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A
day in the life of a kogal (kogyaru)
It's
all about fashion and fun
By
Rini Montague
The KOGYARU
(or sometimes also called kogal) lifestyle is very strange and confusing to anyone who does not live it. You cannot pretend to understand it, this is impossible. There are several things that determine who a
KOGYARU is but I will only highlight one of them in this column.
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KOGYARU
live to shop. KOGYARU generally assemble in Shibuya, a popular shopping district in Japan. Here is the best mall, Shibuya 109,
which is a tower with many floors. Some have stores, and some have
restaurants. KOGYARU like to do all of their shopping here. The most popular stores are Alba Rosa for clothing and Esperanza for
boots.
We also love to get our nails done at Roco Nails in the same tower.
By the way if you have not already noticed, we love long nails, with patterns of hibiscus on them. The hibiscus flower is generally accepted as the symbol of the
KOGYARU.
So to give you an idea of what we do hanging out in Shibuya and particularly at a store like Shibuya 109, here is a good example of a day in the life of a KOGYARU: |
 It is a Saturday, and I have no school or morning school this week. So I decide to meet my friends. We walk to Shibuya, it is not that far from where we congregate. We do not like to take the subway. Men
ogle us and sometimes even grab us (some of my friends have engaged in
enjo-kosai
or date older
men, some have not. The attitude toward prostitution is, however, very different than in the U.S. but in any case we do not like to be harassed).
When we get to Shibuya, we decide first to get something to eat, and head to a
restaurant near Shibuya 109. We are pretty open minded about what to eat but something fast is our preference because we need so much time to shop.
Once we have eaten, we enter the mall. I buy new brown platforms at Esperanza. I go to
CocoLulu, but do not buy anything - I think that they do not have anything cool. At Alba Rosa, my favorite store, I buy two new shirts, a new
mini-skirt, and a new
bag. We shop for a long time, giggle a lot, and just have a lot of fun. By this time it is late afternoon. We make plans for the evening. We are going
Para-Para dancing - the gang decides.
We meet late, in a different part of Shibuya. We go to our favorite club and dance. Para-Para is the dance of the
KOGYARU, and it is very interesting. You use only your hands and the music is mostly
techno J-pop. It is actually very hard to learn but we just try to follow the steps from some of the better dancers who get books and tapes so that they become better. That is something great about Japan - you can still have a great time even if you are not the best on the floor - everyone is so supportive and forgiving.
We head home, it is late, so we take the train. We stop by photo booths on the way to the train, snapping photos of us grinning wide and flashing the peace sign.
It has been a good
day in the life of a KOGYARU.
Recommended link:
Rules for
kogals in school |
