of my random pile of treasure.

uniqlo is doing a special run of videogame-inspired shirts that they are slowly unveiling over the next few months.  of the ones currently out, my favorites feature pacman ghosts Akabei (the red ghost, a.k.a. Blinky) and Aosuke (the blue ghost, a.k.a. Inky).  the shirts come in these really cute plastic jars with screenshots of the game printed on the outside.

to show them off in their delicious nerdy glory, i did a home photoshoot inspired by tom scott’s spring 2009 collection, which i heard about via the ever-inspiring style bubble. i sort of wish that i had a nerdy-looking female friend who wouldn’t mind wearing funky outfits and posing awkwardly for a camera. but for right now, i’ll have to do.  (fullview, if you please)

the outfit made it’s debut not on a first date but actually to go dancing in roppongi’s new lex edo club. i shimmied my shoes off (quite literally), conversed with a fetching japanese lad that spoke indonesian better than i do, and caught sight of kat-tun’s akenashi jin. it was a great night.

my gorgeous friend faye visited me this week. during the days i had to work but at nights, we talked, ate a lot of delicious food, and wandered around grocery stores taking silly pictures. and… of course, put faye and i together (in tokyo no less!) and there is no way we could not spend a huge chunk of time shopping!

however, shopping in tokyo is horribly overwhelming for precisely the reason it’s amazing– so many shopping neighborhoods, styles of clothes to choose from, so many stores– so before our designated shopping day, i threw her my pile of fashion magazines– zipper and spoon– and told her to pick out some of her favorite spreads and outfits so i could plan a dining and shopping route.

she was really taken by this short hooded poncho featured in the march issue of spoon. the caption told us it was from a store called “potto”. an online search showed us this store was in ebisu, kind of away from the route i had planned through harajuku, though not far from an acclaimed ramen shop. her longing for the poncho, though, seemed quite intense, so after i called “potto” to verify that they had the hooded jacket we decided we’d skip laforet so she could be united with it.

the aforementioned hooded poncho

as the directions led us further and further away from the busy parts of ebisu, we were genuinely more and more curious. then we saw a funky sign made of crinkled pipes reading “POTTO.” we followed them to a clear glass doorway. “POTTO” was in a little house in a residential area! we had to take off our shoes and were handed little slippers wear as we entered. the store was so charming (really i have no idea how to convey to you how utterly charming this store is), maybe about 10m x 10m total in size. think… garden-like, beatrix potter cute, Mrs. Rabbit wearing asymmetric aprons and Flopsy with 3 ear piercings. the pieces were all either very muted or very colorful, mostly very simple but then surprising with really pretty gather details and interesting silouettes. it turned out that they had sold out the poncho the day before (there are currently only 2 in existence!) which of course made faye a little bit sad (for all of about 2 seconds– it is hard to stay upset in such a charming store!)

the lady in the store (who i later found is named rere) recognized me as the girl who had called earlier.  here are snippets of my sad attempts to talk to the her in japanese as faye tried on dresses:

how long has this store been open? 1 and a half years. it’ll be 2 years in september!

do you make and design the clothes yourself? i design the clothes; my husband helps me sew them. (awww!)

are all these clothes made of organic cotton? yes, organic fair trade cotton!

when will the hoodies be available again? we’re busy at the moment so maybe in a month there will be more. but if you are sure you’d like to buy one i can have it ready in 2 weeks!

rere’s pink-collared white cat is named Mame (japanese for “bean”) and meows and runs freely through the store.

rere showed me a prototype dress that she is still working on that will be released next month. it was an asymmetric, with one short sleeve, one no-sleeved number. she let me try it on and showed me what she’d change in the next version. i am most certainly going to come back to buy it, as well as look again for the poncho-hood for faye.

i also tried on a green floral jumper/pantsuit and a white knitted poncho with a peterpan collar, which, i very well may get when i come back too!

rere asked if i was studying fashion, where faye and i were from, and how we heard of her store. so i told her i was a computer scientist, from america, interning in tokyo, and faye was visiting, and then the whole love story of faye and the poncho, how she had insisted to come to potto. rere blushed a bit and asked “oh wow really? thank you.” she was kind of adorable.

you know, i think i just might do this every month– pick out a favorite piece from spoon or zipper and track it down through backalleys or crowded streets or cute residential neighborhoods, or wherever else it might take me!

so, if you are in tokyo, and like the kind of fashions that are in spoon, please please check out potto in ebisu. it’s aboslutely delightful and you’ll see how much love and care rere and her husband put into each dress and shirt and scarf.  if you’re not, look here and be horribly jealous.  it always makes me so happy and inspired to see people making things and people doing what they absolutely love.

we never did end up trying that ramen place. we plum forgot. we left ebisu with our wallets intact and our hearts full.