Have I overstepped the boundries of fashion?

I always encouraged John Sieker to wear his rainbow-colored sweater. "Who cares what people think," was always my motto when it came to clothes. While I have been known to sport some loud colors from time to time, I guess this is the first time I wore a truly rainbow-colored sweater.

I bought the sweater a few weeks ago in the Modern Amusement store in Osaka. Although the tag says Modern Amusement I have a complicated theory that suggests otherwise, but that's another story. The sweater is a handsome sweater, but it is definitely a rainbow sweater. It is red, fuchsia, forest green, sea foam green, blue, orange and yellow in thick horizontal stripes. I didn't really think about it when I purchased it. It fit well and looked funky. I just thought like I have been thinking: "Great! I live in Japan, so I can wear this multi-colored dream-coat and no one will bother me about it."

Unfortunately, my school is not in Tokyo or Osaka and my students are not yet used to the liberated styles of fashion in Japan. Some of them just smiled and said my name when they saw me in my bold new sweater, which they always do when they see me. A couple of times I saw some of the younger boys pointing and whispering. I quickly approached them and made them understand I didn't need to comprehend all their words to understand they were talking about me.

I still felt really good about the sweater until a herd of 9th grade girls laughed as I walked past. I stopped and demanded an explanation from them. Apparently, I was wearing a very colorful sweater and that was somehow humorous. Leading the herd was Maki Kumamoto who is very vocal about her crush on me. One of the herd asked if it was from Uniqlo and I was outraged. Uniqlo can most easily be compared to Old Navy. It is a large store with clothes for the whole family set at affordable prices. The clothes are quite a bit nicer than Old Navy and they have really cool t-shirts in the summer time. Unfortunately, their affordable prices have established them as a brand for people who cannot afford better. I expressed my outrage and then Maki and another girl said that they liked the sweater.

So now I'm going to have to wear my new rainbow sweater regularly just to establish that I'm not afraid to do so. Next time I'll remember to wear a tie. Yoshida-sensei (an older English teacher) commented on my lack of one, partially because I was asking him last week why everyone was aloud to dress so casually. There were only four people wearing ties today. Kocho-sensei (Mr. Principal) was one of the four but he was wearing track pants and a track jacket over his shirt and tie. At least I had slacks on! I wear a tie almost every day and hardly any other teachers do. I don't feel bad about wearing my rainbow sweater with a collar and slacks once in a while.

I just found out some of the boys in ESS (English Speaking Society) club made a crack about it not being Halloween in reference to my sweater. On the one side, I give them props for coming up with such a timely cultural joke, but on the other side, I went out of my way to give them candy yesterday!

So why have I just wasted ten minutes of your time talking about rainbow sweaters in Japan? I'm trying to convince both you and myself that the rainbow sweater is here to stay. I'm not backing down on this one, people. I will march boldly in my rainbow sweater! Fortunately, the average Japanese doesn't think about the blatant cultural reference to rainbows that many people do in the West. That would make the whole situation a lot more difficult.