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two girls in Shibuya for ¥100

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

One day we took shelter from the rain under an awning in front of a store in Shibuya station. We bumped into these girls, who would have melted like sugar in the rain. I asked to take their photo and one of them demanded ¥100 each. So I paid them a hundred yen, and made this photo.

There's a thing in Japan where extreme styles take hold. One in the '90s was ganguro, I think these are more likely the manba or yamanba styles of later times. These girls had taken it to the point of painting their contact lenses!

Over the years, several people have told me they didn't believe this photo was real, but Shibuya is the kind of place where youth culture things like this just happen. Get out of your suburbs and see the world, friends!