JapanNewbie

Are You a Sauce Face or Soy Sauce Face?

Posted on 06. Nov, 2008 @ 9:42 am by harvey in Culture, Language

Language and culture time on JapanNewbie!

Are you a Sauce Face or a Soy Sauce Face?

In Japanese the expressions 醤油顔 (shouyuu gao) “soy sauce face”, and ソース顔 (sousu gao) “sauce face” are used to describe two different types of faces.

First of all, “sauce” is not just any sauce, it’s the Japanese sauce that is used on okonomiyaki, or croquettes sometimes. The sauce is thick and hearty. Flavorful. It’s deep… It’s called Worcester sauce in English apparently. Here is a definition from my Casio EX-Word.

As you can see it says, 『日本でいう「ソース」はこの「ウスタースース」を指すことが多い』, which means “The ‘sauce’ that we say in Japan usually refers to this Worcester sauce”.

People with sauce faces have deep facial features.

The Japanese singer, Ken Hirai, is about as Sauce Faced as they come.

As for Soy Sauce faces, they’re the opposite of sauce faces. Soy sauce is kind of light, and thin.

People with soy sauce faces have shallow facial features.

Yukie Nakama, the Japanese actress, is pretty soy sauce faced.

As is Tadanobu Asano, the star of “The Mongol”.

So, what are you? Soy sauce? Sauce? Or something else… like Ketchup?

- Harvey