The international nature of Halloween in Tokyo: North American traditions. The Japanese attention to detail. Plus last but not least, British teeth.
Tokyo Halloween 2014
Photographs from a small group of islands
Photographs from a small group of islands
The international nature of Halloween in Tokyo: North American traditions. The Japanese attention to detail. Plus last but not least, British teeth.
Hans ter Horst says
I know that Japan does have its fair share of very scary ghosts and the likes, glad he drew the costume from that tradition and didn’t go for some zombie.
Lee says
There were a lot of zombies, as well as police officers, Snow Whites, nurses, school girls, the lot really. An incredible spectacle. Way more people dressed up than I imagined. An absolutely huge number. All wonderfully good natured too.
Coli says
Sadako? Needs a TV set behind 🙂
Lee says
Ah, good call. Yes, quite possibly. Dragging along a TV as well may have been a bit much. Although that said, compared to some of the outfits, that would have been a relatively minor inconvenience!
Bernadette Marchetti says
Actually, Britain has some of the best oral hygiene in the world. Orthodontics, however, not so much.
Lee says
To be honest, being British, the mockery of our teeth came as something of a surprise. I’d never thought they were that bad. Something that was emphasised further when I arrived in Japan, and was struck by how many discoloured, extra and especially crooked teeth were on display here.
Yet regardless of how much work teeth here or back in Britain need, there’s no doubt they don’t match the wonderfully healthy looking nature of those in North America. And yet in this day and age, why is that?
Bernadette Marchetti says
I never undestood why we Americans spend so much on cosmetic dentistry. My parents got me braces when I was young. It cost over $3000 over six years. I have a *very* expensive smile. Too bad it’s not something I ever really cared about. I think crooked teeth have character.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151592999751843&l=4b612a348b
Lee says
Judging by the photo, it was money well spent!
I imagine most people with crooked teeth would probably say the opposite!
Jeffrey says
Not to be (too) rude, I’ve always though that the Japanese could show (it’s gotten better) the Brits a thing or two about bad dentition. The Japanese mouth often produces that extra incisor, the “snaggletooth” that for too long was termed a “charm point.” An American dentist would, at the least, make sure it got pulled before it ruined your bite with braces being the prescription to fix the gap. You see more kids with braces these days, but not enough.
Everyone I know in the UK complains about how much dental work, even restorative, costs. Seems that NHS doesn’t cover that as well as most private or company sponsored insurance policies do here. But we digress.
From the Daily Fail, so it should be taken with a very large grain of salt.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2271585/Japanese-women-paying-hundreds-pounds-crooked-fang-like-teeth-latest-cosmetic-craze.html
Lee says
Ah, yes, I remember that ‘craze’. No surprise that paper whose name I shan’t mention picked up on it…
That’s interesting. I guess when I arrived here I was looking more closely at everything, so details such as dental abnormalities may well have stood out more than they would have when I was back in the UK. Good call about the cost too. Seems it’s hard to actually sign on with a NHS dentist these days, plus an awful lot of work that was covered, is now deemed cosmetic.
As for Japanese dentists, I’ve had some very mixed results. A couple were woefully old-fashioned, a few good, and my local one now is a nice bloke, with a fairly modern clinic, but he couldn’t fix an issue I had earlier in the year. After countless visits he conceded defeat and said he’d pull the tooth out the next visit. Not wanting to lose it if I didn’t have to, I got a second opinion from a dentist a friend recommended. A young-ish fella who trained in the US. Almost immediately he detected the problem – a crack in the tooth – and fixed it over 2 appointments. How the other dentists hadn’t seen it I don’t know…