The new official TOJ thread, 2011 - Page 625

Uncontrol Rider rides tomorrow. Gonna not do any more spoilers, since the shipping is so fast on that anyway. Fur should be huge and fluffy.

I hit the calfskin jackpot again, turns out that guy with the whisky leathers got some more in, all of this stuff is from Italy. It's got good thickness, most are not shiny at all, just a natural dyed looking finish.

Anyway, this time it's not about the whisky or browns, it's about the wilder colors - finally found an awesome red calf, a blue calf, green calf, a graphite grey (dark grey but without any blue or green tints like the lamb has) and then a whisky-like tan that isn't as vivid, it's a bit more subdued than the whiskys from last week.

The guy has about 3-4 jackets worth in each color, but it's not all ours, other companies may come first, there were a number of people in there buying today, checking out the same stuff.

Same price as always for now on those. Pics in a bit, but red, dark royal blue, dark green, graphite are pretty accurate descriptors of this stuff.

Dependent on how long you want to stay, how much money you can spend per day. You need, in addition to lodging, like $50 a day each at the bare minimum if you want to eat two meals while trying new stuff, getting around, having enough beer to feel good, and then somehow get home. During my party days I probably spent closer to $150 a day- I lived inside clubs and never saw daylight, and had built up a pretty godly tolerance to alcohol.
Korea is pretty expensive to party, and if you really want to party it's really expensive obviously, like most of the other big economic center cities. SE Asia is probably better if you want to drink and chase girls who want to be chased. In Seoul people are pretty standoffish to begin with. There are cheap things to do and eat here, but they are intended to be your low tempo places where you pre-drink or take a break in between bar hops.

That said, Korean girls are looking flyer andf flyer as every year passes. 5 or 6 years ago they dressed like shit, were all dumb. Now they're still all dumb, but dress a little better, have nicer looking hair.

Tokyo is way different. I don't know if a week in Tokyo is even enough, it's pretty expansive. And expensive. Probably the worst time in recent (or ever?) history for Americans to tour Japan right now, you'll get 75 yen for a dollar, when it was more like 110 yen 3 years ago. That means your jawnz will all be like 30% more.

For the purpose of partying and getting drunk, Seoul is better. Drinks are cheap and shitty, people drink a lot in general, and there's something going off most days of the week, people are out. The Korean won to the dollar is in your favor, at least for now. It doesn't resemble the Japanese yen at all right now. $100 a day if you can find cheap lodging is sufficient, but you may have to slum it some days so that you can splurge on a couple other days. $100 doesn't buy a lot beyond Korean food and cheap soju or Korean liquors that grimy old dudes drink. Cute girls drink beer and shitty $10 mixed drinks at clubs.

Right now the economy is terrible in Japan so people are staying in and not partying like they used to years ago. Tokyo is ultra mellow right now. What foreign people think of when it comes to Tokyo and cool subcultures and all that shit is at least 10 years old by now, the street snap thing is dead, mega cheap fast fashion has taken all over all the cool shopping streets, gothninja was dead 6 or 7 years ago, harajuku street stuff was dead before that, Tokyo is soft as fuck lately.

I haven't been, but I think Shanghai is really going off lately, people are getting rich as hell in China now and partying hard.

A week in HK is good, I like HK a lot but I get tired of it after a few days. It's a lot of shopping and eating, not much else. Most Asian cities are like this though. Tokyo has a better variety of architecture, art, stores obviously, and foods, I think Tokyo and the requisite daytrips and side trips you do (ie Kyoto) would require two solid weeks if you want to see stuff. Seoul has none of those, but it has lots of frustrated people getting drunk every day.

I just came back from a week in Tokyo last month and I really didn't do a whole lot, now that I think about it. Found cheap drinks and ate a lot of fancy food. When I go back on Thursday I'm on this quest to find a bunch of sub-500 yen cheap meals. I don't club anymore so not likely I'll piss money on that kinda stuff, but I like drinking at these old timer'ish bars where I can drink whiskey and waters for like 8 bucks a piece.

They would have no idea man. I'm sure there's something styleforum-related for a Japanese dude to get their jollies on though. Maybe a story about otter's authentic fake Julius jackets.

It's two part as I said, the dollar did get strong last week, but it slides time and time again. When I started TOJ, I had only myself working here, the price of labor was 25% less, leather was 30% less, zippers were about 30% less, and it was 2009, so the Korean won to the dollar rate was amazing if you were changing dollars, like 1250 won/$1 or more. A huge bulk of our material costs are dependent on the New Zealand and Australian dollar, which has been ungodly for awhile now. Factor in that, the other costs, two workers - it's not a bare bones operation like it was when I was starting out and trying everything for the first time.

Before the dollar surged a few days ago, it was at around 1050 won/$1 for the past few months. The dollar isn't getting truly stronger anytime soon, by all appearances, it will slide back to 1050 pretty soon probably. I gotta brace for the unexpected fluctuations though, so that I don't wake up one day and not know the market has tanked and sell a bunch of jackets. The yen is not related to TOJ, but the won is directly influenced by the dollar everyday.

ps. I realize this is probably forgotten at times, but TOJ is a foreign import product for most of you people (that's like 99% of you) - so the price is not based on the dollar for the purpose of a baseline, it's priced in dollars because I have a paypal account based in the US, that's all. If I had a paypal account in Japan, it'd be priced in yen.