Body hair

Did you know that displaying chest hair constitutes sexual harrassment? Apparently so.

A recent story in the news focused on the Somin Festival (See here for more info. ). This is a festival where a bunch of almost naked men scramble to capture 'somin bukuro' (cotton sacks). It was controversial this year and garnered a lot of attention, because the train company refused to display advertising posters featuring an almost naked man with a hairy chest.

Now the problem isn't the 'almost naked' part - I have seen one or two other posters around with almost-naked men on them, for example advertising hot springs - but the hairy chest. Apparently, a hairy-chested guy constitutes 'sexual harassment' and would make women feel uncomfortable. While that may be true, I can't say that their hairless counterparts exactly put women at ease. (And there's certainly no 'sexual harassment' issue with all the scantily clad women, bursting out of the seams, on magazine covers and posters everywhere.)

In a class today, everyone did a speech on customs they think are important.

One guy spoke about how the local festivals of towns should be preserved. As an example he talked about the Somin Festival. He said that he didn't think the poster would 'give women bad feelings' (his words) and that both the poster and the festival should continue.

After the speech, he asked if there were any questions. This is a regular thing that everyone says after a speech. So there were a couple of standard questions like, 'have you ever been to this festival yourself', etc. Then one guy asked:
'Do you have a hairy chest?'

He replied: 'Unfortunately, not...'

Everyone just cracked up.