After three years of concealing their mouths behind masks, some Japanese are turning to specialist smile tutors to relearn the art of breaking into a beaming grin without looking awkward.
Since lifting the official mask advisory to help prevent the spread of COVID-19, many people have admitted to struggling to adjust to life without face coverings, with some saying they have forgotten how to smile.
“With mask wearing having become the norm, people have had fewer opportunities to smile, and more and more people have developed a complex about it,” Keiko Kawano, a coach at “smile education” company Egaoiku told the Asahi Shimbun.
Photo: AFP
“Moving and relaxing the facial muscles is the key to making a good smile. I want people to spend time consciously smiling for their physical and mental well-being,” Kawano said.
Participants use handheld mirrors to check their progress, with some adjusting their expressions until they are satisfied they have rediscovered their natural grin.
Egaoiku saw the number of applicants rise 4.5 times after media first reported the impending COVID-19 reclassification in February.
A month later, the government said that face coverings should be an individual choice, and downgraded the virus’ severity classification this month.
One of the participants, 79-year-old Akiko Takizawa, said she was excited about going back to her pre-mask life, with a little help from her smile coach.
“I didn’t have opportunities to see people during the coronavirus crisis and didn’t smile in public,” she told the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper. “This has reminded me of how important smiling is.”
The classes, which are particularly popular among women, typically begin with stretches to relieve facial tension before participants raise their handheld mirrors to eye level and flex parts of their face in line with Kawano’s instructions.
“A smile is only a smile if it’s conveyed,” she told her students at a recent session in Yokohama, the Japan Times reported. “Even if you’re thinking about smiling or that you’re happy, if you have no expression, it won’t reach your audience.”
Kawano, a familiar face on TV and social media, has coached more than 4,000 people in the art of smiling over the past six years, the newspaper said, as well as helping hundreds of others become certified “smile specialists.” She now oversees 20 trainers who run classes all over Japan.
Early indications are that their services are likely to be in demand in Japan, where mask-wearing was widespread throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Just before official advice on mask wearing was eased in mid-March, one in four people said they would continue to cover up in all social settings.
An online survey by Laibo, a research group specializing in careers, found that 27.8 percent of company employees in their 20s to 50s said they would continue to wear masks “unconditionally,” with just more than two-thirds saying they would decide on whether or not to cover up depending on the situation.
Only 5.5 percent said they were happy to go mask-free all the time.
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
RSS