New Japanese fad not exactly eye-licking good

No licking zone -- please

Charlotte Bronte once said, “The soul, fortunately, has an interpreter – often an unconscious but still a faithful interpreter – in the eye.”




If the sober author of Jane Eyre is right, that faithful interpreter unconscious in the eyes of Japanese school children must be snapping awake in alarming numbers to say – “what the hell was that?”

It seems the young people of Japan are the undisputed international champion practitioners of an ugly activity that has health officials cringing at every corner of the globe.  It is called "worming."  It is when one person expresses his or her affection for another person with a warm, passionate lick of the eyeball! 




That’s right, somebody started the fad of laying a big wet slurp across the cornea belonging the object of his or her affection.

It is an exploding trend on the schoolyards, under the bleachers and in other discrete and not-so-discrete locations through Japan.

Americans who suffer auditory attacks from another fad imported from Japan – Karaoke – are now terrified that the trend will find its way onto US soil and threaten one more of the human body’s senses. Here is a particularly hideous example of Karaoke's reach.

The possibility of an inebriated Karaoke singer being congratulated for slurring through a rendition of “Me and Bobby McGee” with a heart-felt lick of the eyeball from his or her equally tipsy date is almost more than civilization should be expected to endure.

Health officials are trying to stamp out the eye-licking phenomenon by noting an alarming increase in cases of pink eye among Japanese young people.  They are also frantically predicting that the practice can introduce sexually transmitted diseases where they haven’t traditionally been a problem – in the eyeballs of worming practitioners. Of course, there is also the possibility of blindness.

If we absolutely must import another fad from our friends from Japan, I nominate two other options instead of the dreaded worming trend.

Japanese innovators have come up with LED Teeth – LED inserts that can be placed over teeth like a mouth guard.  These bolts of light then light up whenever the wearer smiles. They can even blink or change color from blue to red. On a dark street, a parade of LED teeth wearers can inspire fear and panic like nobody’s business.


Then there is "Dekotora" - an abbreviation for "docoration truck." Take one tractor trailer vehicle, festoon it with a rainbow of color flashing lights and you have what looks like an evil carnival on wheels rolling down the highway. Imagine the potential for startling left lane huggers on the Interstate into submission when you pull up on their bumper late at night with a Dekorora in full glory.

Let’s just hope discriminating tastes will make the right decision on which Japanese fad is destined to invade.