Clothes to Bring

If you are traveling somewhere you are going to want to bring clothes. Well, not everyone does. I saw a girl online that just brings an empty suitcase and buys a bunch of clothes while traveling but I won't be doing that and you probably won't be doing that either. Anyway, the weather and standards for clothing are different in Japan than where I live, so I have to keep that in mind while picking clothes. Also, this is mostly for girls because the standards aren't really any different for guys except for maybe put a little more effort into how you look. Maybe. It's much easier for guys.

So I'm in the land of 55 Fahrenheit/13 degrees Celsius and raining in the middle of June. If you don't believe me, here's a picture I took yesterday out the window of a bus I was riding to a lecture. Also I had to stand in that and get soaked.

Because of this, the majority of my wardrobe is t-shirts, long pants, and hoodies. There are a couple weeks during the summer in which it gets hot enough to want to wear shorts, tank tops, skirts, or dresses, but in those couple weeks I often just wear the same few things because I can't be bothered to have clothing I don't even have a chance of wearing 9 months out of the year. It was actually hot enough to wear a skirt a couple weeks ago, but it's cold again.

Enough of me talking about how rainy it is where I live. It's frickin' hot in Japan. Humid too. I'm not from a particularly hot or humid area so this is going to kill me for a while. Eventually I'll get used to it but there will be much suffering before then. Basically the majority of my clothing would simply overheat me so I have to bring mostly lighter clothes. Things like skirts and dresses are especially helpful for staying cool.

Now to talk about how standards for clothing are different in Japan. In America, v-neck or otherwise low cut shirts are completely normal and so are tank tops. Short shorts are becoming more and more common but still not considered completely okay. Now in Japan, any neckline below armpit level is too low cut, basically nobody wears tank tops, and shorts, skirts, and dresses are often quite short. While it's not too difficult to find good shorts, trying to find shirts that have high enough necklines can be quite challenging. I went clothes shopping the other day with my mom and sister to try to find some shirts and a dress that I could wear in Japan and it took all of us to find shirts with high enough necklines (just to clarify this is about how high I like necklines anyway). All the dresses were either sleeveless, too low cut, or both. I picked out a dress with sleeves but I'll have to wear a tank top under it. Light colors will reflect more light and thinner fabrics won't overheat you as much so keep this in mind when looking through your own clothes or racks at a clothing store.