M on a T

Forget "Snakes on a Plane". "Masks on a Train" is back, with a vengeance.

The early sunsets again mean that Spring is upon us, sadly bringing with it hayfever season. Which consequently result in a large number of the population wearing the white masks.

I remember arriving during the peak of the allergy season last year and being a little freaked out by the number of people concealing their faces in that slightly paedophilic/masochistic way.

Interesting fact. The word 'allergy' has been painfully adapted into Japanese as a 外来語 (gairaigo - a foreign loan word) as アレルーギ which reads as 'a-re-roo-gi'*. Plenty of words in Japanese have foreign bases, but not all from English as I perhaps over-confidently believed. Many have Portuguese, Dutch, French, German, and Russian backgrounds; among other countries. A good list is here.

It's quite fun to guess the contortion. For example (highlight for answers):

ソフトクリーム sofutokurīmu soft ice-cream
パソコン pasokon PC (personal computer)
ボールペン bōrupen ball-point pen
セクハラ sekuhara sexual harassment

Another interesting fact. Hayfever has only been a problem for the last decade or so in Tokyo. Can anyone work out why?

*These words all take the Katakana （カタカナ） form, the more basic letters. Original Japanese is in Kanji （漢字） or the other script, Hiragana （ひらがな）.