Japanese Urban Legends

White String

This legend is a rather strange story that has to do with ear piercing. This legend was so popular in the 1980s, that many kids in Japan were afraid of getting their ear pierced because they believed that the story was true.

The story involves a girl that tries to pierce her ears. It goes like this:

A young girl desperately wanted to get her ears pierced. Her parents, however, thought she was too young to do so. The girl was determined and continued to plead with them, saying that all the other girls in her class had pierced ears. Eventually, her parents gave in to her begging and allowed her to get her ears pierced. They gave her some money and told her to go to the local mall and get her ears pierced at the jewelry store.

But the girl was greedy and wanted to keep the money. She thought that she could easily pierce her ears herself and that it would've been a waste of money to get someone else to do it for her. She called her best friend over to her house, so she could have some help. Once the friend arrived, they started the procedure.

They got a large needle, heated it, and stuck it through both of the girl's earlobes. It was quite painful, but in the end, her ears were pierced. She was overjoyed to finally be able to wear earrings. It was as if her plan worked perfectly.

However, a few days later, the girl was in school when she began to feel a jabbing pain in her left ear. Her earlobe was extremely itchy and continued to irritate her throughout the school day. During break time, she rushed to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. Her earlobe was red and inflamed, and she scratched at it. She wondered what was wrong with her ear to make it like this.

When she looked closer at her ear, she noticed something strange. She saw what looked like a piece of white string sticking out of the hole in her earlobe. Not thinking clearly, she started to pick and pull at the string in confusion. After a few minutes of messing around with it, the white string was now longer and still hung out of her earlobe. The string seemed endless, and the more she pulled at it, the longer it got.

Fed up with the string, she pulled a pair of scissors out of her backpack. She knew this was odd, but she also knew that if she left the bathroom with a white string dangling from her ear, it would definitely be embarrassing for her. She held the scissors up the string, and cut it.

Suddenly, everything went black. She couldn't see anything, and there was a burning pain in her ear in eyes. Panicked, she began to scream and shout until students came in the bathroom.

She was rushed to an emergency room of a local hospital, where a doctor examined her. When she told the doctor about the white string and what happened, a shocked expression appeared on the doctor's face.

"I'm sorry, but that wasn't a white string. That was a part of your optic nerve. If you severed a big part of the nerve like you said... then that means you'll be blind for the rest of your life."

This legend was popular a long time ago, probably because of how teenagers would constantly try to pierce their own ears. Since they were inexperienced with what they were doing, they would use dirty tools to do the procedure. This would cause infections and inflamed earlobes. The origins of the legend aren't clear, but the story did spread around quickly in Japan.

Either way, even if this legend isn't true, don't try to pierce your own ears. This isn't a DIY situation. Professionals can easily do it better.