I’m big fan of Japanese girls and the kawaii things they do, and when I was a teacher, I loved observing the never ending parade of attractive female students I had. In Japan it’s supposedly bad manners for a girl to laugh while showing her teeth, and the way they cover their mouth when laughing really starts to look cute to a guy after a while. Then there’s the two-handed “bye-bye” wave that girls will do amongst themselves when parting, which is fun to watch, if a little bizarre. But the cutest thing I’ve ever seen a girl do is get embarrassed about something, then try to pull her bangs forward as if she could hide her red face underneath her hair. While I think the unique mannerisms of Japanese girls are kind of cool, not everyone agrees, and the derogatory word for girls who act like super-cute children to push the emotional buttons of males is burikko (boo-REE-kko), lit. “pretending girl.” The culture of acting to cute is raised to a science in magazines like Bomb or in Japan’s idol world, and I’m quite powerless to resist their magic.
