Before I traveled to Japan I would occasionally see a street scene from Tokyo on the news that showed ordinary people going about their day. Usually it was meant to illustrate a story about something the government of Japan had done that affected the U.S., and we were supposed to focus on the reporter in the center of the frame.

I often found the folks in the backround more interesting, though. One thing that struck me was the number of people that walked around wearing cloth mask over their nose and mouth. Were they worried about germs? Was it effective?

Well, when I visited Tokyo myself I finally found out the answer.

Lots of people in Tokyo wear those masks. I really paid attention to it one day I was there, and just about every moment I was in sight of at least one person, and usually more, wearing a mask. The are sold in the drugstore area of department stores, and come in a multitude of models. Some are made of simple cloth, some of specially treated fibrous thick molded paper, much like what you see in hospitals here. I walked past one of the displays, which featured about eight models of face mask, and it was surrounded by a crowd of interested shoppers.

I found out that, at least at the time I was there (end of March/beginning of April), The masks are worn not to ward off germs but to prevent the inhalation of pollen. Lots of folks get a kind of hay fever there apparently, and the masks help keep symptoms at bay by acting as a physical barrier to pollen. It must work well because I never say people sneezing that I can recall. Katie, maybe the folks in San Antonio should adopt this during the famous cedar pollen season that affects everyone so terribly.

It just goes to show that you never really know a culture till you go there. I had always thought that the Japanese people were generally germophobes since so many wore masks. And I thought that was a silly way to deal with it since cloth can't repel tiny bacteria. Now I see how ignorant I was before. Pollen is so much larger than bacteria, and the cloth masks are a good way to keep it at bay. It all makes since. Never judge till you have first hand knowledge, and maybe not even then, that's the moral of the story.