Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Are Japanese women Vampires?

Japanese women go to such extremes to avoid having the sun touch their skin it is the only explanation that I can come up with.

The weather is finally starting to cool down and fall is coming to Japan but all summer long I saw women dressed like it was the dead of winter.  It wasn't because it was cool out side or there was a chill in the air.  It was often 95 'F and 90% humidity.  If you have ever lived in this weather than you know it's like breathing soup, you sweat profusely when you just think about crossing the street and even if there is a little breeze it just makes the sweat drip slightly sideways.

Women in Japan like keep their skin as light as possible.  This means in the middle of a sweltering summer the still wear long sleeves, gloves, a hat, and often a face mask, carry an umbrella to use as a parasol and often their bikes have built in covers for their hands to keep them out of the sun or an umbrella holder.  I'm sure that my exposed arms (I have a lot of sleeveless tops) and tan lines were quite the shocker to them.


I remember this day being particularly sweltering.  I was wearing a knee length skirt and a sleeveless shirt and dripping sweat and this lady walked by like it was a crisp fall day.

This is not the best picture but the lady on the bicycle is not an unusual site with the face mask and gloves and umbrella.  The lady in the peasant blouse is the unusual one.
I don't have any picture of it (since I got a Japanese phone it's really hard to discretely take pictures of people since you can not disable the camera sound and it's really loud.  It is a Japanese law, apparently, to prevent men from taking up-the-skirt pictures on trains.) but women also wear face shields that look a little like cross between a welding mask and one of those visors that were made out of colored plastic that I got as a kid at Disneyland.  Anyhow, it goes from their forehead to their chin and is a see through dark plastic like sunglasses.

Now that it's cooler, people still cover up but it looks a little less unpleasant.

I'm wondering how they get enough vitamin D?  Why don't Japanese women all have rickets?  Their milk doesn't have any added vitamin D like in the US and they don't really drink it anyway.  I have no idea what they do nor do I know anyone well enough to ask without seeming rude, but it seems strange.  On the positive side, they do age better than us tan Americans.

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