Visit Japan — come join the sweating masses!
Imagine 120 million people on a typical hot, humid summer's day. I've heard some tourists say that whenever they come to Japan they bring enough shirts to wear two per day. The second shirt they change into at midday. This is usually said by big burly men with beer bellies, but I can understand the sentiment. Carrying luggage up and down stairs in train stations makes you sweat like a racehorse. Then of course, there's the frothing at the mouth.
While the Japanese perspire, they don't seem to do it to the proud degree that we foreigners do. While I've always attributed our sweating and ensuing body odor to the fact that we are the more hirsute of the species, the Japanese say body odor has more to do with food — you smell like what you eat. So, Koreans smell like kimchee and Indians smell like curry. Obviously, this theory can't be true or we'd all be cannibals. We all know at least one person who just cannot pass up a good kimchee or curry.
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