Staff Room: yabori’s Mysterious Screenshot Hat

Last Updated on 2026-07-13 by a-indie

Hi there! This is the BELONG Media editorial team.

Does your phone’s screenshot folder keep growing, never quite organized? Mixed in with all the useful reference shots, there’s always that one meme or bizarre image you just can’t bring yourself to delete.

Today, four BELONG Media staff members — wakiki (moderator), yabori, Takita, and Maririn — sat down to talk about the theme: “Screenshots and photos we just had to take.”

We kick things off with a very strange hat that yabori stumbled upon.

Today’s Theme: Screenshots and Photos We Just Had to Take

yabori

So today’s theme is “Screenshots and photos we just had to take,” right? I feel like I’m actually pretty trigger-happy with screenshots myself. What kind of stuff do you all tend to screenshot?

For me it’s mostly restaurant recommendations. Whenever I see a place that looks good, I look it up on Tabelog (Japan’s leading restaurant review platform, similar to Yelp) right away, screenshot it, and stockpile them with a “gotta go sometime” attitude.

Takita

Mine are mostly social game screens — “social games” are Japan’s hugely popular mobile games with gacha-style mechanics — and order confirmation pages from online shopping. Order numbers, that kind of administrative stuff — I take more of those than I’d like to admit.

Maririn

I screenshot things I’ve been looking up online, like items I want to buy. And since I love traveling, I also take a lot of “oh, I should pick this up as a souvenir” shots.

wakiki

yabori

I can already tell this topic’s gonna show off everyone’s personality, y’know? Looking back through my own screenshots — about half are useful reference stuff, and the other half are pure memes. And the top hit among those meme screenshots is this hat I’m about to show you.

The Mysterious “Declining Birthrate” Hat

yabori

So first — why are we even talking about hats? It’s because there’s something I’ve always found kind of baffling: middle-aged Japanese guys love hats, right? There’s this whole image of “older guy = wearing a hat.”

Yeah, that tracks, honestly.

Maririn

yabori

My dad (he’s in his 70s) always puts on a hat when he goes out. And it’s always got a brim, without fail.

A totally different vibe from the hats you’d wear to Fuji Rock Festival (Japan’s largest outdoor music festival), right?

Maririn

yabori

Exactly — not a bucket hat or the kind of knit cap Maririn posted a photo of once. So I started looking into why older guys wear hats, and found out there are actually quite a few different types. The one we’re talking about today is called an Apollo cap — a style popularized by the Apollo 11 moon landing era, apparently that generation grew up thinking it was the coolest thing to wear. Then there’s the theory that some people got into the habit through their work. As for my dad, his reason is apparently that he hates having his hair messed up. Which actually makes a lot of sense.

Makes sense!

wakiki

yabori

Anyway, back to the point — while I was down this rabbit hole about older guys and hats, I found this particular hat. And this hat has a name — it’s called “Declining Birthrate” (a reference to Japan’s well-known population crisis). The most prominent part of the hat has some very explicit English embroidery on the front (laughs). And then on the back, for some reason, it says “Love and Peace” in Russian (laughs).

Why Russian all of a sudden?! (laughs)

wakiki

yabori

And the product description is something else. It says: “Wear this out into the world and you’re sure to contribute to solving Japan’s declining birthrate.” Followed by: “※ Results not guaranteed.” And then: “※ Please exercise caution when wearing outside Japan.” Inside Japan is fine?! (laughs) On top of that, there’s laurel wreath embroidery — referencing the Greek myth of Apollo and Daphne, where the laurel became a symbol of victory and glory — and the description says “Please be victorious.” “Victorious at what?!” — and that’s when I had to take a screenshot.

That is one serious meme hat (laughs).

wakiki

yabori

Right?! (laughs) But seriously — who is actually buying this? Are there real people out there purchasing this thing?

And it’s not even cheap.

Maririn

yabori

Right! It’s 4,500 yen (roughly $30 USD). And free shipping only kicks in at 8,000 yen or more — so if you just buy this one hat, you pay for shipping. Are people out there buying two of these things??

Does the shop sell other things too?

wakiki

yabori

I looked it up and yeah, they sell other hats, and they’re mostly pretty normal. The vibe is a lot of corduroy caps — the kind of thing a city pop fan might wear. Stylish, mostly. And then there’s just this one hat that’s clearly in a completely different universe (laughs).

Like, why did they even make this? The concept is baffling. But design-wise it’s not actually that strange on its own, is it? Except for the laurel wreath… (laughs)

wakiki

It feels like the product description is what completes the whole thing.

Maririn

yabori

True. In a weird way, it’s kind of a complete package (laughs). Any English speaker would do a double-take. That’s exactly the kind of thing it is.

Someone should really wear this abroad.

wakiki

yabori

If someone actually wore this abroad, things would get wild, I’m telling ya.

Maybe it’d work in reverse — people might find it funny and come over to talk. I wonder if anyone actually wears one.

wakiki

yabori

No idea. I want to put out a call online — “Did anyone buy this? Please send photos of yourself wearing it.”

Post it on X and see what happens!

wakiki

yabori

Not a bad idea. Maybe I’ll put out a casual open call (laughs).

Editorial Postscript

So, what did you think?

What started as yabori wondering why older Japanese men love wearing hats somehow ended with the discovery of a hat literally called “Declining Birthrate” — and that’s his conclusion for this round.

What stood out: yabori, for all his serious editor-in-chief energy, has an extraordinary nose for absurdist content. And wakiki ended up being the one to propose a genuinely optimistic scenario — that wearing the hat abroad might actually attract people. Funny how that works.

Next up: wakiki’s “End of Century” camping night.

BELONG Media Editorial Team
A music media outlet covering indie rock and beyond, from Japan, the West, and Asia. We have published 26 issues of our roots-rock themed print magazine, BELONG Magazine.

In 2021 we appeared as guests on J-WAVE’s SONAR MUSIC. In 2022 we launched our English-language sister site, A-indie.

Our editorial team runs primarily on shoegaze and dream pop.