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Arghhh Shivering me Shibuya Timbers!

8 Jul 2004
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So Budd pointed this out in the leg thread, but its something I've been meaning to ask about for a long while anyway.

Back in Japan a walk through popular youth areas like Shibuya, Harajuku, Machida or areas of Yokohama and you'll notice this.

The uber fashionable 'cool' girls, the blonde, the tanned, the alba rosa wearing, the Louis Vutton carrying, the made up, the glamourous girls occasionally can be seen sporting an eye patch on one eye.

Eye patch?

Visions of Pirates and the high seas?

No, these are medical eyepatches, worn when one has had an eye injury or eye surgery.

Now I ask, why are these eye patches so much more common on young 'cool' girls in Japan than any other demographic I've seen ANYWHERE in the world?

Is it bandaging because they have had laser eye surgery (heaven forbid they wear glasses)? Or surgery to make their eyes more 'western' and hence more fashionable?

Or did Johnny Depps blockbust 'Pirates of the Caribean' have amuch more chilling, sinister effect on the Japanese population?


Maybe we will never know!
 
Ahoy, Matey! I did not witness this phenomenon when I was in Shibuya last summer.
 
Its not rampant, like every second girl or anything.
But its a lot more common on that demographic than any others.
 
FirstHousePooka said:
Its not rampant, like every second girl or anything.
But its a lot more common on that demographic than any others.

I never noticed it while in Shibuya nor on my video tape I shot there. I will make a point of it to look for eyepatches the next time I view it.
 
It eye-surgery, I'll bet you. They do plasticsurgery to make their eyes look "western" - they fix the eyelid, so it'll become formed as a european/american eye.
 
BrennaCeDria said:
Thanks for the link.
It appears that the site tries to give support to people with two different types of concerns: 1) medical conditions that require wearing an eye patch and 2) an unexplainable and therefore "shameful" fascination for eye patches.

Another possible source of the eye patch fashion appears to be the 1999 anime Juubei-chan, "The Secret of the Lovely Eyepatch," a fantastic story of a highschool girl who accidently meets a 300-yr-old samurai who wears an wywpatch. I suspect there is more to the eye-patch fascination, but that's as much as I can make sense of right now. Possibly there's a dark and sinister connection too, but that's a bit too scary for me. brrr... :cry:
 
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isayhello said:
It eye-surgery, I'll bet you. They do plasticsurgery to make their eyes look "western" - they fix the eyelid, so it'll become formed as a european/american eye.

If that's the case, wouldn't they do both eyes at the same time?
 
ArmandV said:
If that's the case, wouldn't they do both eyes at the same time?
Maybe they do one eye at a time. Since one eye will always have a patch on, it wouldn't look weird to people of having one eye westernized (as if having the eyepatch isn't weird enough).

Keiichi

:p
 
Hmm, im thinking cool girls would have nice nails, probably long nails, and its only a matter of time before they accidently try and gouge their own eye out.... :D
 
Keiichi said:
Maybe they do one eye at a time. Since one eye will always have a patch on, it wouldn't look weird to people of having one eye westernized (as if having the eyepatch isn't weird enough).

Keiichi

:p


That's what I was thinking, but you said it better than I could.
 
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