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What are the medical masks Japanese people wear called? The ones you see
people just casually wearing; what are they?
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2017-04-21T01:02:57.180
46735
2018-02-02T07:13:38.150
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question
word-choice word-requests
What are the medical masks Japanese people wear called?
They are simply referred to as マスク. This term refers exactly to the kind of
mask you are asking about, as well as "more professional" masks such as the
ones doctors/surgeons might use and so on.

There is also a
[wikipedia](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%9E%E3%82%B9%E3%82%AF) page
about this.

Well to be more precise (since now I actually spent some time reading that
wikipedia page), as you can see there there are technically several different
types of masks (face mask, surgical mask, dust-protection mask) but after all
all of them are mostly always simply called マスク. For your specific case (the
ones people are often seen casually wearing), it's most likely the simple type
use to reduce the spreading of viruses (cold/influenza) or to protect from the
pollen allregy very common among Japanese people (花粉症{かふんしょう}).. and you can
see in the following sentence they are just referred to as "mask" as I said
above.

>
> 呼吸の際に外部からの埃や塵、花粉などを防ぐ用途に用いたり、また、風邪やインフルエンザの感染者のクシャミや咳などでウイルスを含んだ分泌物を外部に広く撒き散らしにくくする効果があり、風邪・インフルエンザに感染している患者は他人に伝染させない為、感染拡大を防ぐ為に
> **マスク** を着用する事が求められる。
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2017-04-21T01:13:31.670
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2017-04-21T01:22:29.447
2017-04-21T01:22:29.447
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answer