WHAT'S IN A JAPANESE WOMAN'S PURSE? LET'S LOOK INSIDE!

Have you ever spent time with a Japanese person of the female persuasion? She probably carried around a purse, right? I bet she pulled out some interesting things out of it, like strips of oil-eating tissue paper, or a colorful bottle of milky scent water. What about those bits of paper with writing on it that look like they could be tiny books or throw-away labels, but she yelled when you tried to innocently throw them away for her?

Well, let's dive into people's personal belongings and de-mystify some of these weird every-day items, learning some subtle cultural quirks while we're at it!

KINDS OF BAGS

Let's start with the outside and work our way in. What kinds of bags do Japanese women carry? Well, there are a lot of different kinds of thing-holders that people have thought up and slung onto themselves. Here are a few examples.

PURSES/TOTES

You can find a wide variety of purses in Japan just like you can anywhere else. Totes are popular because they are relatively cheap, match with any outfit, and can carry a lot of stuff. Sometimes you can even get totes as freebies wrapped literally inside magazines such as non-no or Seventeen.

Other purses that seem to be popular right now are leather and shoulder-strap purses. Small backpack-like purses are also pretty widely used.

Also feel free to go bag shopping on sites like this. (It's all in Japanese, but at least you can browse. If you want to buy, there's always the Chinese Ebay-like site Taobao, which takes payment options from around the world so long as you can navigate around the Chinese.)

SCHOOL BAGS

Middle school and high school students tend to carry School Bags. Sometimes shortened to "sukuba" which sounds like "scuba", most teenagers opt for one of these bags over a backpack. Some use both, especially kids who go to high-level schools and have to carry twice their weight in books.

There are plenty of ways to show your own style with a school bag. You can choose different colors, brands, fabrics (leather seems to be popular among fashion-conscious teenagers), and sometimes hang whatever keychains or charms you want on them, depending on your school's rules.

BRAND BAGS

Japanese women have had a fascination with brand items for quite a while now, and in fact account for consuming over 40% of the world's luxury brand items. The video above shows people coming in to a brand recycle shop to buy and sell brand-name bags and items for discounted, but still ridiculous prices.

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