So this is going to be my second post about heading to Japan in the summer, more things are set in stone now so I thought I would share.
This trip is going to be a lot more interesting than my last, simply for the fact that I'm going to be getting chance to travel and experience some of the summer festivals in the north of the country. The time I managed to get off work actually falls on a really good time period, even though it's earlier than I first planned to travel, but the first week of August is festival season in Aomori! For those who don't know, Aomori prefecture is the very north before you cross to Hokkaido. At this time of year they have a lot of snow, but in the summer it's still as warm as ever. (Thankfully not as hot as Tokyo, but only by a few degrees!)
As you can see it's a distance from Tokyo. I'll be taking the bullet train the day that I land in Japan. First I'll have to travel from Narita into Tokyo itself and get the train from the central or Ueno station. It's a trip right to the end of the Tohoku line to Aomori city itself and then a regular train out to where I will be staying. Hopefully I'll be able to sleep on both the plane and the bullet train, if not I'll be super jetlagged when I arrive!
After then I'll be staying north until the friday, then back to Tokyo for 10 days until I fly home.
Once in Tokyo I'd like to see a band or two, shopping obviously, and then a few things like Namja town and Sunshine city, The Lockup ect ect. Recommend me your favourite places to go and I'll be sure to check them out !
For those who wanted to find out more about the bullet train here's some information pages which I found useful. I've used the bullet train before to travel south to Hiroshima and Osaka, but not everyone knows how to use it! I can recommend getting a 'JRP - Japan Rail Pass' if you plan to take any kind of long journey by train, it can make things a LOT cheaper. Shinkansen Guide
"After receiving positive stimulation from collaborations with world-class charismatic visual kei artists. h.NAOTO started the “h.ism” project based on the theme of co-existence between fashion and music. As one of the results of the project, in 2007 the collaboration between the young fashion design duo IBI and MINT, “SIXh.” is born. In 2010, with designer MIKA in the lead, SIXh.’s ladies collection “MelT” brand has joined SIXh.’s lineup. With gorgeous butterflies and roses as the main motifs, mixed in with sexiness and a devilish cuteness in the MelT style, the IBI Ageha-kei fashion is well on its way of expansion."
When people mention H.naoto, most think of Hangry and Angry and similar brands within the 'H.naoto' identity, but today I wanted to take a look at Sixh! Starting off as a men's brand primarily, they now produce a female line. They lable the line as 'ghost-kei', a mix of gothic and host-kei, keeping the tailoring popular in both host and a lot of gyaru-o brands and giving it their own individual style. Purples and silvers are a popular accenting color in most of Sixh along with the black/white/grey as you can see in their A/W campaign in the video above, pink does creep into the girls collection though. Mint's collections seem to carry more muted colors though, beige and neutrals seem to be more to his liking.
Both Mint and Ibi have collaborated with popular hosts/models on previous occasions too! (A line named 617.) This was done with 条 誠 (Makoto Ichijyou) and 皐月星七 (Setsuki Sena) from Men's Spider.
Has anyone ever been inside the stand alone H.naoto stores? I think they look amazing inside, even the shop itself is a piece of art!
So today was the day where I finally banked the cash I'd been saving, and then went ahead and booked my flights to Japan for this year! It's been a while since I've been back there (this will be my third visit) and I'm really looking forwards to it. Lots of things have happened over the past few months, and I only decided this week that I was really going to go for it. I'm really glad I have now, and I just need to make sure to keep saving hard between now and then!
I'll be going for the 30th July - 13th August and it's going to be HOT.
Living in Wales we don't get much hot weather, so my summer clothes are almost non-existent, I'm going to have to invest in a couple of outfits I can take, then I can stock up on nice clothes while I'm out there. I plan to spend at least a week in Tokyo itself, and then for a few days I'll be traveling up to Hirosaki to stay with a friend of mine! So I'll get to see a new part of Japan which I've not been to before. My other trips involved Kyoto, Osaka, Hiroshima, Nara, Hakone and Tokyo and a few other places, so it will be really nice to travel north and see somewhere different.
Is anyone else planning on visiting Tokyo this year?
So after a good bit of thinking, I decided to come up with a mini series of posts to fill space in my blog, and hopefully make it a bit more informative for people to read, rather than just have random posts of my own. It's about time I put more effort into this. Each of the posts will consist of one brand, but feel free to ask about something you'd like me to look into. Otherwise I'll just keep going with the ones I love the most. My latest trip to Japan will be happening towards the end of the summer I hope, and I wanted to do a more detailed look at my favourite brands before I leave, then I can show you all the gets when I get back.
Monomania is on the 1st basement floor in the La Foret building in Harajuku, Tokyo! The brand has a limited color pallet, reflecting their name, mostly black and white pieces but there's color throw in here and there. A lot of their stuff is oversized and unisex, but there are a few pieces aimed at either male or female, really wearable no matter your size. (We all know how tiny some brands carry their clothes!) they are pretty well priced too, even more so if you catch them when they're having a sale (like now!).
Now onto some snaps. See if you can spot the brands signature print.
