For this break's Extensive Listening Activities, I watched Japanese makeup tutorials on YouTube. The first video I watched that made me decide to do this was one by Naomi Watanabe on Vogue's YouTube channel. For those who don't know, Naomi Watanabe is a Japanese actress, and I believe that she specializes in comedy. I really enjoyed watching this video because she has a fun personality, and her Japanese was easier to understand than some of the other videos I watched. Her video had English subtitles and was only around 4 minutes long.
The first person I watched after the Vogue video was a woman named 和田さん. 和田さん was also interesting to watch, although she spoke Japanese very quickly. Her videos don't have English subtitles, but because she had a decent following and all her comments were in Japanese, I assumed that her makeup was a more typical style in Japan.
All of these women had very different makeup styles, and all of them were very different from popular American makeup right now. One thing that really shocked me was how they do their eyebrows. While their natural eyebrow hair is still dark, they all used a blond eyebrow pencil and then covered their natural eyebrow color with a really thick eyebrow gel. As an American, that was very weird to me, and I don't think I would personally ever try it (both because I don't think it would work with my eyebrows and because I don't think it would look good on me).
Overall, I probably spent around an hour watching different Japanese women put on their makeup, and I had a good time watching them. I think that different beauty standards around the world are interesting to learn about, so I enjoyed learning more about Japan's makeup style and how it differs from Americas.