Even when there's soap, I don't think I've EVER seen a Japanese man use it. They just wet their hands–often just their fingers–and walk out. It's as if they're going through the motions so as not to stand out as some uncivilized germ-spreader, but surely a not-insignificant percent of the population must have internalized the germ theory of disease… But ironically, if I were to bypass a soapless sink altogether while scrubbing my hands with an isopropanol wipe or the like, I'd be regarded as ill-mannered and dirty by these very finger-wetters… Kinda like when everyone uses a word wrong, so by using it right you end up sounding like the wrong one, to digress into an unnecessary analogy…
I have to wonder how many people don't even do that if nobody's looking. But I'd have to be looking while nobody was looking, so it'd be like Schrodinger's Salaryman, I guess…
OR, are men like this everywhere and I just don't know it because I've been here too long and don't remember other countries?
by rrosai