Two days ago a friend of mine  was changing her baby in front of me…as she was doing so,  I saw again the so famous Mongolian spot: The litttle blue mark that most Asian babies have on the lower back. When I say “again”, I mean that this image reminded me of a little episode that I had years ago when I was student working part time as a baby-sitter with a Japanese family back in France. The very  first time I had to change the baby, I saw the little mark. However, my lack of experience and information back then made me think that that little spot was in fact a big, huge bruise!!! I was in horror thinking I had done that type of  harm to the baby by accident!! when I thought throughly, very carefully of  my time with her( feeding her and putting her to sleep) , I then came up with the conclusion that the bruise was not from me but from her family. “Somebody did this to her!” I thought. I was uneasy with this idea so I called my mother. She asked me to describe the mark and then she laughed ” you silly girl! that is not a bruise, that is a birthmark”. I searched about this birthmark thing right after I hung up with my mother and it looked to me  like an amazing silly little fact. Not all Asian babies have it, but most do. These spots generally fade within a few years and almost always disappear by adolescence ( sometimes they stay during adulthood, but that is rare. I did see a lady in an Onsen with one). The Mongolian mark  are also is referred in a Japanese idiom that says :”shiri ga aoi”, which  means “his butt is blue”, a phrase to describe a person that is  inexperienced, just like I was back then 🙂