Jeremy Hedley discovers that foreigners are now allowed to donate blood in Japan:
One of the questions on the form was whether I have Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Really, how would I know? I sway a bit and dribble occasionally but I think I’m OK. I said no.
And when he was done, they gave him a towel:
(You get these small bath towels — good for hot springs — on all sorts of occasions in Japan. Open a bank account, get a towel. Bump into a stranger on the street, get a towel. Sneeze, towel.)
Well, you know, they are massively useful.
The best part of this post was the link to towel-land 😉
I can actually understand why foreigners wouldn’t be allowed to donate blood. I’d not recommend it, but:
different countries have different health standards — Japan’s, I’m assuming, are higher than those of some nearby countries
each nationality [especially such racially homogenous societies like Japan] shares some genetic material. this isn’t as true for a ‘melting pot’ society like the US [rumor has it, they’re teaching kids that it’s a ‘tossed salad’ now, because a ‘melting pot’ implies that all the different cultures are forced to conform, and that doesn’t ever happen in the wonderful US…]
Yeah, but calling the US a “tossed salad” society implies something else entirely.
Really, can’t we just go with melange?
(Of course not, it’s a French word.)
Yeah…doesn’t “tossed salad” have some kind of sexual context?
/Sheltered
Yes, it refers to condiment-assisted analingus.
My sister spent two years in Japan. one of her favorite annecdotes was that they gave her the wrong change at the post office once for mailing a package, and had someone go to her house to give her a towel by way of apology. Though she never said whether they gave her the proper change back.