Yaeba, a “Charm Point” in Japan

During my time in Japan, I’ve been able to observe some of the more interesting traits of the females around me. Japanese girls in their teens or 20s are generally in touch with their “inner kawaii” and are capable of making a wide range of cute manga-like gestures and facial expressions without warning. Thanks to the grid-like organization of hiragana, it’s easier to enter Japanese text with the number pad on a phone than it is in English, and on trains you can see females typing rapidly with their thumbs. Japanese females are extremely group-oriented creatures, and seem unable to go to the bathroom without bringing their friends with them, a social phenomenon called called tsureshon. Another interesting feature of Japanese females is the tendency of many of them to have crooked teeth, called yaeba (ya-eh-ba). Instead of being viewed as a negative, yaeba are often thought of as being cute, and many idols and singers use their imperfect teeth as a “charm point” to win more fans. This isn’t universal, of course, and increasingly people here are getting crooked teeth fixed at a young age (both of my kids wore braces). These cute teeth show up in anime, too, represented two-dimensionally as a single fang protruding from the mouth.

Crooked teeth can be quite a “charm point” in Japan,