Did I tell you about that student of mine? The cute looking girl who always wears a face mask. Remember that face masks are a common sight here. People wear them when they're sick. Supposedly, the mask will keep your mouth and nose from drying out. It'll keep your bad germs to yourself. Imagine coughing while squeezed in sea of people on the train. Now imagine coughing in that same situation wearing a mask.

Japanese people are polite, aren't they?

But the whole idea of wearing a mask when you're sick doesn't quite seem to explain it. Some people seem to be perpetual mask wearers. Live here long enough, and you're sure to see a few of em. They don't seem to be sick, but why are they wearing masks? Well when this girl took off her mask once, briefly in my presence, I understood. She had a piercing. It wasn't in the lip, but rather in the skin close to the lip. Still a very deviant thing to do, all things considered.

And now that I've got a goatee, I've learned yet another secret of the mask. A teacher came up to me, this being an older man who had been wearing a mask every day for some time. He spoke to me in Japanese at a natural speed. I could only catch the word “dundee,” which I knew had something to do with my goatee.

Then he showed me his secret. He removed his mask, ever so fleetingly, to reveal a goatee of his own. It's the only time I've seen any facial hair on a man in the Japanese public school system. Except, this guy was old enough for the majority of his goatee to be white.

The masks we wear. I can't imagine the idea of having to hide your facial hair. Or that its forbidden to grow in the first place. Beards, and all derivatives thereof, are a time honored tradition of men. Maybe its just me, but I can't help but feel like this is some form of social castration.

Today, at another school, another teacher stopped me and pointed to my goatee. “Ka-ko-E,” he said. Cool. He asked me what we call it in English. This took some time to ponder. Imagine a grown man, going up to a younger man and saying “Hey Bob, your goatee looks cool.”

In chess, what's important isn't where you move your piece—its why you moved it there. And in this situation, I found myself wondering why he called it cool. Was it because native Japanese men can't wear facial hair? Perhaps he thought it was cool that I, as a gaijin, could get away with it? Or maybe Japanese men don't have the kind of thick bears that westerners have, and he thought it was cool, just the fact that I could grow a full goatee.

These mysteries and more can all be yours. On the archipelago that is Japan.