Earthquake Helmets (Pro-tek yo Head!)

As most salarymen and office ladies in Tokyo, we have our own little earthquake helmets that we only used for the emergency drills and were perceived as a bit of a joke. Up until, of course, Friday two weeks ago when I put it on in earnest while grabbing my can of biscuits and bottle of water, huddling under the table with Cpt. Awkward fearing for the safety of myself and my family back at the Salaryman base of operations.

I actually also brought out the instructions for use pamphlet at one point and flipped through it just in case there was something I needed to know about how to wear a helmet. In the IFU were some great illustrations on how the helmet should look like (see the picture, click to enlarge). The text is basically talking about a number of checks you should do; one I particularly like is "check to make sure that there are no holes in it other than made by the manufacturer" and "check that there are no cracks in the helmet".

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But what really caught my attention in this is the expression on the faces of the people wearing these defect helmets. I particularly like how they went through the effort of making individual expressions for each case and I also wonder if I need to take the facial expressions into account when trying to find out the severity of the defects. For instance, guy number 3 "check that there are no scratches on the the helmet" looks a bit sleepy while guy number 10 "check that the helmet is not shaped oddly" looks closer to panic, guy number 4 with the "check that there is no dirt on the helmet" mostly looks pissed off.

I also wonder if the facial expression illustrate how one should feel about each particular problem? Well, in any case, I hope I can put away the helmet again for quite some time. As far as my check went, it looked fine, but not sure which facial expression would be suitable for this?