The new school started in April in Japan. In March, I was wandering through the upper reaches of a Nagoya department store (and in May I finally got around to actually posting it) and discovered where a lot of students buy their gakuran. Here, every person can live their Cosplay [LINK] fantasy and get JUST the Japanese school uniform they want.

Actually, I don’t know if you can really buy one without a specific reason or not. Perhaps they have rules to keep people from posing as students. These pictures though show the variety in the various school uniforms. Notice there is a theme to the uniform – dark. There is one school though that sports a tan coat and gray plaid pants. I’m not sure why this school is not represented.

My interpreter has a son that just started high school. She told me multiple department stores sell uniforms for the same schools, and that you can get varying degrees of quality of gakuran depending on where you buy it. I wonder if, even though the uniform is supposed to make everyone the same, perhaps the quality of the uniform causes differentiation among the students?

I’ve written about gakuran before, both at this link and this link, and I get a LOT of search hits as well for gakuran. Perhaps I’ll increase my traffic of 助平 (すけべえ – sukebe – lecherous) lurkers now.