Ganguro's Not Dead

The fashion scene in Tokyo is a lot like a living, breathing thing. It's constantly evolving, growing, figuring itself out, trying things, failing, getting back up again and moving on. And some trends are practical and define the era during which they are set. Whereas others are hard to explain in any way whatsoever. Ganguro is probably one of the latter, for most people.
 Without going into it too deep, the ganguro trend basically stands for everything opposite to Japan's already established beauty standards. Whereas classic beauty in the land of the Rising Sun (and in many other parts of Asia, even) is defined by dark hair and pale skin, ganguro goes the opposite way - opting instead for dark skin and brightly colored hair - both of which aren't exactly natural for the typical Japanese person.
 Needless to say, the results are somewhat frightening.
 According to Millo, who had visited the capital in 2008, ganguro girls were actually once pretty commonly seen walking the streets of Shibuya district.

Today, in 2015, there's only place you can be sure to spot one - and that's the Ganguro Cafe. The small cafe is located in the same district, but isn't as easy to find as you would expect. It's tucked away a bit of a walk from the station, on the second floor of a building with no visible signs, asides from a small sticker next to its respective button on the building's elevator. But there's no mistaking it when you're inside.

 Millo and I were sat down as soon as we got in, and the cafe was fairly empty, quiet - which is somewhat of a miracle when speaking of Shibuya on a Saturday. And sure as hell, the waitress was as authentic a ganguro girl as they got. She looked like she had spent untold amount of hours in a tanning salon. Her hair either had four layers of dye in it, or was a very intricate wig. Her nails were each five inches long, and had anime characters stuck on to them. I can't even begin to describe her make-up, but you can pretty much see it for yourself.

 But I've got to hand it to her, she was actually really friendly! In the 3 years I've spent in Tokyo, not once had a waitress ever approached me or my group of foreigners and actually seem interested in making conversation, but she actually talked us up and was pretty open-minded about us not being fluent in Japanese. It made me think whether the girls there making themselves look so different was representative of the fact that their personalities were so different than your typical Japanese girls.

 The food at the cafe was almost as unusual as the waitresses, with one of the recommended items on the menu being deep-friend sausage balls with ketchup and mayonaise, dyed black with squid-ink. "That's because we're all dark-skinned with white and colorful make-up," the waitress explained. Okay, so not much thought went into this in terms of culinary science, I thought, but hell, I went for it. Well, it tasted weird, but was not at all as terrible a shock as I expected, which is kind of representative of the cafe as a whole.

 Y'know, I actually had a pretty good time at the Ganguro Cafe, so go check it out, if you've got the guts. If you're girl, they'll even do your make-up if you want it badly enough to spend 70$ for it.

Lots of pics courtesy of Millo. My camera's battery died. Woops.