On to important matters

Got a bit bogged down last post with politics, history and consecutive posts about the Keystone Cops (and that's three mentions in a row - something must be done about this! Ed.).

So, tonight I feel it is more important to get to the bottom of a much more relevant issue - why are there so few ugly women in Japan?

Now I know what you are thinking, 'there are no ugly women in Japan!', but this is not true. It is true that there aren't very many of them and there are a minuscule number of ugly women over the age of 18, but they do exist. Anyway, I wondered about this for an awfully long time, about as long as I've lived in Japan actually.

When I first came here in the heady days of 1996 with Andy, my mate who I drove mad, we both remarked, after walking around tripping over our tongues for a few days, that the (and please bear in mind that we were young, hormonal and extremely sexually frustrated at the time so the language used was not particularly flattering) 'fit bird:munter ratio' was extremely high in favour of the 'fit birds'. We puzzled long and hard but not could work out why, and since Andy was invalided back to Blighty I have continued to ponder.

Until now, that is (well, April this year actually but I've just got around to writing about it). It is because all the ugly girls are taken away and recycled!

I know this for a fact because not only have I seen the facility where it happens, in the spirit of investigative photojournalism, at no small peril to myself, I have pictures.


Munters ugly bird recycling plant, Itabashi-ku, Tokyo

And it seems to work!

For example Norika Fujiwara is a well known model who advertises, amongst other things, automatic bog seats. Anyway it is a little known fact that she is a Munters alumni. On her 18th birthday in 1989 she was taken away for recycling, because, well, looking like this I think you'll understand why:


Our Norika at her 18th birthday party

However after a lengthy, intensive and probably extremely painful process we have bog seat promoter extraordinaire:


Standing next to the Arakawa soon after her 19th birthday

A vast improvement, I think you'll agree. And it is all done for the benefit of Japan as a whole because, let's face it, no one is going to be interested in an ugly country... Well, Japan is quite an ugly country in places, the bits covered in concrete especially, but no one will be interested in a country full of ugly people at any rate.

Anyway I've done a bit of running and things feel good. Monday night and tonight were both 7.3km-ers along the bank, a 36m 08s on Monday and a 35m 58s tonight. Good going I reckon.