Posts Tagged ‘Japan’
Japan Creates Legal Waist Limit
Are you too fat for Japan? The Global Post writes on the nation’s new national waist limits: 33.5 inches for men and 35.4 inches for women.
In the world’s slimmest industrialized nation, those whose bellies expand beyond the legal limit may be subject to therapy and exercise classes (no jail time as of now).
The goal of the new regulations is to head off metabolic syndrome, or “metabo,” a combination of health risks, including stomach flab, high blood pressure and high cholesterol, that can lead to cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Companies are offering discounted gym memberships and developing diet plans for workers, and citizens are buying new metabo-fighting products, such as a $1,400 machine called the Joba that imitates a bucking bronco.
This Mob Is Big in Japan
Jake Adelstein in the Washington Post:
I have spent most of the past 15 years in the dark side of the rising sun. Until three years ago, I was a crime reporter for the Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan’s largest newspaper, and covered a roster of characters that included serial killers who doubled as pet breeders, child pornographers who abducted junior high-school girls, and the John Gotti of Japan.
I came to Japan in 1988 at age 19, spent most of college living in a Zen Buddhist temple, and then became the first U.S. citizen hired as a regular staff writer for a Japanese newspaper in Japanese. If you know anything about Japan, you’ll realize how bizarre this is — a gaijin, or foreigner, covering Japanese cops. When I started the beat in the…
