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At 7 p.m., Norie and her friend, 17-year-old Megumi, step into a purikura booth, a curtained stall where a camera pops and their picture is printed eight times on a sheet of stickers. They pay nearly $3.40 to take two sets of prints that are decorated with pink bubble borders; $2.50 to make prints that look as if they're standing in a shower; $5 to make two sets featuring rainbows; and $3.40 to look as if they are in a rock band. "Kawaii!" Norie coos. She says she has "thousands" of purikura prints at home. Norie's phone rings. It's her mother. She wants Norie to bring home gyoza--dumplings--for dinner.
"I respect her very much," Norie says. Her mother works at a computer design firm and, to make extra money, teaches lessons to computer students on weekends. Norie's parents have separated but are not yet divorced. In a custom common to Japan, her father continues to live with the family, on the third floor of their home. But the children rarely see him. He doesn't hold down a regular job, and works infrequently. Recently the family had a meeting and decided it was time for the father to move out. "We're sick of watching him hang around doing nothing while my mother works so hard," she says.
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That isn't the life Norie wants for herself. She thinks Shinichi will be a better husband than her father. But she's envious of her older sister, who has chosen a vocation, nursing, and seems to know what she wants to do. Norie hasn't figured out her life. She is still looking. She knows one thing, though: that her look, the currently popular kogyaru, has nearly run its course. "The kogyaru boom is over," confirms Akiko Togawa, a director at Dentsu Group's marketing arm. "I don't think we'll see many girls with tanned faces and wearing camisoles this coming summer. The straight-and-serious look is spreading now." On the doorstep of adulthood, Norie finds her acquired identity to be wearing thin. "Ash brown," she says, explaining the hue she has decided on for her hair once the gray streaks grow out. "Like gaijin. But not tea hair," she insists, distinguishing "ash brown" from the reddish-brown hair that was popular a few years back.
Norie fusses with samples of foundation makeup in a department store. She smears some onto one cheek. Too dark. She wrinkles her nose. The second sample doesn't look right, either. The saleswoman at the cosmetics counter cleans Norie's face with a tissue and applies another tone. She turns to her friend Megumi, who shrugs. For the next 65 minutes, Norie fingers makeup boxes, dabs lip gloss and gazes at her tanned complexion in the mirror, searching for a new face that will give her a new identity.
With reporting by Sachiko Sakamaki/Tokyo
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THIS WEEK'S TABLE OF CONTENTS
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Young Japan Home
The Me Generation:
The country's privileged youth are struggling to define what they want. Their efforts--both frivolous and fundamental--are already beginning to transform the culture
Day in the Life:
What a 17-year-old girl does--and buys
Culture Club:
Tokyo has taken over as the source of what's hip and happening for the rest of East Asia
Sound Factory:
An Okinawa school turns out stars
Talk Talk:
What teens are chatting about online
Not Playing Ball:
A fresh generation is starting to shake up the hidebound world of Japanese baseball
Outside the Box:
Breaking the education straitjacket
Viewpoint:
Actress Youki Kudoh says respect the old ways
Viewpoint:
Parents should examine their own ethics
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