Japanese Girls and the Yaeba Factor
Throughout my time in Japan, like many Westerners, I’ve been amused and sometimes horrified by seemingly flawless Japanese beauties suddenly smiling and revealing a snaggletoothed grin. Now, this post isn’t meant to be a feature on what yaeba are - you can see for yourself at Yaeba Superstar.com - but to find out how people feel about the Japanese tendency to find many girls with protruding canines cute. Or, more to the point, can Westerners find Japanese girls with yaeba attractive?
As for me, a single crooked or protruding canine tooth has never been a deal-breaker as long as I find the girl attractive. I tend to take things as they are on the whole and try not to let one or two details concern me much, but there are definitely times when an amazingly cute girl here in Tokyo reveals such a train-wreck of a set of choppers that I just have to say WTF!
Two things happened to make me write this post. The first is a situation that occurred at my previous workplace, and the second being a request from a Japanese reader of this blog to post about how Westerners feel about yaeba.
As for the first situation, at the office where I used to work there was a young Japanese professional woman who I worked in close proximity to, but rarely had much contact with. At one point, however, we were discussing something work-related when I noticed that if her mouth wasn’t closed, the right and left corners of her upper lip seemed to be caught on something. Then she smiled and I saw not one, but two tiny yaeba perfectly protruding from above most of her gumline. Instantly, images from various vampire movies I’ve seen throughout the years flashed through my mind. Holy shit, I thought at first. That’s amazing. Perfect imperfection? Or maybe, just plain perfection from a different cultural perspective.
Either way, I suddenly found myself intrigued and not put off by her vampire smile. I know it’s strange, but I couldn’t stop thinking about how sexy this girl’s yaeba were. God help me!
Anyway, check out Yaeba Superstar.com.
Originally published at 7:10 to Tokyo last year
An American living in Tokyo. Can be seen bounding through Shinjuku Station most mornings, teeth gnashing, eyes bulging, a cup of cheap coffee clenched in one fist and a satchel in the other. God help those who don't see him coming.
May 10th, 2009 at 4:24 am
I think it makes them cuter (sometimes), it really varies from girl to girl. And one is enough, it’s not cute when the whole mouth is messed up ^^
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May 10th, 2009 at 6:33 am
The only time I want to see a bear trap is when I’m hunting.
The only time I want to see two rows of teeth is when I’m watching “Shark Week” on Discovery.
It’s a deal-breaker for me.
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May 10th, 2009 at 6:44 am
I don’t know… It really depends on the person. I’ve seen yaeba without it looking bad at all, and in some cases it does make the girl look cuter. But then sometimes I’ve seen really bad dentures that could really do with straightening.
As we learnt in evolutionary psychology, there are reasons that we humans flash smiles at people, a couple of them being in order to reassure the person that we are safe, and to show that we are healthy and have good mating potential (simply - a dazzling smile attracts).
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May 10th, 2009 at 7:29 am
For some girls it is very endearing, for others, their smile looks like a cheese grater. Each case on their own merits but at the end of the day, I guess, beggars can’t be choosers so I say ‘yeeha’ to yaeba!
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May 10th, 2009 at 7:33 am
Yeeha, Brotha!
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May 10th, 2009 at 8:11 am
Now why wasn’t the word “yaeba” in my Japanese textbook?
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May 10th, 2009 at 9:07 am
Yaeba are an absolute turn-off for me. When it comes down to it, I’m gonna be looking at this girl’s face with regularity! I wanna like what I see, and even the subtle imperfection of yaeba is enough to cool my jets. Perhaps my own vanity coming through, but yaeba-no-onna need not apply.
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May 10th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
Now you wrote about a subject related with my profession. You see, I’m a dental technician. I had already reached to the conclusion that this kind of teeth placement is very common among japanese women. This type of cases is visible also in other populations but appears to be more frequent in japan. There is a branch of dentistry that deals with teeth position and their movement to proper places which is called orthodontics. The problem to me, seems to be with the lack of interest in general, about teeth related problems and their solution among all the japanese.
Don’t let the yeba become a fettish.
P.S. thanks to your words about my hobby. Be a critic, that helps me to improve. I’m thinking to post about tiltshift and I found your pics great to exemplify. May I use them?
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May 10th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
Well, I have seen gals who look cute with them and ones who look butt ugly with them. I guess it all depends on the face for me. If she has got a really cute face the fangs only add to her cuteness. If her face is messed up from the start, no unique teeth placement is gonna make up for it.
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May 11th, 2009 at 12:56 am
Nice post!
I got an email from the girl, too.
I was going to write about this but I’ll probably just link here instead.
I’ve dated a girl with one of those extra teeth, and she kept showing it off with pride. Now I know why.
Still, you don’t need to look at the mantelpiece when you’re stoking the fire!
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May 11th, 2009 at 3:07 am
@Yonasu:
Yep. A messed-up mouth can cause a heart attack if a smile is flashed without warning.
@Spartancus:
Keep fighting the good fight, sir!
@Mike:
Yes, a great smile can do a lot to win someone over. A too-perfect smile can put me off sometimes, though.
@sixmats:
Ah, come on now… since when has any real-world information ever been contained in a Japanese textbook?
@japanagogo:
Stick to your guns, sir!
@Antonio:
Yeah, it’s weird how Japanese people can be so concerned with eyebrows and eylashes, but so often ignore the teeth.
And, feel free to use the photos as an example if you like, though I’m sure you can find much better ones out there. And, don’t forget the watermark, eh
@freedom:
Agreed that the face doesn’t start with the smile, but it certainly could end with a bad one.
@roaf:
Haha. I figured quite a few people received the request to blog about Yaeba. That’s why I put mine up ASAP.
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May 11th, 2009 at 4:22 am
You got a thing for yaebas huh? I would say it is a case by case thing.
I suppose out of all the teeth problems I see yaebas are the most acceptable imo. Broken, crooked sideways teeth and black/brown teeth are all no nos though
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May 11th, 2009 at 5:06 am
Haha. Yeah, broken, crooked, sideways, black/brown teeth are all Heeelll nos.
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May 11th, 2009 at 5:07 pm
it depends on the girl but I am not really a fan of Yaeba.
I remember getting an email the other day with a request to write about Yaeba, that’s how I learned a little of why the Japanese find it attractive and cute
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May 11th, 2009 at 9:27 pm
My God, are you telling me there’s a whole fetish geared towards girls with imperfect teeth? How did I miss that? I could’ve met tons more cute Japanese boys while I was there!
Hailing from a land where the natives don’t have perfect teeth - and pretty hit-and-miss free dentistry - I’d have to say as long as they’re not too tombstone-like, a cute J-guy will pass the test. The key is they have to be clean. To me the deal breaker is bad breath.
I think our British teeth might be a bit better than Japanese gnashers, but it’s a bit unfair to compare any of us to Americans ;-). You guys are reknowned as having great teeth.
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May 14th, 2009 at 2:46 pm
I only just found out about Yaebas tonight! Aussies (like me) have quite nice teeth not Colgate smiles like Americans but definately not like the mother country’s teeth ( Britain). I had a Japanese friend in school with Yaebas when I was like 7, I just thought her teeth were F%$@ed up,
but now I learn it’s a whole culture thing,That’s Pretty cool. But Dentistry should be important, teeth mutations shouldn’t be fetishes, remove the teeth and straighten up. For me only top front teeth need to be straight. For example, my fiance’s teeth are all straight except for his bottom front tooth which is shorter and a little more forward than the rest. Now that is absolutely adorable 
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May 15th, 2009 at 11:40 pm
I’ve already published the post about tiltshift using your pictures. Thank you.
You can check it at
http://zanucki.blogspot.com/2009/05/tilt-shift-falso.html
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May 16th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
Hot babe Aya Nakata doesn’t have that orthodontic problem, she’s a dentist!
http://japansugoi.com/wordpress/aya-nakata-sexy-japanese-dentist/
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May 25th, 2009 at 10:18 am
I live in Gifu, Japan and the two years I’ve been here I have seen tons of yaeba. Not only from girls, but guys, students, and teachers. I just took it at face value that Japanese parents didn’t want to take their kids in for braces. Very few kids have braces compared with America.
It wasn’t until February when a fellow teacher had 4 teeth pulled because of eating pain and came to school looking like a rabbit that I got curious.
So I asked my (Japanese) wife about braces in Japan, and the lack of them. Thankfully she has a great smile, and that is what drew me to her in the first place. Sorry guys but I couldn’t date a yaeba.
But here in Japan, braces and fixing teeth cost a lot of money. In America where it might cost about US$2,000 (Rough estimate) for braces and such, here it can be anywhere from US$4,000 to US$9,000 for braces. Add on the fact that we are paying $4.50 a gallon for gas, among soaring prices for fruits, you can see why they sometimes opt out on the braces.
Just check out the bottom of this website on prices at this Tokyo Dentist.
But in the end what ever floats your boat.
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May 25th, 2009 at 10:20 am
Oops sorry about that.
Gotta copy and paste it, sorry everyone.
http://www.iihani.com/ortho.php
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June 7th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
Seconded here.
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June 7th, 2009 at 11:38 pm
Never mind teeth-what about feet? Why waste time speculating about negative stuff when you can focus on positive stuff like feet? For me, a woman’s feet attract me.
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July 9th, 2009 at 5:05 am
I think 1 yaeba can look really cute. In fact, it could look cuter then a perfect set of pearly whites. But more then that is just ugly.
What I’m trying to figure out is how there are even enough girls with the yaeba teeth to turn it into a fashion/cultural thing. Maybe its because of braces or because I live in SoCal (Where its about 1/3 asian 1/3 hispanic and 1/3 other), but I have yet to see a single teenager who doesn’t have a perfect - near perfect set of teeth. The worse I see would probably be overbites.
Maybe they have braces for creating yaeba teeth where the braces pull the teeth out of position instead of fixing it.
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July 21st, 2009 at 1:57 pm
I really don’t get what the japs like about yaeba! There’s a really thin line between cute and ugly..
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August 6th, 2009 at 10:15 am
So, after recently discovering what “yaeba” actually ment, i have come to the conclusion that, like most people, it varies person by person.
Cute Yaeba - http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_hdMWb_HMuzo/SgfyAO4Yx1I/AAAAAAAADdM/zS3kYE-w0oM/s1600/nagasakirina.jpg
Ugly Yaeba - http://gaijintonic.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/yaeba018.jpg
As you can see, they both have “Yaeba”, but I find the second one less attractive. I think sometimes, it comes down to what i’m going to call a “Perfect Yaeba”. This consists of perfect teeth placement for a cute look, along with an adorable face and other things.
I am from america and I have horrible teeth. I think that because I find an imperfection from myself, that by seeing something like this glorified in other cultures (plus they have better teeth than me), I think of it as a variating beauty.
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August 6th, 2009 at 10:18 am
If that was the case, it would be horribly painful. Plus near impossible. To move a tooth up the gum what cause it to rip and tear, and lose teeth.
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August 10th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
its a cultural thing really, some cultures place a lot of importance in “perfectly white” & “perfectly straight” teeth, other cultures don’t.
We have a good, almost affordable, dental industry in Australia but I frequently hear students from the US and Canada talk about how horrified they are by how bad many Australian teenagers teeth are…. lord help them if they ever visited places like Japan, Vietnam, much of China and India.
Compare what seems to be the US’s overwhelming obsession with perfect teeth with the old Japanese practice of Ohaguro (staining your teeth black) and similar practices across most of south east asia, and the still practised, habit of hiding your mouth when you laugh (and more recently when on your cell phone .
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October 18th, 2009 at 10:49 pm
Asian women are just sexy. If they have the teeth as they were meant to be or if they decide to give themselves a Western ‘upgrade’, doesn’t matter to me. Just don’t cut my tongue if we kiss.
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January 9th, 2010 at 3:44 pm
Why do so many americans have “false” teeth i.e. orthodontics? unless the slightly crooked teeth present a health problem there is no need to do anything to straighten the teeth up, unless you want to kid the world that you are the perfect “master?” race!! At least the japanese women are as nature created.
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January 11th, 2010 at 7:19 am
Wait…did you actually just say that Japanese women are as “nature created”? Sure, they may not bother fixing their teeth, but the amount of other cosmetic surgery the population undergoes is still humongous. The Japanese are just as caught up as Westerners are in creating the “master race” (aesthetically speaking, of course).
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February 14th, 2010 at 7:17 am
I’m with you, never a deal breaker but the lack of brushing certainly is… I have noticed that sometimes the special tooth is are on the inside rather than the outside so a little more deceptive and something to be a little more careful about in the playpen. I wish some would swap their $2000 hand bags for a bit of dental work. I will spend some time on yaebasuperstar, looks like a bit of fun.
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February 18th, 2010 at 5:11 pm
I gotta say, it’s amazing to me how many men I’m friends with who are dating Asian girls. I’ll admit that I do find some Asian women to be very beautiful, but what do you think the attraction is really based on? Why do some white guys only date Asian women…can somebody explain to me why some guys have this preference?
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May 3rd, 2010 at 8:56 am
Looks like I didn’t do as good a job as I hoped avoiding holidays when I booked my upcoming trip. I’ll arrive in Japan Sep 20th, which turns out to be Respect for the Aged Day, closely followed by the Autumn Equinox on Sep 23rd. Both are listed as National Holidays.
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May 15th, 2010 at 8:08 pm
I was wondering whats up with japanese and braces and now I now, thanks for the info about Yaeba.
For the record I dont like it, I suffered with braces for over 5 years and I would like to think that I can find a japanese girl that understand the meaning of a good looking teeth.
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