What Kind of Girls Are They!?

Mashuu is sucking on the bum of a barbie doll, with its legs and arms sticking out of her mouth. She and her friend, dressed in punk clothes and faces plastered with make-up, pose for tourists. They are just two of the hundreds of teenage girls - and few boys - who flock to Tokyo's post-modern Harajuku district.

A visit to Tokyo isn't complete without coming to the bridge separating Harajuku Station and the Emperor's Shrine. Often, the tourists outnumber the curiously dressed teenagers.

Mashuu, 16, has been coming to the bridge for a couple of years with 21-year-old Akira to chat with the other girls. They belong to a group of 24, who agree to meet most Sundays. Sometimes, Mashuu and Akira mix with other groups, depending on who's there.

So, why do they come? "Don't know!" both burst out laughing. They giggle some more and are distracted by another group. "We like to see each other and be seen," says Akira.

But only in Harajuku. Most girls, including Mashuu and Akira, arrive about midday and leave with the setting sun. They leave home in their jeans and T-shirts and get changed at public toilets or phone booths around the station.

"My family knows [about me coming here], but are too embarrassed the neighbors might find out. So they won't let me let me get changed at home," Akira says with a smile.

Akira, who works in a tailor shop, sometimes sees her workmates walk past in Harajuku without recognising her. Does she call out to say hello? "Of course not! I don't want them to know."

For a society where conformity is so highly prized, dressing up like this allows them to leave behind the stringent social rules imposed on them at school, at work and at home.

Families are crammed into tiny high-rise apartments and everyone commutes to work or school like sardines on hour-long train journeys. Today, Japanese continue to live with their parents until the minute they're married.

At work, employees are expected to do overtime, often regardless of whether any work needs to be done. Until recently, children had to attend school 6 days a week. Not including cram schools on Sundays and special English lessons during weeknights.

It's a tough life for young Japanese. The pressure of getting into the university of choice is particularly grueling, as they spend much of these years with their noses buried in textbooks.

Conforming to the rules of the company, school or the family is considered more important than one's individuality. A typical aphorism of Japanese culture goes, "The nail that sticks up gets hammered down."

No wonder these girls want to get away from all that - if only for a few hours on a weekend afternoon.

They arrive around midday, get changed, have lunch, chat, pose for tourists, and change again into their normal clothes for another week of school or work. For most of the girls, it's not much different to a dress-up party.

This party, though, has been going on for years. In the 1970s, a carnival atmosphere was created near the bridge. In those days, the roads around the area were blocked off to street performers, bands and girls who dressed up. The local council has since opened the roads and tried to move these people along. But, the girls have stayed to continue their "kosu-purei" (costume play), while lookalike Elvises practice their pelvic thrusts around the corner.

The girls dress up like their favorite band members. It used to be heavy metal and punk. A big influence was a band called X-Japan, a "visu-bando" (visual band), as famous for its costumes as its very heavy metal music.

The kinds of costumes the girls wear have names like "lolita", "cyber fashion" and "visual fashion".

Today, I see some girls wearing Elizabethan corsets and balancing empty silver trays on their white-gloved hands. Black-clothed goths with very light-coloured contact lenses have temporary tattoos on their nipple-covered exposed chests. Some girls are dressed in nurses' uniforms, while others have red paint dripping from the corners of their eyes.

Other Japanese think there is more to the girls than just dressing up. Hitoshi, who works in a Harajuku fashion shop, thinks the girls are lonely. "This is one way to meet people who don't care what you think and look like," he says.

Nineteen year-old Kiyomi Nagajima decided to come three months ago after she met a couple of girls in an Internet chatroom.

She works for a software company in Yokohama, and travels about one-and-a-half hours from her family's home to Harajuku.

"Already, today, I've made four more friends," she says.

Anyone who's lived in Japan knows finding friends is difficult. But for Japanese teenagers it can be hell. Few opportunities exist for Japanese to make friends outside school, university or work.

The Internet has become an important tool for Japanese to find people with the same interests.

"I know about 20 girls [who regularly come to Harajuku] through a web site," says 17-year-old Chiharu Kyou. She's from Saitama Prefecture, an industrial centre more than half an hour north of Tokyo. Chiharu's Internet friend, who doesn't want to give her name, has come for the first time today. She's quiet and doesn't want to talk. But, she does pose for a photo - something all the girls do quite well.

Mashuu and Akira, for example, cover one eye with a hand and look at each other with the other eye. No smiling, though.

Photography is something they can't avoid.

"I don't really like the tourists," Kiyomi says. "Because, it's very rude to take photos without asking." Saying this, a foreigner snaps a shot of her two friends behind us. They scowl at the offender, but it doesn't stop him from taking more - he thinks it's a part of the show.

Some tourists tiptoe around the various groups waiting for a permissive sign. It doesn't come.

"It's okay to take photos if they ask," says Chiharu. The problem is they don't speak Japanese, so they don't know how to ask.

Five o'clock comes and the tourists have started to disappear. Mashuu and Akira and hundreds of other girls get changed back into their regular clothes for the train ride home. Back to eat dinner with their families and prepare for another week of school or work. Mashuu and Akira are looking forward to next weekend, when they can do it all over again.

And how long will they keep doing it? They both laugh. Akira says, "It depends on her. She's the younger one, so I'll keep coming until she gets sick of it!"