A few short weeks ago, when my brother and his girlfriend were visiting me in Japan, they received the results of a genetics test that they and some of my family did for fun and curiosity. It's a pretty cool test to find out your heritage and genetic predispositions. (If interested: https://www.23andme.com/). We had quite a few discussions about the results and one of the topics that came up was earwax. She is Korean and he is American. Unknown to me was that Asians and Caucasians have different types of earwax and that this gene is also related to sweat production. My world was just made bigger. Perhaps this is the reason for the paucity of deodorant in Asian countries. I had no idea.
I think about this every time I'm on a train or bus surrounded by Japanese people. I'm the only one here with wet earwax. It's a strangely intimate thing to know about somebody. A secret no one was trying to keep, but now I know. How many other curiosities have I not even considered? How many things do we not even know that we don't know? How ever many it is, it is one less than it was before.
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