Yoshitomo Sango treats his complexion to a face scrub, toner and face cream every morning before strolling to a nearby salon to get his hair done.
By the time the 23-year-old is ready for breakfast, his skin is soft and shimmery, his hair trimmed, pomaded and bobby-pinned into an elaborate pompadour.
The daily regimen takes an hour and costs more than 10,000 yen ($84), but Sango says it's essential to maintain his style.
Sango may spend more cash on his looks than most, but he is far from unusual among Japanese men his age.
In a society that in many ways remains sharply defined by traditional gender roles and expectations, fashion-conscious young men are one-upping their metrosexual counterparts in the West - it is not only acceptable for them to obsess over their hair, face and clothes, it's sexy too.
Japan's latest heartthrobs are a far cry from the American masculine ideal of stoic, stubble-cheeked muscle men. Slender, smooth-faced and androgynous stars such as singer-actor Takuya Kimura, or Kimutaku as he's affectionately known, routinely top popularity polls among women, and men in Japan are taking note.
Obsession with cute
Nowhere is this more apparent than in male grooming.
"I shave the tops and bottoms of my eyebrows to make them look cleaner," said Shinya Abe, 21, a wispy third-year student at Kobe University.
Abe, who also uses a men's eyebrow kit of brow comb, brow scissors and tweezers to keep his brows in line, says many of his classmates go further, shaving off their eyebrows and pencilling in new ones. Some go to aesthetic salons, or "esute", to get facials, manicures and pedicures.
"Girls like guys to be kawaii," he says with a shrug.
An obsession with kawaii, or "cute", has dominated Japanese popular culture for 40 years. But it is only in recent years that kawaii has been applied to men, emphasising pretty, youthful looks - with the help of cosmetics.
"The numbers are still relatively few, but those men who see fashion and make-up as a part of self-expression are growing," said Sakae Nonomura, director of the Beauty Research Institute at Kanebo Cosmetics Inc.
"There are more and more men's cosmetics brands and the most interesting right now is in men's skin care," Nonomura said.
Japan's $3 billion male cosmetics market is one of the biggest in the world, accounting for nearly one-fifth of men's cosmetics sales globally, according to market research firm Euromonitor International. It estimates the global market will reach $25 billion by 2011.
Sales of men's skincare products in Japan have surged in the past few years, growing an average 13 percent per year, despite a lacklustre overall cosmetics market, according to Mandom Co, Japan's No2 men's cosmetics maker after Shiseido Co.
Domestic sales of Mandom's popular young men's cosmetics line, Gatsby, grew 12.8 percent in the business year ended in March, but its women's cosmetics fell 7.7 percent.
Source: China Daily/agencies
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