Japanese Ear Cleaning

Get ready for a beauty salon with a twist: cleaning your ear canal, with full-color coverage on TV.

A small salon called Mimi Kurin (which means Ear Clean) recently opened near one of Tokyo’s biggest train stations. A therapist will clean inside your ears with a special tool designed to do the job thoroughly but safely.

Now here’s the bizarre part: the tool is equipped with a tiny camera, and you can watch what’s happening inside your ears on a full-color television screen.

It doesn’t sound pretty, but people are doing it. Maybe it’s just such a novel idea that people are intrigued. Or maybe some people will race to try anything new.

Given a) the fact that it’s new, and b) the salon’s proximity to a busy Tokyo train station, it has become popular with Japanese businessmen looking to kill an hour before catching their next train or attending their next meeting.

Personally, I’ll stick with the Q-Tips.