Why do the Japanese always peel their fruit? 2nd attempt

May 31, 2010 at 11:31 am (Edo period, Japanese food and drink, Japanese fruit, Japanese history)

My in-laws are convinced that it comes from the 70s, when Japanese chemical warfare on farm bugs (along with pouring pure chemicals into rivers etc) made the common complaints about Chinese imports today seem the nationalistic nonsense that it mainly is. My own theory, though, is that it goes all the way back to Edo times, where the lack of animals (most people never ate meat, milk products were unknown, most people were forbidden to ride horses) meant that the manure was almost always “night soil” (human excrement), with the consequent greater risk of the spread of diseases.

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Why is mobile phone television so popular in Japan?

May 28, 2010 at 11:05 pm (Japanese mobile phones, Japanese technology, Japanese television)

Korea being the second biggest market.

I’d always assumed it was the long commutes, but a recent TV-themed special supplement in The Economist convincingly argued that most mobile phone TV use is actually at home and it fills the role of TVs in the bedroom in the American and UK home. That might also explain the young guy who sits half the evening in his car in front of our house watching TV on his car’s satellite navigation screen

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Why is it so easy to spot Japanese women in Seoul?

May 26, 2010 at 7:32 am (Japan and Korea, Japanese women)

This is a regular topic of conversation between me and my wife. The easiest thing to spot is usually the particular colour of hair dye, as dying your hair is far less common in Korea and the shades are almost always different (although Thais and Chinese tourists sometimes have the same colour as the Japanese). I’m convinced the surest sign is a shuffling gait, but obviously my wife isn’t too fond of that explanation! (See another post for possible reasons why Japanese women walk that way)

Other possible explanations, but please note that the Japanese on holiday in Korea are just a small subset of Japanese and rarely include Shibuya panda girls (on the beach in Kamakura beach instead) or Ebi-kei (in Europe or planning to go):

  • Clothes- especially woolly hats, Ugg boots and other “cute” and decidedly unglamorous stuff- Sex and the City seems to have had a lot more impact in Korea than in Japan.
  • Shoes- Less likely to be wearing high heels, and walk in a particularly Japanese way in them too
  • Smiling and laughing a lot, especially if they cover their mouths with their hands
  • A lot less spontaneous in conversation, even with who you imagine are their friends if they are on holiday with them. This is particularly true with groups of middle aged or mixed aged Japanese women in a Korean cafe, where you can spot the older dominant one much quicker than with Korean groups
  • Different attitudes to eye contact with strangers, though can’t exactly define it
  • Much more likely to carrying brand carrier bags, especially one that they’ve kept to use as an extra handbag
  • Much more open neutral expressions

You can also look at it the other way round, of course, and we did spot one group of obvious Korean girls when we were back in Tokyo. Telltale (though by no means universal) signs include:

  • Very low straight fringes (not sure why, but Koreans are even more obsessed than Japanese with having a “small face”, so could be that)
  • Bushier eyebrows
  • More bodily contact, e.g. touching the arm of the person you are talking to
  • Girls holding each other’s arms or even hands as they walk along
  • Style a bit like Japanese bubble years body-con, e.g. skirts with very high waistbands
  • More likely to have had plastic surgery to get a “high” nose

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