Mikans make my palms yellow?

It is very cold these days.

A few decades before, “kotatsu” and “mikan” were symbols of Japanese winter. (A kotatsu is a low table with an electric heater. For keeping warm, the kotatsu table is covered with a quilt. A mikan is a mandarin orange.)

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This is a kotatsu table.

When I was a child, many families bought mikan by the box in the winter. I took out some mikans from the box and ate them while I was warm at the kotatsu. I ate a lot of mikans before they are became rotten or moldy － like a job to eat them up. After I got full I tried to put my whole body under the kotatsu: being bent double or lying diagonally under the kotatsu. Then I fell asleep. Sleeping under the kotatsu was a very happy and peaceful time, which I could enjoy only in the winter. Unfortunately, my happy time was never very long. When I was sleeping under the kotatsu my mother always woke me up and scolded me, “Don’t sleep under the kotatsu! Go to your bed before you catch a cold!!” Most Japanese must have had the same experiences as I did. This was one of the typical Japanese winter scenes in the Showa Period.

“Look at my palms! See?” “Wow, what a very bright yellow. How many mikans did you eat?” “I ate 20.” “I ate more than 20!” This conversation always happened just after the New Year holidays among elementary school children. It was like a competition that compared the number of eating mikans and whose palms became the deepest yellow. Is the same conversation still common among the school children now? In the first place, I haven’t seen people buying mikan by the box in the winter recently. Most Japanese lifestyles have been westernized and many of them don’t have kotatsu in their houses now. What is the number of kotatsu holders in proportion to the number of mikan buyers? Is there any deep connection with kotatsu and mikan?

Then I have a question. Why do only palms become yellow when we eat a lot of mikans? I have never compared the color of other body parts with classmates. I have never seen other kids comparing the color of their necks, arms, or feet － faces either. Why don’t all of our body change color like our palms? I also have one more question. If eating a lot of mikans makes palms yellow, many Italian’s palms should be red because they eat a lot of tomatoes ie: pizza sauce or pasta sauce. If there are people who love squid ink and eat squid ink dishes everyday, their palms should be black. Green pepper lovers? Green palms.

I think eating mikans doesn’t change my palms’ color. The mikan peelings’ coloring matter may make my palms deep yellow. It is the reason that only palms change color. However, why did I eat a lot of mikans frantically?

If I really want to know the truth, “mikans make my palms yellow”, I have a way: for several days eat a lot of mikans while wearing plastic gloves, 7 to 8 mikans a day as when I was a child. If I do the experiment I can know the fact a week later, but now, I am a little older and I don’t have enough passion to inspect mikans’ mystery. So please let me know if you know the truth; what did make my palms yellow?