Male grooming

Self-expression belongs to everyone, everywhere. It’s our chance to impose our personalities on the day to day. Recently, we went around the world looking for the very finest examples of everyday self-expression, resulting in our choice of the world’s best self-expression heroes. In the course of this process we also came across some other really impressive people from across the world.

Whether it’s pimping your ride or creating art from bank notes, we found some awesome self-expression in Japan. First up, meet the Dekotora truckers. “Dekotora” is an abbreviation for “decoration truck”, a form of wildly-pimped truck that drivers soup up both on the inside and out with shiny neon, bright paint and extra rigging. It’s as if the Transformer Optimus Prime drove into a Christmas tree.

The Japanese are also famous for having invented the paper décor art of origami. The word stems from ‘oru’ (fold) and ‘kami’ (paper) and has gone global. But when you start practicing origami with bank notes, what do you get? Moneygami! It’s a simple way to jazz up the everyday – such as leaving payment or tips – and stamping personal self-expression all over it.

Want to put a fez on the Queen of England? What about a baseball cap for Abe Lincoln? This can be done in seconds with a few clever twists and folds as one of our heroes Yosuke Hasegawa demonstrates. These moneygamists feel they’re making the day-to-day better for themselves and those around them by taking the ordinary and making it extraordinary.

Why not give moneygami a spin yourself with this how-to app and upload your work to our Facebook wall.

What’s stopping you from embracing the art of self-expression?