Saucy Japanese Men

I’ve come across a couple amusing concepts relating Japanese men to food. Condiments have been used to describe men’s faces, and food or diet to describe their personalities.A Japanese friend of mine posed this question to another friend, “do you prefer sugar, miso, soy sauce or salty face?” Of course, I became curious and discovered that there were 4 more types of Japanese faces that women use to describe men’s faces. So here are the 8 different types.

1) A Soy Sauce Face is typically Japanese-looking with long, narrow eyes, a small mouth, a straight nose and a small, slim face with a soft triangular jaw. The term was first used to describe Ninomiya Kazunari from the Japanese music group Arashi.

2) A Sauce Face is more Western-looking with clear-cut, defined facial features with darker skin and larger features, a stronger jaw-line and rounder eyes.

3) A Salt Face is like a Sauce Face (Western looking) but with flatter, less-defined features. Salt faces are apparently cute.

4) Ketchup Face falls between these two – less defined than Sauce (Western-looking) but more defined than Salt (the strong features but more Japanese). Since Ketchup Face is so vague, it isn’t such a common term to describe someone.

5) Miso, important in Japanese cooking with a distinct flavour, has been used to describe men with strong features. Miso Face is more Japanese looking than Sauce Face (remember, Sauce Face is the foreigner-looking face).

6) Sugar Face probably makes more sense the others – Sugar Face is sweet and has a more boyish, youthful look. You can find Sugar Face in many J-pop groups.

7) A Mayo Face has mild and sweet features also, but is not as sweet as Sugar Face.

8) And Vinegar Face is almost expressionless, pale with narrow eyes, but plainer than Salt Face.

It seems there’s a spectrum of condiments that all Japanese men fall on. Personally, I don’t know how I’d feel about my face being reduced to a condiment but I do admit I find it most amusing.