The over-riding message you take from all of Japan is one of food. There are restaurants, cafes, diners, quite literally everywhere. In rows. You never ever find just one, always 17. Most selling the same thing, sometimes they offer variety. In the spaces between the eateries you find food shops. Not just ‘yer basics’ kind’a shops, you have those too. But sweets, biscuits, cakes, desserts. And all these places are busy and everyone walks down the streets with either bags of food or eating on the move. They are also a nation who love to drink. As in ‘drink’. Beer, wine, sake, whisky, anything, the more the better, whatever helps with the high notes on Unchained Merody.

Yet you don’t see fat people here. (Currently pigging out in the lounge at Haneda airport and by the time you read this ‘here’ will be ‘there’, so there may be ambiguity), Well, you do but they speak with American or Australian accents. Ok, a few British. And not just ‘not fat’ but the default position here is ‘painfully skinny’.

And thus we should be investigating the genetic make up of oriental people to discover, isolate and clone ‘the gene’ for thinness and offer implant services outside every branch of KFC, McDonalds, Dennys, every fish’n’chip shop, pie-n-masheree and pub in every… everywhere Westerners eat, except the Japanese restaurants, obvs.

Because the answer must be diet. Yes, they are ‘pre-disposed’ to thinness but obesity levels are generally a reflection of fat/sugar/carb consumption within a society which is cultural and to a degree socio-economic in that ‘the poor’ can eat hi-fat shit much more cheaply than they can eat ‘well’. They don’t sell pizzas at Nobu.

It’s what they eat though that is rather spectacularly healthy. 796 ways to eat fish. Some of them even cooked. A few you wouldn’t even want to ask. But loads that are just wonderful. If ya like fish, obvs. And Japan is a series of fairly narrow islands, so everywhere is coastal. (Fish generally live on the coast, FYI). Plain boiled rice. Yeuch. But you get used to it and can drown it in anything to give it taste. They grow it here. Many in their own gardens. They DON’T use heavy sauces here, like your British chicken-tikka-massala or ‘chinese’ take-out. And they’re big on tofu (no, me neither, horrible stuff) vegetables, lots and lots of good stuff. And they’re big on breakfast. Which pretty much looks like every other meal; fish, rice, tofu, miso soup, but is more… breakfasty than the same thing served later on. Because…

So I suppose what I’m really saying is: YOU EAT TOO MUCH YOU GREAT FAT WESTERN FUCK!! LIGHTEN UP, IN EVERY SENSE. And then, like me, your inner yin will outweigh your outer yang and you’ll either become slim and waif-like or you’ll vanish up your own kimono. But something in the diet here is seriously, profoundly, outrageously, non-obesely, type-2-diabetes-preventively wonderful and good for you. Turning Japanese, I want to turn you Japanese, I really think so.

Happy landings

A xxxx