Stick to Guessing Weights

An important part of living abroad is learning to reexamine your snap judgments that you rely on for daily life; for example, if I were to purchase some ice cream at the grocery store, I may not be able to trust my inherent assumption that something marked "Ice Cream" would not contain any tentacles or moving parts. One of the things that's hardest to get used to is probably our complete inability to accurately guess the age of anyone in Japan.

This is no big secret, really. When I accompanied Jenn to the Jet Alumni Association meeting in Kansas City, they separated the men and the women for gender-specific talks. I can only imagine the things covered in the Lady Talk, but I can only assume from the last time there were organized Man Talks and Lady Talks that it was something about flowers and bees (also, that mocking a teenage girl about menstrual issues will cause her to develop telekinetic superpowers and slay an entire high school class). The man talk entailed athlete's foot, some extremely self-satisfied discussion of the size of Japanese condoms, and a caveat that any attractive woman a gaijin male will hit on will be at least 40 years old. Ask any gaijin: when judging the age of a Japanese person, subtract at least ten years from whatever you assume at first.

For instance, just look at the Japanese Minister of Defense (right).

Scientists are at a loss as to what causes this effect...whatever it is, it's probably related to the fact that the Japanese also do not sweat. Hell, maybe it's prolonged exposure to Hello, Kitty. It could be something in the air (plastic?), though, as some of the gaijin I've known to live here for five or more years also seem to be immune to the effects of aging. Whatever the case, I've learned that some Japanese people can be somewhat touchy about this subject, taking intended compliments about their youthful appearance to mean that they look "childish." I'll just be careful when dealing with my new boss next week:

I believe he has three children.