Dealing with Sunburn in Japan

     On a recent beach trip with my kid, I managed to get a fairly awful sunburn. Like many people, I managed to coat the easily reached parts of my face and upper body without much issue, but only getting my kid to help cover an exposed area of my back once meant that my skin has been fried in an area I find it hard to apply skin cream to.

     If you're like me, as easy to sunburn as it is to forget to apply sunscreen, one way to improve your skin's healing time from this painful plight is going to involve a small vat at aloe cream and a flat backed plastic back scratcher, preferably with a telescoping handle. This aloe cream is from Welcia where I recall it costing in the neighborhood of 1000 yen. The backscratcher is from Can Do and only cost 100 yen.

     Simply plop a dollop of cream on the back of the scratcher and telescope it out to the appropriate length for reaching your unreachable spaces. Then move as you would to use it as a backscratcher, stopping as it makes contact with the skin and rubbing slowly to apply the cream instead of moving quickly in a scratching motion. Within a few applications via this process, I found that I had managed to cover the red patches of my back with healing aloe cream without having to pester my family to come and help.

     The flat back is important because we want to use it more like an icing spatula than a backscratcher. Similar impliments with many holes would be less useful. Using the palm of the backscratcher's hand-shaped ending would also be a bad call as scratching the damaged skin is something you should avoid doing for the sake of healing what's there and less of the cream would be making contact with the skin. Also, somewhat thick creams work better for this.

     While this method could also work for reapplying sunscreen to the frequently adversely affected swaths of skin at the beach, the weird looks from passersby likely won't be as welcome so I would advise covering up the skin you can't easily reach when going out on aggressively sunny days instead. In addition, keeping a sunscreen with an SPF value of at least 50 with you and reapplying it hourly should cut down on the need for this kind of thing. Most of the people found on Japanese beaches in my experience tend to be closer to fully covered anyway and these days there are many lightweight, UV blocking jackets available.