Won't Miss #489 - "I have black eyes."

If his eyes look black, it's because I have a crap camera, not because they actually are.

One of the most common types of English lessons that I taught included asking students to describe themselves. This type of thing may seem a little silly in this day and age of digital phones with cameras and displays capable of showing pictures, but it is something that can come in handy if you're meeting someone for business and have to tell them what you look like or listen to a description of what they look like. Over the hundreds of times that I was conducting a lesson that required a student to tell me what he or she looked like, I probably heard them say, "I have black eyes," 95% of the time. I realize most Japanese people have quite dark brown eyes (irises), but no human has black eyes (except the pupil). I would explain this to students, along with the fact that saying your have a black eye means someone punched you in the face and your eyes are now surrounded with a bruise. Unfortunately, I was generally greeted with skepticism about the true color Japanese eyes. They were black, and my gaijin eyes couldn't possibly see this truth. They might patronize me by switching to dark brown, but if we repeated the exercise in the future, they'd say they had "black eyes" again.

Sometimes, I felt this insistence that Japanese eyes were black was another form of expressing the absolute uniqueness of the Japanese physiology and the skepticism I was greeted with when I said they were dark brown was about asserting a racial feature rather than a difference in color perception. I won't miss people insisting to me that they had "black eyes", particularly in light of how it sounded in English as if they'd been in a savage bar fight.

Won't Miss #471 - skinny guys, high, cinched waists

I'm not a superficial person for the most part, but some things strike me as aesthetically unpleasing. And I'll admit that some of the things I didn't like about life in Japan were pretty petty and this is absolutely one of them. Of course, many of the things we all dislike are of really no consequence, but we have our feelings about them anyway. One of the things which I found really unappealing in Japan was the tendency of some businessmen, especially very thin ones, to wear their pants very high and very tight. In the summer, this was an especially unappetizing sight as jackets were off and I saw men who were looking like they were attempting to recreate the scene in Gone With the Wind when Scarlett O'Hara tries to have her maid tighten her corset down to her pre-pregnancy 18 inches. I think the thing that was most troubling about this is that it seemed an unattractive and unnecessary fashion statement. A belt doesn't need to be choking ones waist in order to hold up trousers. 

Seeing men who looked like they feared their pants might fall down if they wore them lower and at a normal tightness level was a big turn-off for me and I don't miss it. 

Will Miss #178 - pale is good

I'm fair-skinned, and red-haired. That means that I have three states - white, freckled, and lobster. There is no such thing as brown or tanned skin for the likes of me. Back home, that means my complexion is likened to such lovely things as beached whales, dead bodies, and geeks who live in their parents' basement. In Japan, white skin is seen as more appealing than that which has been nicely sun-toasted. I never received a compliment on my skin back home because Americans believe that tans are healthier and more attractive. I've been complimented by nearly every Japanese woman who has gotten to know me well.

While I believe that all healthy skin of any shade is beautiful, I will miss my tone being perceived as desirable rather than unappealing.

Will Miss #69 - Japanese blonds

In a country where kids get teased for having wavy or curly black hair and adult employees who have dyed their hair a shade of brown have to use a kind of black shoe polish applicator to hide their brown hair during working hours, seeing people who just go for the most shockingly different choice of hair color is inspiring. It's one thing to dye your hair green or fire engine red in countries where diversity is tolerated and celebrated, it's quite another to do so in a country where the nail that sticks out gets hammered down.

I'll miss seeing people who are brave enough to just go as far as they can in being different in a country where conformity is the norm.

Will Miss #36 - people with crooked teeth

One of the things I noticed early on in my stay in Japan is that, compared to the U.S., a lot of people never had their crooked teeth fixed. Unless one plans to be a model, television personality, etc., it's relatively rare for Japanese people to bother to get braces. They simply aren't that hung up on having perfectly straight teeth and are okay with the way they look naturally.

I love the way people just allow their crooked teeth to look the way they were born to look rather than torture their mouths and wallets to straighten them out, and I'll miss that.