Amerika-Mura in Osaka is one of those truly uniquely Japanese locales that most gamers/anime fans/n3rrrdz assume makes up 90% of the island nation of Japan (the other 10% split equally between ninjas, robots that turn into other things and giant rubbery monsters). Gwen Stefani might have taught a nation of teenaged white girls about Harajuku, but those chicks are posers compared to the hardcore rock fashionistas that cruise this Osaka hotspot. Read on for more, with some great photos I took on my trip.

As you can undoubtedly tell from the name, Amerika-Mura is literally “America Town,” a series of interconnected streets that hold up a crazy rock-’n-f’n-roll funhouse mirror to what the kids in Osaka must assume is American culture. Huge global brands like Apple, Nike, Adidas, American Apparel and suchlike sit right next to Japanese outlets like UniQLO, B.S.T. (”Beast”) and approximately 300 shops that would make Hot Topic blush with shame and hide its stupid Fallout Boy t-shirt. Gutterpunk kids with neck tatoos and green spiked mohawks stride past Japanese b-boys on skateboards; the few muscle cars, choppers and convertibles you’ll find in Osaka are all cruising around Triangle Park; the boys all look like girls (imagine Cloud Strife with acne and one-off sneaks) and the girls mostly look like, well, strippers.

Music cranks out of every shop in the area, filling the air with US hip-hop, Japanese reggae (for reals, AZN kidz with dreads and Lion of Judah tats are funny as hell), various forms of electronic dance music and straight up, god-bless-Amerika rock. Needless to say, I find Amerika-Mura to be heaven on earth, a tiny neighborhood of ever-changing sites and sounds that are equal parts awesome and hilarious.

The majority of kids coming into this area in Osaka are not just dressed to impress, but dressed to blow away. While kids in Harajuku tend towards wackier displays of goth frippery, the Osaka-ites are all about looking like they just stepped out of a J-Pop music video. I didn’t know that hair could be gelled out into such gravity- (and taste-) defying heights. I was completely awed by these kids’ dedication to fashion; In late January, Osaka is occasionally hit with snow flurries, so I was wearing a combo of thermal shirt, hoodie and snowboarding jacket with gloves, scarf and wool cap. The girls in this area of town (and nearby Shinsaibashi mall) were rocking a jean shorts/jacket combo that made it look like they had on nothing more than their jacket, fishnet stockings and pointy, pointy boots (”whore boots,” as Shigemi from Capcom Europe deemed them, much to our delight). Keep in mind most of these girls weighed in at 90 pounds because they were wearing about 20 pounds of jewelry and hair product.

The dudes were a bit more appropriately dressed, with the current winter fashion tending towards big, shiny, puffy shell jackets with fake fur lining. And slapped-on patches with the requisite jumble of English words that probably only make sense when run through the Bablefish Japanese to English translator. And maybe not even then. Of course, pair that with artfully ripped jeans sporting holes big enough for owls to roost in, and your overall heat retention has been negated. Just looking at the crowd made me cold, but as far as I could see, there were no T-Energy posts nearby.
Stomping through the streets and alleys (literally) of Amerika-Mura, I marveled at the incredible display of stylized fashion on display. Then it hit me: it’s not that all the kids on the streets in Amerika-Mura look they just stepped out of a music video, it’s more like they just stepped out of a video game. While North American gamers tend to chuckle at some of the DMC fashion choices (really, all those buckles and bangles while sword fighting?) or have simply come expect wacky looks from a Japanese game, I never realized that clothes of similar style could be found on every street corner and in every boutique. Where is Japanese youth culture fashion coming from? Are the games influencing the look of the trends or are the outre clothes being fed into a PlayStation mixmaster? Do the kids in Osaka all look like Final Fantasy characters, or has Square simply been snapping photos of teens on its lawn and then chasing them off with a hose?

I can’t answer those questions, but what I can tell you is that if you’re a six-foot-tall foreign devil closing in on 200 lbs., don’t even bother trying to buy a pair of jeans in this particular corner of the world, unless you want to be made to feel like the last living member of the Fat Boys. While scoping an amazing pair of jeans with dragons embroidered on the leg, the helpful shopkid told me, “Ok, ok, two-XL! I get for you!” Screw you, slim, I’m going back to Mos Burger for seconds.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 29th, 2008 at 3:42 pm and is filed under Those crazy Japanese!, Devil May Cry®, Capcom®. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.