I just returned from Kinosaki—a hot spring town on the Sea of Japan.   At 4:30pm, the streets were filled with people going to and from various bathhouses, dressed in cotton Yukata robes.  Each of the town’s hotels and inns provide a different pattern of robe to their guests, making a colorful street scene, on a warm March afternoon.

I recently took street fashion photos at one of Kyoto’s oldest Shinto Shrines, on a cold winter day.

ACCESS HERE: Slideshow of Winter Street Fashion, 2009

There are snow flurries as we leave the house this cold January morning.  In less than 10 minutes we arrive at 1300-year old Kamigamo Shinto Shrine, 100 years older than Kyoto, itself.  I don’t expect anyone to be out in kimono in such weather.  We enter through the huge torii gate, down the long walkway towards the main wooden shrine buildings and, there they are!  The snow flurries have stopped and some 150 youngsters are lined up and politely posing for a huge group picture.  Today is Coming of Age Day.  A national day off,  when both schools and businesses close.  This is the day when all Japanese turning twenty during 2009 officially became adults.  They can now drink and vote.  At this moment, tens of thousands of young men in suits and young women in hand painted yuzen, nishiki brocade, stencil dyed or embroidered silk kimono are adorning shrines all over the country.  In Kyoto, we can see them in moving in groups, in all parts of the downtown district–laughing, taking each others’ pictures with cell phone cameras and collectively celebrating their 20th birthdays.

See more images of celebrating 20-year olds

I took these photos on the first Saturday in December. These people were on an outing to see the last of the autumn color of the year. Most of the images were taken in and around the huge, wooden Sanmon Gate, in the center of the monastery.

See Many More December Street Fashion Images

Remember the old stereotypes about Japanese clothes, of men in black suits and armies of women wearing designer scarves?  Today, Japan is one of the world’s most creative fashion centers–on the high end as well as the grass roots level.  These photos were taken on a street corner near Shinjuku JR Train Station and in front of the La Foret building in Harajuku, a six-storied building features small, independently run, intensely innovative boutiques, where grass roots-inspired youth fashion attracts fashion spies from all over the world.  The nature of the street wear differs by Tokyo neighborhood.  Harajuku is very youth oriented, whereas the Aoyama district, located just a few blocks away, attracts an older, more elegantly focused demographic.  The Ginza, probably the world’s most celebrated and pace-setting fashion shopping district, attracts well-heeled people of all ages.

View More Tokyo Street Fashion Images