Japanese face masks

One thing which surprises most foreigners when they come to Japan is the number of people wearing face masks. Many people wrongly assume they are wearing them to avoid pollution. In fact, they are wearing them to avoid giving people their colds or the other way around (i.e. they don’t want to catch a cold from anyone else).

Due to the swine flu epidemic frenzy and mass media hype, face masks have sold out in many shops around the country and it is now even more common to see people wearing them. There are some real fancy face masks coming out now which kill bacteria among other things and look more like something out of World War II (although these ‘oxygen type masks’ are generally only worn in extreme cases (or by extreme people) and are not the norm.

Whether or not these face masks actually protect you (or others) from infection is another topic of debate, but if you are in a heavily populated area like Tokyo or Kyoto, people will appreciate it if you wear a mask and you have a cold. At a minimum it will prevent you slobbering on someone when you have a nasty cough. Personally, I haven’t mustered up the courage to wear one yet.