Japanese People All Look Young. An American Asked Him Why He Doesn't.

What's going on

A Japanese teacher posted a small moment from work. A new colleague had just joined the staff, also Japanese, and everyone had been remarking on how startlingly young they looked. An American coworker, apparently connecting the dots out loud, turned to him with what was surely meant as a friendly observation: Japanese people all look younger than their age, right? So how come you don't?

The premise isn't unusual. Looking young for your age is generally treated as a compliment in Japan, and the idea that Japanese people are hard to age-guess is a stereotype that travels widely. The trouble is that a compliment aimed at a whole group can land very differently on one specific member of it. He was left holding a question about his own face that he had no way to answer.

The replies split into two camps. One group rushed to defend him, mostly by reaching for a word that only makes things worse. The other group took the opening to share their own stories of being read as a decade or two younger while abroad — carded at bars, mistaken for someone's kid, and in one case worried over by strangers at the Grand Canyon.