it's back! yes, i am talking about Burger King! it is back in Japan after a lengthy absence and hopefully it is here to stay. J and i waited for the hype to settle for a couple of weeks and headed over to Sunshine City to get a burger tonight. the line wasn't very long at all and the burgers were good. it was like being back in a burger king in america but for all the Japanese people inside.
Japan follws american trends a few years after they are hot in the US and it seems that the massive-jumbo-supersized-colossal-big-gulp craze has entered Japan. Tokyoites flocked to McDonald's when the Mega mac (read: 4 goddamn beef patties) came out. in fact, they had to limit the amount of mega macs sold in a day because they would run out of meat patties. The King is also pushing the size issue with the whopper, the selling point being that it's huge. watch television and you'll see food eating contests and shows where chubby Japanese tv "talents" go to various big portion serving restaurants. it was quite the eye opener today.
they call obesity "metabolic syndrome" here in Japan. it's "new" for them and it seems quite the juxtaposition to be hyping these massive junk food items in japan while pushing various diet products. what gets me is that by american standards, the girls who "lose weight" are not such fatties to begin with. the diet product commercials show a 105 lb. girl going to 70 lbs soaking wet. it can't be healthy. i realize i am not the pillar of health (especially having eaten at burger king tonight) but i feel like so many of the women in this country are too thin. c'mon girls! keep a little cushion for the pushin'. yes, i know that they preach that fat is bad and you'll die of heart disease and diabetes but you have to remember that your boobs are fat and your ass is fat and your kidneys are held up by fat and you don't have as many wrinkles on your face if there's fat under the skin. there needs to be more balance and less push for the extremes.
one of the funniest things i heard was that my friend Jess was upset cuz her boyfriend lovingly poked her on the side and said, "if you were a fish, you'd be chu-toro." she was very insulted by this but i thought it was hysterical. for those of you who don't eat fish or are not obsessed with sahimi the way we are here in Japan, chu-toro is fatty tuna. it's not too fatty but it's good fatty (chu- means middle). now, Jess's boyfriend is a super cut lean mean surfing machine. he has about 2% body fat and he has a gorgeous body that he doesn't mind showing off. he'd be considered maguro (or just plain tuna -- no fat). then we come to oo-toro, or super fatty tuna. this is the category in which is mostly reside. when you look at people, you can tell which kind of tuna they are from the way they deal with having to move to higher elevations. maguros take the stairs, even when an escalator is available. they bound up them as if they were going down (those turds)! chu-toros will walk up an escalator going up. their guilt of taking advantage of the machine is assuaged by the fact that they are "taking the stairs" by climbing up the escalator. it helps them get to the top with minimal exertion and guilt. then you have the oo-toros. they "keep to the left" on the escalators which means they just stand and let the machine move them up. there's no guilt here, there's no deluding themselves that they are anything but fatties who want to get to the top of the stairs without having put any effort at all into this. i've been adopting the chu-toro lifestyle these days. that combined with watching those tai-bo commercials are really doing me wonders. remember, it needs to be a "full body work out" and that includes the brain! what kind of tuna are you?
