You may have seen them in London every now and then and even been a bit weirded out by them but here they are everywhere. Almost everywhere you go there are people wearing face masks

Anna smelt fine i can vouch for that

 
I delved a little deeper into this phenomenon. So one reason is that the Japanese people are super duper clean (need I mention the toilets yet again) and super respectful. They wear masks when they feel a little unwell in order not to infect the people around them. If you think of the amount of people in London Underground who clearly don’t know what it means to put your hand over your mouth, it seems like quite an attractive proposition.

The other reason is that after Tokyo was destroyed during WW2 the government started rebuilding and planting a lot of trees to make the city a prettier and greener place. The problem is that the overexcited government went crazier than Maja in a japenese toilet and planted more trees than the environment could cope with. As a result many japenese people suffer from extreme hay fever and need the masks to get around. 

most popular item in japans equivalent of a tesco metro

 
For those a little more fashion conscious don’t despair because there is special fashion masks for both you and your pets (in case they also suffer from the problem)