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Fashionable Japanese Kids: What’s JK, JC, and JS?
21/NOV/2009 on air

School kids from jr. high scholl and even elementary school are now acting like high school girls?

JK…Joshi Kousei (女子高生)= high school girls (age 16-18)
JC…Joshi Chugakusei (女子中学生)= jr.high school girls (age 13-15)
JS…Joshi Shougakusei (女子小学生)= elementary school girls (age 5-12)

Nakako (仲仔)…close friends (This is a coined word only used by elementary and junior high schoolers.)

Don’t ignore these early teenage girls, the 4 fashion magazines that target them sell 700,000 copies in total. There are so many JC who want to be a fashion model to those magazines. They even wear makeup after school.

Even elementary school girls (JS) are so fashionable nowadays they have cute stationery and even makeup tools to carry to the school everyday! Isn’t it too young for the elementary school girls to start having deco nails, skin care, makeup, and modeling just like the adults do?

Let’s look at characteristic of jr. high school girl (JC) models.
-Sukuba mori(=putting overloaded toys and accessories on the school bag.)
-Seiare (=arranging school uniform as they like)
They have cute stationeries and makeup goods but they don’t even carry text books. They leave them at school and do not study at home.

Takashita dori (Takeshita street, Harajuku) is one of the most popular places for the jr. high schoolers in Japan to visit for the school trip.
There are many shops on the Takeshita st. that target these kids. They like to wear the same item among close friends, which is called Nakako item or Nakako fashion.

Asahi-chan, a popular JC model who even works as a fashion designer, shares 3 best spots for JC or JS on Takeshita st.
-Pink Latte…The most expensive clothes in the store is priced 5000 something yen, which is affordable to JC. (I’m even double JC aged but I still enjoy browsing or shopping at the shop myself!)
-ParisKid’s…Cheap kawaii accessories for JC. They can get grownup looking accessory at 315yen.
-Purikuraya P-kan…There is a wonderful Purikura machine that has functions of changing hair colors and eye colors, or adding false lashes and makeup on the photo. With a set of false lashes as a free gift, all these experiences are for only 400yen! There’s no wonder this Purikura has become so popular!!

Sunhoseki‘s price is crazily cheap. It’s originally a jewelry company but they changed their way. 10 female designers design these cheap accessories. One of them spent 9 hours at Harajuku to think of 100 new accessory ideas in a day.

Lovetoxic is an apparel maker targeting teenagers. They use JC (jr. high school girls) as stylist that coordinate for the dummy and reduce the price of their clothes.

JC love charaben or decoben and it’s their moms that make bento for them.
There are many nice tools to help make charaben and decoben.

Takizawa-san, one of the most well-known charaben proficients who’s especially good at decorating boiled egg. She was even featured on the “Face Food Book” published in the U.S.A.
She soaks a boiled egg into Mentsuyu (seasoning soy sauce) with curry powder in, to put a skin color on the egg.
She even tries to express eyelashes by using laver, lips that have lip gloss on by using some ketchup, and to paste laver she uses mayo.

Washizawa-san is not making cakes. Instead of using egg and whip cream, she uses mashed potatoes, because her daughter is atopic. To make it colorful, she mixes it with colorful ingredients such as curry powder, purple colored potato, spinach, or ketchup.

Higure-san is a proficient of portrait bento. She has won the grand prize at the biggest charaben contest in Japan. She usually starts studying the pictures of the model of the portrait 2 weeks ahead of the contest.

Maria-chan is a top JS dokumo (a model to the fashion magazine that was selected from the subscribers of the magazine). She has been to nail salons since she was 2nd grader of elementary school (6 or 7 years old). She wants to be a fashion model.

Mia-chan, 4th grader of elementary school (9 or 10 years old), has been training to dance and sing because she wants to be a singer. Her mom is a single mother who tries to save money by doing Mia’s hair and sharing clothes with her.

JS, JC and Sugawara-san, the popular charaben artist whose charaben blog has over 100,000 page views per day and whose book is selling more than 50,000 copies, are the jury of the small decobento contest held by Tokyo Kawaii TV.

Washizawa-san’s fake cake bento beaten Takizawa-san’s deco boiled egg bento and Higure-san’s Mr.Ikki bento.

Kirin’s opinion:
It’s totally free for anyone to do anything, but I basically disagree with JS(elementary school girls) becoming too fashionable.
I think there are a lot more important things for the kids at this age to learn or do than spending time and effort on fashion or shopping. It’s not good to spend too much time to shop kawaii, dress kawaii and do makeup or nails. They are supposed to play with the similar aged kids, learn very basic rules of the society, how to communicate properly with other people, sports, art, music and anything besides school studies that enrich their personal character throughout their life. Of course I’d encourage them to enjoy having something kawaii for fun, but this is way too extreme and I’d even feel it very weird small kids are into makeup and skin care just like adults do.

Also, most of the kids do not work at this age, but the magazines are too stimulating to ignore. They will end up with asking their parents to buy clothes, makeup gadgets, nail goods, and etc. Parents to the elementary school kids should not spend money for such things but for great books or music and opportunities for the kids to learn something such as piano, calligraphy, golf, foreign language, and something that is left to them throughout their life.

What do you think?

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