As for the gum in your hair, I’ve had my fair share of it from girls and boys being mean! Ice also worked getting gum out of your hair.

If you don’t want to cut your hair, there is a solution… peanut butter. Apparently, peanut butter has the right stuff to make sticky gum not so sticky so it will come out of the hair. Naturally you will have to wash your hair after you treat it.

I have more issues trying to avoid other things when walking, though. Even though there are laws for owners of pets in the city, many still refuse to pick up after them…

I have heard that peanut butter helps remove gum from your hair.

Steve in St. Louis

As for chewing gum getting stuck in the hair, I was also unaware that is supposedly a common occurrence in the US. But there is one story I can recount.

There is a wonderful song that was a hit on the charts before even my memory kicks in (i.e., truly ancient). “Does your chewing gum lose its flavor (on the bedpost overnight)” by Lonnie Donegan, one of the musical inspirations to John Lennon. I happen to have the hit on a collection of novelty songs, and played it once for a visiting UK scientist (whose father happened to be the groundskeeper at Sting’s farm). She had heard of it, but actually never heard the song itself. She related to me how her mother (as a young girl) was so taken by this song that she actually did put her chewing gum on her bedpost one night, and woke up with it in her hair.

その経験がよくある。My reaction? こう->

The Harajuku station is one of my favourite in Tokyo (from the outside I mean). The country feeling it has goes well with the nearby Meiji Shrine. But why does it look like that, actually ? Any historical reason ?