During my daily travels, I often come across stories, anecdotes or little pieces of information that I think would be great to tell you all about. I'm often asked by Japanese people, 'Is Japan what you expected it to be?', and I tell them that I had already had a pretty good idea of what Japan was like because I studies Japanese at school. This usually leads to them asking, 'What do foreigners imagine Japan to be like? They probably think it's full of geishas and ninjas, and everyone eats sushi for every meal! Ha hah hah!'. So I ask them, 'Tell me, what do you think Australia is like?'. Responses are varied, but most Japanese people think that koalas and kangaroos are on the streets and in people's houses, Santa Claus wears boardies and rides a surf board, and aborigines roam the streets dishing out vigilante justice with their spears and boomerangs. Oh yeah, we eat koalas too.

The point of this is that you can never really know what another culture is like until you immerse yourself in it. Japan is not exactly like people imagine it to be, but on first glance, it's not too different either. Japanese people are fairly quiet and reserved, people have tea ceremonies and some people wear kimonos. And yet, some of the stuff that goes on in Japan (the real Japan) is so ridiculous that given all the time in the world you couldn't imagine these things happening. These are the things that I see on tv, or read about in the newspaper (or, if I'm very lucky, get to experience first hand). These are the things that I file away in my brain, hoping for a chance to write about some day. For example....

Recently, a junior high school teacher was fired for conducting a lesson that wasn't the type of lesson you'd usually find in the teaching manual. To help a class of 2nd grade junior-high school girls become 'interested in water', and to make the class 'as much fun as possible', this teacher wrote questions on about 40 golf balls, chucked them into the school pool, and had the girls dive in and choose one. Once they picked a ball, they had to answer the question. Some of the questions were 'How big is your bust?', 'Do you want to have sex?' and 'Who is the name of your lover?'. Only in Japan..... and if you don't believe me, read the article at http://mdn.mainichi.jp/national/news/20071016p2a00m0na045000c.html

Did you know, it's polite for people to remove their shoes before entering a Japanese house? Did you also know, it's polite to remove your shoes when you're about to jump off a building? This week, a woman was found dead on a Tokyo street after jumping off the roof of a department store in Tokyo. Fair enough. Suicide in Japan is fairly common. In fact it's so common that it rarely makes the news. So why did this one make the news? Well, it seems that this young jumper was polite enough to take off her shoes before jumping, but not polite enough to make sure there was no one underneath her when she jumped. She landed on some poor guy who is now in a coma. Very bad manners. http://mdn.mainichi.jp/national/news/20071106p2a00m0na023000c.html

And finally, this is not a news story, but something weird I regularly see on tv. Japanese tv is dominated by people called 'talents'. I suppose they could be considered tv celebrities. An example from Australia would be someone like Darryl Somers or Rove. They host programs, they appear in programs... they are the program. You almost never see a regular person on tv. 99% of Japanese entertainment, variety, comedy and game shows are solely the domain of the tv talent. Talents are usually either comedians, actors, singers or people with some special talent (ah hah, that's why they're called talents!). If you become a tv talent, then you're set. You'll get to appear on numerous programs on every channel at all times of the day. You'll become popular and just about everyone in Japan will know you.

This is the sort of topic I could write for hours on, but I'll just talk about one type of talent for now. The 'Oogui Talent'. 'Oogui' means big-eating. In other words, this celebrity is a person whose special skill is being able to eat massive amount of food. They participate in competitions, they travel around the world to compete against champions from other countries, and they appear in food and cooking programs (of which there are many). When you think about an eating champion, you'll probably imagine some huge guy like Homer Simpson or that fat kid from Stand By Me that ate all the pies and then barfed all over the audience. Not in Japan... In Japan, the champion eaters are all regular sized (which, in Japan, means thin). Maybe you've heard of the hot dog eating champion Kobayashi, who wins the American hot dog eating championships every year? Well he's pretty small. But he's nothing compared to the Japanese female champion, Gal Sone (actually, she beats all the men too, so she should probably just be called the Japanese champion). This is what she looks like:



She's about 160cm tall, and weighs about 40kg. She is an absolute twig. She looks like she would snap in half if you touched her. She looks like she would blow away in a slight breeze. She looks like the sort of person who would be full after drinking a mouthful of water. If she turned sideways, I'm pretty sure she would disappear.

But she is the champion, and a deserved champion she is. Watching her eat is mezmorising. It makes you feel sick just watching, yet it's impossible to turn away. She defies the laws of physics and astounds doctors. It's a truly amazing thing to watch.

I'll tell you some figures, but they really don't do her justice. I can say that she ate 1kg of this, or 2kgs of that, but unless you actually see her eating and see what 2kgs of this or that looks like, you have no idea.

In a recent competition, she ate 183 pieces of sushi is 30 minutes. Not the little sushi rolls, but proper Japanese sushi (a piece of fish on a bed of rice).



It's hard to tell how big a piece is, but on average it's about the length of your middle finger. In other words, 183 pieces is a hell of a lot.

For a tv program, she went on a tour of some restaurants in Tokyo (this kind of restaurant tour program is very popular). Over a few hours, she ate 40,000 calories of food. She also regularly breaks the 'Elvis' record of 15,000 calories per meal.

Lastly, my favourite, she really likes curry and rice. She ate 6kg of curry in 23 minutes. That's over 15% of her body weight in curry. Uhhh....

Seeing the before and after shots is amazing. The before shot shows her as a regular twig. In the after shot, she looks about 8 months pregnant. She participated in a medical study in which doctors examined her body before and after eating, to try and find out how she does it. Apparently, her stomach is normal size before she eats, but as she eats it expands to be 10 times the size of a regular person's stomach. They showed an x-ray of her expanded stomach. It literally filled up all the empty space inside her torso. Also, she has some kind of condition that increases her body temperature way above normal levels when she is eating. If normal person's body temperature goes up by half a degree or so, they have a fever. Her body temperature goes way, way past fever levels, which helps her burn the massive amount of food she consumes.

All I can say is that I'm glad I'm not going out with her. The restaurant bills must be extraordinary.