“They all look the same”
Said someone dumb… Look, I don’t blame you if you think this or thought this in the past. Hell, when I first arrived in Japan I had a hard time telling girls apart. Over time however, you learn to see patterns and differences in their appearance which help you navigate their world better. This article is going to attempt to clarify a lot about the general appearance of Japanese girls and hopefully get you making some better assumptions, statements, and observations about them. Because let’s be real, saying (or thinking) they all look the same ISN’T helping you get laid.
Cold reads can be broken up into levels of complexity. For absolute beginners I recommend starting here:
- Hair color
- Nails (existence or lack thereof)
For hair here, we are mostly going by color. There are about 4 types:
Black – 黒髪ストレート. Factory issue.
Brown – Chestnut. Light brown. Dark brown. The cool kids are doing it.
Blonde – Edgy. Social reject/night worker/apparel worker. Silver arguably is just the natural extension of blonde. The new platinum, as it were.
Colored – Blue, green, etc. Funky job like hairdresser, music shop, bar, hip fashion brand, etc.
There’s one special case I have to mention here. It’s the “美容師 biyoshi, hairdresser look.” For some reason, an unnaturally large percentage of them have colored hair that is relaxed/wavy. It’s a very “twee” kind of look that’s tricky to explain so here are two pictures that perfectly typify every female hairdresser in Japan:
So yeah, that’s a safe cold read right there. Even if she’s not a 美容師 she will understand what you mean. The waviness and even a slight “wet” look to the hair is characteristic.
In addition, I would be remiss to not mention extensions and hair sets.
Extensions are the magic by which short hair can become much longer. Bonus – you don’t damage your hair as much since it’s not really your hair! This allows you to rock that platinum blonde year-round even though Amaterasu blessed you with the straight and black.
Sometimes you can see the extensions popping out, especially if the girl is ratchet. They look like this.
Hair sets.
No, boys, this did not happen by accident. And no, she did not do this herself. Therefore (all together now!) she is either going to a special occasion (wedding/coming of age/birthday party) OR is a hostess/kyaba (who get this done every single night).
#2 Nails
There’s a few types of nails we need to discuss. First off, gel nails. These are extremely common. They can make the nail slightly longer, but don’t have the strength to make it significantly longer.
Next, we have スカルプネイル, sculpture nails which are also known as acrylic. They consist of a clear plastic sheet, affixed to the real nail with an acrylic paste, then painted over and decorated. The main characteristic of these is that they can significantly increase the length of the nail. So if the girl has long nails (gyaru/kyaba), this is the type.
Next we have チップネイル, chip nails. These are more for students, kids, and people without much money, or those who can’t get more permanent nails, such as a construction worker or esthetician on her week off.
Finally we have nail polish, which is probably what the average dude thinks all nails are. This is just a coat of polish applied directly to their actual nail. Pretty straightforward, and the girl often does it herself.
That’s it. Believe it or not, you can understand a LOT about a girl from her hair color (and style) and what type of nails she has (or not). So generally speaking we want to separate women into two initial categories: “Beauty” and “Education.”
Black hair and no nails or simple nail polish? Education.
Blonde hair and elaborate sculpt nails? Beauty.
That much should be fairly simple to understand.
As for what these actually mean:
Beauty means she learned from an early age, perhaps 14 or 15, that she would be pretty enough to get by on her looks. Therefore, she stopped paying attention in class and started looking for job opportunities. Maybe dropped out by 16 or 17. If you’re meeting her in her 18-25 year old stage, she’s likely a: kyaba, apparel worker, nailist, eyelist, model, dancer, etc.
Education. This means she was either ugly or motivated. She probably still has black hair, went to University, and is a: OL (office lady), nurse, teacher, real estate agent, translator, reporter, etc. Mostly OL though lets be real.
There IS a middle ground. 専門学校 senmon gakko is a “trade school” and many of the “beauty” professions DO need a 2-year (more or less) degree from one of these. If you just want to do nails you only need a short degree, but if you want a full 美容師 license (to cut hair), you need the full degree. Additionally, outward-facing OLs tend have some appearance overlap with the “beauty” girls – these include Real Estate, PR, sales, etc.
Build the habit, starting from today, of noticing first and foremost the color (and style) of a girls hair as well as her nails, and from there trying to guess/intuit her occupation.
From there we can try to add complexity to our model piece by piece until we are making some razor-sharp observations about girls like Sherlock:
After hair and nails, the next things we want to look for are:
3. Eyelashes
4. Shoes
5. Bags
#3 Eyelashes
付けまつげ, まつエク, マスカラ or natural? Can you tell the difference? Don’t worry, Papa Sinapse is here to help you. here we go.
First up, mascara. This is probably one you know as a foreigner, as it’s quite common in the West. Notice the slight clumpiness and variance in the thickness of the eyelash. Really good mascara doesn’t do this as much, but it will still have some variance. This is the telltale sign of mascara.
Next up, 付けまつげ tsukematsuge, fake eyelashes.
These come in a single strip and are applied with glue to their eyes. They have to be put on every day, and if you hook up with a girl with these you’re liable to find some of them in your trash can or sink area (or bed) afterward. They aren’t as popular as they used to be, but still are big with gyaru, who often go for the extremely even (and therefore somewhat artificial) look. At their extreme, they look like a barcode stapled to the eyelid, but there are other kinds with a built-in variance in length (such as the example image or even more so). The decline in their popularity compared to the early 2000s comes because of our third category.
まつエク, matsueku, eyelash extensions.
These are applied manually by an eyelash technician (aka eyelist). The process takes some time and steady hands. I used to date one of these ladies and I admire their work. In the picture above, you can see the extension is a single strand, however, there are other types that attach a small cluster, such as 3 extensions to a single natural eyelash, increasing the volume of lashes. The number of extensions also varies, starting around 80 and going up to about 200. They usually last about a month and cost anywhere from 5,000-10,000 yen on average. Fashion is no small commitment! One of the reasons the man can still pay a bit more on dates.
While we’re in the eye area, there’s a couple other things we should mention.
Eye tape.
Eye tape is a uniquely Asian fashion… accessory? Which is used to create the famous “double eyelid” 二重. Some people naturally have this, but for those who don’t many use tape or glue to tuck part of their eyelid in to create this magically desirable flap of… skin. Yeah that sounds strange. Anyway, it does look nice. These are cheap but still require effort. Sometimes if the tape loses its hold you can see a bit of the tape above their eye. This isn’t really useful for cold reading, but still not a bad idea to know about it.
Next up we have カラコン, karakon, color contacts. These also aren’t that useful for cold reads either, but a word that should be in your vocabulary at the very least, and something you can comment on. I will note that there’s mostly three kinds. Natural (basically shades of brown or grey that could theoretically be their actual eye color), color (blue, pink, purple, white, etc), black (these are designed to make their eyes EVEN blacker and bigger, increasing the size of the iris).
Alright enough about eyes. Onto…
#4 Shoes
Most of the names of these shoes above don’t matter really. For shoes, we generally want to divide them into 3 categories: flats, short heels, and big fuck-off heels. Ok, these aren’t scientific terms because these categories mostly don’t exist but they exist in the world and for our purposes of cold reading. Let’s start, against all reason, in the middle with the short heels
Office ladies, or at least a solid 80% of them wear a boring black mid-height heel like the one above. Probably even more boring, but I honestly couldn’t even find one that boring. But you get the idea. Shoes like this, usually an OL. Paired with black hair (education!) and you have a freshly minted OL right out of Uni. The more boring and “ざOL” she is, the more likely she is to be fresh out of Uni. OLs CAN have brown hair and some simple nails, depending on their seniority and the office itself, but again, those ones tend to be a bit older.
Onto the second category. Fuck-off heels
Heels. God bless ’em. Don’t make a woman walk too far in these. These are the sign of a girl who cares about her appearance (category 2: beauty!). Sometimes an OL might have these, but more likely to be an outward-facing position, like HR or something like Real Estate. Kyabas, dancers, night workers (though fewer prostitutes than you might imagine!) etc wear these.
Finally, flats. ぺたんこ
Nothing much to say about these. They’re pretty common, but indicate either: day off, student, or casual (baito-style) job.
#5 Bags
Bags are also a great indicator of a girls’ preferences, style, and even personality. Both her actual bag, and any paper bag she might be carrying around as a fashion accessory.
Let’s start with one with broad appeal. Tori Burch. Don’t really have anything to say about this, but it helps to recognize the logo at least. It’s common enough.
An American Apparel bag is also common enough, and also an indicator they are more likely to speak English. Probably a good bet to approach these girls.
Moving on to 紙袋, kamibukuro, paper bags. These are actually used as accessories, so if a girl is carrying this it doesn’t necessarily mean she just went to that store today. They actually store and reuse these bags. Often they’ll have notebooks, water bottles, jackets, and other random stuff inside. The thing to note is the brand itself – she’s repping that because she likes it!
Alright so. So far we’ve noticed first:
- Hair
- Nails
- Eyelashes
- Shoes
- Bags
By this point, you should have quite a decent idea of what her profession is. Her age and profession should be the two factors (related, of course) that you’re trying to guess. But just to point you in the right direction, here are some of the most common professions. For each of them as an exercise, try to consider what each of points 1-5 will look like for this particular profession. Again, start with hair and nails.
Nurse
University Student
Office Lady
Kyabajo
Prostitute
Kindergarten teacher
Esthetician
Nailist
Real Estate Agent
Did you give it a shot? Seriously, treat this like an exercise, and go through items 1-5. This will help you when you’re actually faced with a Japanese girl to at least get on the right track. Working backwards from their profession you should be able to guess their hair color, nails, eyelashes, shoes, and bag. I’ll give you a pass on the bag as that might be the hardest – you do have to basically know some brands to successfully guess that, and there’s a lot more variance. But at least for 1-4 you should be able to form a solid picture of what each of these girls might look like.
Take a minute to do the exercise
Alright, are you really done? Here are the answers:
Nurse
Hair: Black most common, but not mandatory. Could be brown.
Nails: Definitely NO nails
Eyelashes: Most likely no eyelashes, just mascara
Shoes: Simple. Unlikely to wear extreme heels. Petanko more likely.
Bags: Not flashy brands. Tori Burch would be a solid guess.
University Student
Hair: Any color possible. Black most common, followed by brown.
Nails: Anything. No nails is common, but some do have nails. Chip or polish are most common, followed by gel if she has some money.
Eyelashes: Most likely no extensions or 付けまつげ. Mascara or plain most likely.
Shoes: Simple. Unlikely to wear extreme heels. Petanko more likely.
Bags: Not flashy brands. American Apparel, Tori Burch, or some no-name/minor brand. Backpack also possible.
Office Lady
Hair: 1st year OLs must have black hair. As they gain seniority, could be brown. Elaborate styles not common.
Nails: At most, simple one-color polish or French nails.
Eyelashes: Either simple, mascara, or まつエク. Definitely not 付けまつげ
Shoes: Those shitty boring middle-height heels. On weekends maybe petanko and on special occasions, heels.
Bags: Anywhere from Tori Burch style simple bags, Chanel, Gucci, etc.
Kyabajo
Hair: Black uncommon. Most likely brown or blonde and curly.
Nails: Definitely have sculpt nails.
Eyelashes: 付けまつげ possible, but まつエク more likely recently.
Shoes: Louboutins.
Bags: LV. Hermes. MCM
Other: Two phones.
Prostitute - NOTE: I bet a lot of you got this wrong. Pros here look classy and more like an upscale OL than a street walker in the West with red stilettos.
Hair: Brown common, followed by black. Blonde for niche pros.
Nails: Most commonly simple gel nails or a simple polish/French. Niche pros might be more gyaru with sculpt nails, but again, that's niche.
Eyelashes: Most likely まつエク
Shoes: Simple colored heels (brown or black). NOT flashy, and NOT what you imagine as a prostitute in the West.
Bags: Classy brand bags. Hermes, LV, Gucci, Coach, etc.
Other: Two phones.
Kindergarten teacher
Hair: Black most common, but not mandatory. Could be brown.
Nails: Definitely NO nails. Could have polish or chip on day off, but nothing permanent.
Eyelashes: Most likely no eyelashes, just mascara
Shoes: Simple. Unlikely to wear extreme heels. Petanko more likely.
Bags: Not flashy brands. Tori Burch would be a solid guess.
Esthetician
Hair: Black or brown.
Nails: Definitely NO nails (notice any correlations? Those who have to touch people's bodies at work can't have nails.). Polish is possible, or chip on days off.
Eyelashes: Mascara or 付けまつげ.
Shoes: Any
Bags: Any
Nailist
Hair: Brown or blonde
Nails: Will always have nails. Usually sculpt or gel.
Eyelashes: Often will have まつエク
Shoes:Heels are common.
Bags: Girly Japanese brands. Rady, Rienda, etc.
Real Estate Agent
Hair: Brown common.
Nails: Will have nice, elegant nails. Gel most common, followed by sculpt and a French or polish.
Eyelashes: まつエク every time.
Shoes: Short heels common.
Bags: Classy brands. LV, Coach, Gucci, etc.
How did you do?
Ultimately, the goal is to develop a taxonomy of sorts based on appearance. You can think of yourself as Darwin, exploring a new island and trying to understand the underlying families, origins, values, etc based on certain identifiable characteristics. Of course, this article is titled 101 because it doesn’t actually delve into their values and personalities, and there’s still a LOT left out (fashion being one huge thing). But the 201 course is for another day!
Cheers,
Sinapse
