What's happening to me?

Or, more specifically, what is Japan doing to me?

Today, I willingly, without the coercion of any outside sources, purchased this.

Yes, that is what you think it is--a relic of the past that is now worn only by fashionable members of my generation in conjunction with costumes that involve fluorescent bike shorts, sideways ponytails, and other garish mixes of 80's and 90's fashion.

It's a scrunchy, an item which remains a basic, fundamental component of a young woman's collection of accessories in Japan despite its obsolescence in the US.  The scrunchy-saturation of Japan made me laugh when I first arrived.  Two months in, and I didn't even notice them.  Three months, and I wanted one.  Now we're almost at five months, and I finally gave in.

The fact that I feel the urge to defend this scrunchy and talk about how it's quite cute should be a sign of how far gone I am.

I repeat: what is Japan doing to me?