Cheap kawaii bag can look more than as it’s priced?
Posted by: kirin on 
Jun 2nd, 2009 | 
Filed under: Fashion, Tokyo Kawaii TV
★Bag Shopping Heaven★
4/MAR/2009 on air
The player will show in this paragraph
What are they saying? I can tell you.
But somehow JK (Joshi Kousei, meaning high school girls) who do not even belong to Katakura high school like to use it when they go to their schools. Why? That’s because Katakura bag is cute with several color variation and it just makes them look as “JK”!
Do you remember Mori fashion? Sukuba-mori means overloaded decoration to highschool bag. (We like to abbreviate words. Suku from Sch(ool) and ba from ba(g), you know…)
Here’s a cute decorated Sukuba sample photo.
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Image photo is quoted from here.
Speaking of cute kawaii bags, they could be paper bags that we get at shopping. Here comes again, Shobukuro, meaning sho(pping) and bukuro (bag). CECIL Mc BEE prepared as many as 100 types of paper bag samples in 6 months until they determined which color/design bag for which store in what location. “Our customers have various tastes and their age also varies. That’s why we want to make things that still keep them satisfied.” |
In fact, they change the paper bag design and color according to where the store is located. In Shibuya store, their paper bag is black and gold, while it becomes elegant white in Yokohama store, which is because their customers in Yokohama are rather office working women, unlike Gyaru in Shibuya. When it comes to Ginza, it turns to gorgeous gold with rare and expensive impressions.
Shobukuro is very popular at internet auction sites. (Note: Speaking of online auction, Yahoo auction is most popular in Japan. Not ebay!) Whenever we shop, we can get a paper bag for free. But Shobukuro such as hard to gain or very rare can be sold at high price like 1600yen and this is not unlikely happening here in Japan.
Mr. Ikki & Beni-chan guess how much the bags.
1) a bag mania boy’s bag that he bought 3 months ago.
2) an eco bag named “cher”
3) a pink bag of a young housewife.
Here’s the answer.
1)193,200 yen. The bag is made in Florence, Italy.
2)This bag is only for the people who make purchases at the cher shop to buy at the price of 840 yen. The cher shop has sold over 150000 pcs of it so far. Because it’s just so cute, they sold out number of bags in a single month that they had planned to do in 1 year.
3)800 yen. The girl is good at puchipura shopping.
(Here again, puchi meaning petit and pura as in pr(icing). So it means cheap!)
Cheap kawaii cute bags are nice. But we may want to have a good brand bag at some occasions, a formal party, for instance. Liberte＆Noblesse in Aoyama, Tokyo is a company that offers a membership dress/bag/etc. rental service. They have high-class bag collections as many as 50 kinds with its price ranging from 300,000-400,000 yen (about US$3,000-4,000) each. A member can rent such luxurious items for only 3000 yen per item. (That’s how it is spoken in the show, but it looks more expensive when I read the webpage of this company.) Such service is getting popular in Japan these days, and similar services are available one after another just like this.
In average, how much do Japanese girls spend for a bag?
It’s 12,570 yen. Crystal Ball is a famous bag brand in UraHara. (Ura=back + Hara(juku) 
) They have stores in Taiwan and Hong Kong, too. The average price is 17000 yen and they produce as many as 100 patterns per year.
Eco bag is also very popular in Japan. It’s said 68% of people have it.
The best thing is being ecological and kawaii at the same time.
There was a remarkable eco bag that drew attention in 2006 NYC. It was made in Japan, made of old newspapers. Even though it’s made of newspapers and glue only, it’s very strong and durable against 4 x Japanese radish.
The bag went so famous in the U.S, and it sold 5000 pcs per month.
Finally the episode ends introducing a university student entrepreneur Himiko-san. She created her bag brand collaborating with Japanese skilled artisans. The bag is totally handmade needing 1 week for production, costing 60,000-80,000yen each. She’s doing pretty successfully now that people queue to wait for several months to get it.
Kirin’s opinion:
Women love bags (shoes, clothes, and accessories, too).
Every time I’m obsessed with a new one, my hubby asks me “Why you need another one again even though you have many already?”
Men just don’t get that. :p I bought my dog (Pi-chan) somewhere very close to cher store in Tokyo. (It’s here, my Pi-chan is a Shih Tzu dog at the top right of the page.)
When I went to the cher store, there was a notice saying “Eco bag is only available for those who shop here! We do not sell eco bag as it is. Thanks.” 
It has become that popular. Many people just come buy the bag only. The clothes were tagged high prices. I don’t feel like spending as much as US$100 or US$200 of equivalent money for only a shirt or something. Then I’d rather go to Forever21. Here’s another puchipura, hahaha!
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