Hello Sweetie!
Forget the Ideal Home Exhibition. Forget the Motor Show. We've got Kasihaku 2008, otherwise known as the National Confectionary Exposition. Now in its 25th year, literally hundreds of thousands of sweets enthusiasts descend on Himeji for this "showcase for sweets and desserts from all across Japan" (sayeth the blurb).
It's not Japanese if it doesn't have a jingle, and it's not a jingle if it's not stupefying inane and repetitive. This year it's the imaginatively titled "We Love Sweets", sung by the delicious 6-piece girl band 'Milky Hat'. In fact, you can listen to it here.
And you can even download the musical score.
You would have thought that something as cravenly cavity-creating as Sweets Expo would be frowned upon, but not a bit of it. The Japanese vie for top dog status with us Brits for having the worst teeth in the world and I guess they take the view so what the hell!
There appear to be numerous different explanations for the fact that the Japanese have dodgy choppers. No fluoride in the water supply, tight-fisted parents not willing to splash the cash for cosmetic dentistry, even dark tales of sadistic dentists who eschew all forms of modern anaesthetic. My favourite is the theory that Japanese jawbones have gradually got smaller over the last 2,000 years, but their teeth have not, resulting in dental overcrowding to match the housing conditions.
The Japanese seem to have always had a bit of a thing about teeth. Revealing them was thought to be like showing the white of your bones. So tooth blackening - known as ohagura - was commonplace for many years, but it all proved to be a bit of a turn-off for Johnny Foreigner when he turned up in the mid-19th century and the practice was outlawed in the Meiji era.
Wow, how dodgy were the Minipops? Maybe Japan isn't such a strange place after all....
There appear to be numerous different explanations for the fact that the Japanese have dodgy choppers. No fluoride in the water supply, tight-fisted parents not willing to splash the cash for cosmetic dentistry, even dark tales of sadistic dentists who eschew all forms of modern anaesthetic. My favourite is the theory that Japanese jawbones have gradually got smaller over the last 2,000 years, but their teeth have not, resulting in dental overcrowding to match the housing conditions.
The Japanese seem to have always had a bit of a thing about teeth. Revealing them was thought to be like showing the white of your bones. So tooth blackening - known as ohagura - was commonplace for many years, but it all proved to be a bit of a turn-off for Johnny Foreigner when he turned up in the mid-19th century and the practice was outlawed in the Meiji era.
Now we have tooth greening, courtesy of the JSRD - the implausibly-named Japan Society for the Recycling of Dentures - who are setting up denture deposit boxes in Fukuoka, a city in the south of Japan.
But this is all a massive digression to hide the fact that we saw absolutely nought at Kasihaku 2008 because the queue to get into every one of the pavilions was at least 90 minutes long! But we did manage to catch a show, even if it was a dubious mixture of Minipops and cosplay.
Wow, how dodgy were the Minipops? Maybe Japan isn't such a strange place after all....
posted by Steve Wise at 9:23 PM
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