Japan wasn’t always addicted to masks like it is today. Actually, Japan used to be pretty normal. Look at the images below. That’s what it looked like in Nagano in January 2008 — right in the middle of the normal yearly flu season! That’s 15 years ago. However, if you live in Japan right now in early 2023 you can see the difference clearly. For those who do not live in Japan, if you came here any time from 2020-2022 or even early 2023 you wouldn’t see a single face (except mine, of course). Note that it was actually not possible to come to Japan during 2020, 2021, or half way into 2022 because the country was simply closed (except if you had one of those fancy government passports, of course). Anyway, similar street scenes today like the images below would show people who’d be 100% masked.

We just started the 4th year of 2020. Utter insanity.

I have many hundreds of images like the ones below from all over Japan during all seasons in all spaces and circumstances for two decades where you’d be hard pressed to find even a single mask. I post this because I’ve heard so many people in the West during the “pandemic” saying that “Japanese people always wear masks” but that’s not true. Not even close. Now, there are individuals who do mask throughout the year here when they get sick, when they have allergies, when they go to a doctor’s office or hospital, when pollution is high, or when they just (unfortunately) want to hide their face. However, it’s not the norm. I count 1 mask below. That’s normal.