Sort of Arbitrary Really

To continue on my observations of the more odd culture found in Japan, my next subject is SARs masks. At least that’s what I know them as because other than doctors or dentists I never saw people wearing these white masks in public until the threat of SARs broke out, which was shortly before my first visit to Japan in 2003. In Japan they are just called “masks” or more accurately “masku” and people wear them all the time. Students wear them when they serve school lunch (kids dish out the lunches in Japan, not Lunch Ladies) and adults wear them if they have a cold or the flu or if they don’t want to contract a cold or the flu. I just think it’s creepy. To see so many people looking like they walking into surgery, but really are on their way to teach a class. I even see people wearing them alone, while driving in their cars, protecting themselves from what? They give people an expressionless mute-like quality that reminds me of Hello Kitty, because she too, has no mouth. But there is a sort of sinister element, a sort of obsessive-compulsive germ-a-phobia about the whole thing. But it’s Japan, so they’ve taken some dark and made it cute. I’ve started collecting children’s SARs masks which come in brightly colored packaging, with cute character details, because something about them is uniquely and thoroughly Japanese.