You can shower in the morning, put on a clean shirt, and still smell by two in the afternoon. It isn't that you don't wash enough. It's usually your towel.

I'm Kiyo. I've kept a home in Osaka for thirty years, and every one of these is either something my mother taught me or something I worked out the hard way in my own house.

Nine things we do differently. Why your bath towel is dirtier than you think, and the two second test that proves it. The order a Japanese bathroom washes in, because standing in your own runoff undoes the soap. Why wiping takes a smell away and spraying only adds one. Namagawaki, our word for that half dried laundry smell, and how to stop it. Why shoes need a day off. The surface behind most bad breath, and it isn't your teeth. And the one place on your body you have never once smelled.

Almost none of it costs anything.

Now the honest bit. If your body odour changed suddenly, or it's strong in a way it never used to be, or it survives every single habit in this video, then that isn't a hygiene problem and no amount of washing is going to fix it. Please go and see a doctor about it instead of spending another year quietly blaming yourself.

Next time we go from your body to your rooms.


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