There are a lot of videos on youtube referring to the “Japanese style” of folding clothes.　The most popular one shows a portion of a Japanese TV show where a women demonstrates how to fold a t-shirt in just one motion.

Soon, many more videos surfaced referring to this style of folding as the “Japanese Style” emerged. I was impressed with the efficiency of this style of folding, and I was excited to see Japanese people actually do this when I moved to Japan.  I was somewhat disappointed to learn that not a single Japanese I talked to (including Asawa) knew about this method of folding.  I learned that this is in fact, not the way they fold clothes in Japan.

I should have figured it out, that if indeed it was the Japanese way of folding shirts, then why was there a need to feature it on Japanese TV?  And why were the viewers so surprised at how the lady folded it so quickly?  Yet, in cyberspace, no one seems to refute this misconception, other than myself.  Yes, its probably because everyone else has better things to do than talk about trivial shirt folding techniques, but I like to call it my own quest to remove some stereotypes of my second home.   In complete irony however, guess how we fold shirts in the Kaeru household these days?

Perhaps it is easy to associate such an efficient way of doing things to the Japanese, but this myth shows no sign of being corrected. Although, some videos have begun to call it the “Chinese way” of folding clothes.

Here are a collection of some of the videos on youtube referring to the “Japanese” way of folding shirts.  Enjoy, and happy folding.

“Japanese T-shirt Folding in English”

This one is creatively called the “Ninja Shirt Fold”

“T-shirt folding Japanese Style”