Muji house and weird bag

I worked in the trading section of Muji after I graduated from college. "Mujirusi Ryouhin" means "no brand, good quality." But Muji is a well known brand not only in Japan. By the way, Muji sells very MUJI houses in Japan. They’re wooden houses and window houses. They seem to be very simple houses. I like them.

This is the official site of graphic director Kosai Sekine. I know him by the TV ad of the fish shape snack "Otto-to." In his official site, there are more interesting movies and ads. This DIESEL "Daughter" got an award at the Raindance Film Festival. I like this Kenmin/Instant Noodles "Cabbage Rugby." The last copy of the ad is "Try with cabbage."

This is funny: "10 Weird Handbags." I like No.4 the most, Ridiculous Chicken Feet Purse. (I said before, it I wear a costume, it will be a chicken. I like to see "this Kids in the Hall's Chicken Lady" sketch. I don't know why chickens looks so cute to me.)

I tried to find some unique bags. How about this? Face bag. I wonder if Japanese tend to make cute deformations. But foreign goods tend to keep reality like this Armadillo bag...scary...sorry it's scary for me. (Now I remember I did not finish reading 'A Prayer for Owen Meany'. It's a good call!) Not joking type, Umami Ezura designs unique shop bags. This is cute, isn't it?

I found this Japanese language pattern bag in Singapore. It's funny, those are advertisements from fashion magazines. I can read "Buy! these are is cute shoes," "looking for the nice skirt" etc. This is another one. The big words means "recycle corner" and the small words mean "frankly this secondhand space is more popular than regular space." So funny. But of course we can't laugh. Japanese won't use Japanese newspapers or magazines as design patterns, but an English newspaper pattern (or itself) is used very often. I saw some flower shop use it as wrapping paper. This wrapping paper (1m 175yen) won't be an old paper; these are made as newpaper patterns. A funny and unique one is this Japanese Tabi (socks for kimono)...ha ha I think it's a kind of humor (don't be too traditional or such feeling). By the way, do English native people use English newspaper patterns for design? I found Harrods made such a bag design. So maybe it happens.

Comments

[Mari]

Hi there
I am not sure Muji Yurakucho desplay the house still now. Family mart started to sell the Muji item since last year (?) because they are family company. I am not sure Famima in the U.S does the same.

[abraxis]

The Muji in Yurakucho has a display house still? It's really quite nice. Wish they had this kind of infill housing over here!

[Jason Truesdell]

Hi Mari, thanks for dropping by my blog today.

Actually, I've seen some old Japanese and Chinese newspapers used as design elements in the US and Europe... the content is usually unimportant, like English on t-shirts or packaging in Japan.

I found these products: http://www.3rliving.com/SearchResults.asp?Search=Translations

It's also trendy to use kanji for tattoos, often with disastrous results, as you may have seen before on hanzismatter.com.

[julie]

I like Muji! It's like a better version of Ikea; really good for basic purchases. The Muji house is actually really pretty.

Your blog is really nice.
Julie

[Guy]

Someone said that when he was in Japan he saw Japanese with English sentences on the
shirts which made no sense. So maybe Japanese use English words as design patterns?

[Rachel]

In answer to your question, Mari, (in England at least) we use Japanese writing for the newspaper design on things, and also we use English if the text is funny. (Not published papers though, I think).

[Gabriel]

Hi Mari,
ちなみに私のブログで「私と東京」のリンクを設置した。ところでtattooはおもろいね。