"Obsessed" is probably the right word to describe the Japanese's woman's relationship with her hada (skin). From her earliest years, she is exhorted by her elders to look after her skin -- scrub, cleanse, moisturize -- to achieve that tsuru-tsuru (polished) texture and shittori (moist) feel. If a young girl should bruise her face in the slightest way, there is a big fuss: "Kizumono ni nattara oyome ni ikenai! (If you damage the goods, you can't get married)."

Though this may sound hopelessly feudal and antiquated, to the Japanese it's a matter of pride. Smooth, unblemished skin speaks volumes about the person's lifestyle, psyche and intellect. What eyes are to the Western mind, so skin is to the Japanese: a window on the soul. My grandmother used to say that a woman can't help the features she was born with, but "Hada no kirei wa shichinan kakusu (Beautiful skin will hide seven defects)."

Consequently, the language surrounding our skin has become incredibly diverse, and the Japanese woman is so attuned to its finer points that any woman rhapsodizing on the ideal epidermal state automatically launches into poetry. It's not just the enormous range of adjectives, like sube-sube, sara-sara or tsuya-tsuya (all describing various degrees of "smooth" and "polished"), it's the whole, exaggerated eloquence of it all.