10 fun Stories from Japan – A miniseries: The panties story

by The Flamingo

Dear reader, you already know what big fans we are about all things Japan. The Flamingo wrote a 10 stories miniseries about funny/awkward/eccentric experiences that can only occur in Japan. I will share with you some more or less embarrassing moments that happened during the trips there, that always make top conversation topics.

5. The panties story

Everybody knows what a Japanese high school girl in uniform looks like, either from anime (Japanese cartoons) or movies. The classic uniform with the bow, the high socks and the short skirt. What fewer people know is that the skirt isn’t actually that short. In fact it is usually knee length. The girls roll it up at the waist, so it gets as short as they like. Sometimes it is so short that one can spy their panties, which is (I found out later) the whole point.

We found ourselves on a train going somewhere one afternoon. Opposite us sat a high school girl with her nose down her phone. My husband was reading, but I was as always too amazed to concentrate on something other than looking at the totally different people around us and at the scenery…I was 21, the first time out of Europe.

After a while I noticed that the girl sat with her legs just open enough to see her panties, with Hello Kitty (of course), right under the nose of my husband, then boyfriend. “Well”, I said to myself, “the nerve of this girl, probably just a couple of years younger than me.” I felt myself transform into Mary Poppins, my whole disapproval transpiring from my every pore. Being the jealous girlfriend then, I was appalled by the idea of another girl flaunting her panties in front of my boyfriend with me next to him, although he seemed completely oblivious to the situation, with his nose stuck in the book.

If my eyes could have thrown fireballs, she would have been turned to ash. She didn’t even stir, just sat there with her panties in full sight and wasn’t bothered at all by all the adult men looking at her and also not by my desperate looks.

What I noticed later was that she wasn’t the only one, there were lots of girls showing off their panties in public, so it seemed like a trend.

Over a few weeks I got used to the idea, shoved my inner Mary Poppins in a drawer and bought my first Hello Kitty underwear. What’s the saying? If you can’t beat them, join them?

Photo by Sandrachile on Unsplash