G.U

On this trip to Japan, I discovered "g.u." ジーユー 自由に買う、自由を着る. Well, not really....the tour guide introduced g.u. to us....cause we saw her boots and she said that she got it at a really cheap price while on her way to the washroom! and we were like...."washrooms?"


We eventually found out that she was talking about g.u. at Shinsaibashi, Osaka. She was on the way to use the washroom at g.u. when she saw the boots.


Shinsaibashi was not on our itinenary but since we had time to spare so we each paid 1,500 yen to get there and to another place for a kimono show. Expensive! It would have been much cheaper to travel there by train from the hotel. I only found out how I can get there from the hotel when I got back. Lol....next time maybe~


Anyways back to g.u., it's a sister brand of UNIQLO. g.u means 自由, giving customers more freedom of choice...buy freely and fress freely.

You'll find that they sell very similar stuffs. I always knew that UNIQLO is one of the top 3 brands in Japan but I just only found out that UNIQLO is considered a cheap brand!! Well....the clothes sold here are definitely not cheap! I spent RM200 there on 2 pieces of shirt!!!


Ok. If UNIQLO's stuffs are reasonable, g.u is cheap!!! Like really cheap! The jeans there are like 4 times cheaper than UNIQLO, selling at only 990 yen per jeans! Was sooo tempted to buy one but I didn't have enough time! I wonder if they are comfortable. Don't care if it's a cheap brand, next time I will go back and check their jeans out. One can never have too many jeans.

Imagine my surprise when I saw a shirt something like the one I bought at UNIQLO KL selling at half the price!


The company didn't set up g.u. to bring down their other brand UNIQLO. According president Tadashi Yanai : “Uniqlo offers top-notch quality at affordable prices, while g.u. provides so-so quality at the lowest possible prices.” While there may be some impact on Uniqlo jeans sales, the greatest impact will likely be on supermarkets and specialty chains selling low priced domestic brands.

But rest assured, the quality is good. I've checked out some of their products. They're better in quality than many of the things we can get here for the same price or higher. They are able to make it cheap because they haev shifted their factories from China to Cambodia where labour rates are lower.

I guess g.u. is really good for consumers during recessions.

Ok, back to the boots. I couldn't help but get one for myself too. Another lady from my tour got 2!! They're really comfy and at only 990 yen!!! They come is several colours-black, brown and beige. The insides are of either long or short fur material. I chose the beige one with the long fur. They come only in S, M, L and XL.

The picture above shows the short-furred ones.

These boots....in exactly the same design or with sligh variation are very popular in Japan. You can see many girls wearing these boots, either folded half like this, just a bit, or un-folded. I guess other brands also sell them as I have seen boots with the same design but have other brand names on them/ with slight variation in design/ in other colours-pink/purple/white/etc.

Take Disney sea for example.....While I was queueing up, I saw one in front, one at the back, one on my right and another on my left! haaha.......love them, they're super confortable, ligh-weight and quitable for daily wear esp if you need to walk the entire day!