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Comment by techrat | Hacker News Reader

Ever been on the L in Chicago in a car without working air conditioning?

Spoiler: Everybody stinks.

Wrong. Try Japan. They're clean, polite, and courteous. Crowded trains in August (like all year) are surprisingly absent of body odor (and litter, and noisy people, ...).

Different folks are indeed different in some ways.

Well if you want to compare Japan to other countries, you should be aware that the fear of being a burden to others due to one's body odor is a very Japanese phenomenon [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taijin_kyofusho

Asians sweat less and their sweat does not stink as much for some reason.

I read that body odor is controlled by the same gene as the one for ear wax.

People with wet/creamy ear wax smell. People with dry/crumbly earwax don't smell.

I'm not sure if it's true in general, but it's true for me and my partner.

One of our kids has creamy ear wax, and the other has crumbly ear wax. I'm curious if only one of them will need deodorant once they get to puberty...

Genetics is fun.

https://udel.edu/~mcdonald/mythearwax.html

Didn't the Asians refer to the Portuguese as "garlic eaters"? When one eats garlic, the scent comes out in the sweat - so you can smell them coming.

From my own experience, if I eat garlic and later scrub my head with a wet washcloth, I can smell the garlic on the washcloth.

Sweat doesn’t smell. Bacteria strains common in Asia don’t produce stinky compounds.

As a German, I want to add that on German trains, "in the summer" implicitly means "without working air conditioning" ;).

(Sort-of-jokingly. On ICEs, you're most likely to actually freeze body parts off due to the harsh AC. On local trains, you'll dehydrate due to excessive sweating. There is no middle ground.)

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