Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/12/04/in-japan-these-giant-shoulder.html
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You sure that’s not a goiter?
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*in Ah-nold voice *
“It’s not a goita!”
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It really does not LOOK like a callous. I mean I have had some thick callouses when I was younger and more active, and nothing remotely like that.
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I’ve carried one of these. It’s pretty hardcore. It weighs hundreds of pounds, and at various places along the route, you do a dance with it where all the people carrying it lock arms and rotate to face the side, and then the front and back rows alternate squatting down and jumping up. As the night goes on, and people get more and more drunk, it’s not uncommon to see property damage (vendor stalls knocked down) and serious injuries ( broken ribs, ear torn in half, etc.)
One time, we took it into the local shopping center, and messed up the dance, and several people went down under the shrine into a large display of grapes.
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Agreed. That looks like live skin, not dead skin. I get crazy calluses on my feet, sometimes I will shave off a flake of skin 3mm thick. Dead skin is a bit translucent and grayish.
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It’m more like a temporary blister which will go down after a few days.
Like Space_Monkey, I have also participated in these events, you do get a lot of bruising on your shoulders from the carry. I never got anything as bad as that but it did take a couple of weeks for all the marks to go away.
And it was definitely worth it
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looks more like a bursa
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My drinking hand, either one, has a callus from titling heavy Whiskey glass.
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“It ain’t heavy, it’s my shriner.”
If it were me (which honestly it never would be because I don’t mix well with religion) I would draw a face on it as an homage to Pustulio (which is an example of why I don’t mix well with religion).
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Also, as someone who gets flappers sometimes from callouses that rip, I am freaked out by those things.
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Whatever this is - it doesn’t look exactly healthy.
Related: the Muslim forehead callus:
https://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/12/world/africa/12iht-letter.1.8709966.html
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That base of honor had better come with some epic perks… like kickass healthcare.
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Vestigial twin in “hunker down” mode.
There’s a reason why it’s called ‘sendpaper’ my friend.
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Well, commie pinko Japan has civilized… Uh I mean “socialized” medicine so yeah.
Also, I agree that those do not look like calluses. I highly suspect localized areas of severe cellulitis from the trauma of bearing one of those shrines. They’re not the right shape for something that’s not a fluid swelling, the skin’s not thin enough to be a giant blister, and while abscesses could look the same, I’m sure we’d be reading a quite different story if that’s what they turned out to be.
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