Raw Japan
Slices of Japanese business, politics and life
Japan’s first lady: High-flying UFO rider
Call her what you want, but boring she is not.
Japan’s next first lady is making international headlines as more details emerge of her eccentric past.
Miyuki Hatoyama, now in the spotlight following her husband’s crushing lower-house election victory on Sunday, wrote about her extraterrestrial voyage in a book published last year entitled “Very Strange Things I’ve Encountered.”
“While my body was asleep, I think my soul rode on a triangular-shaped UFO and went to Venus,” the 66-year-old wrote about an experience she had some 20 years ago.
“It was a very beautiful place, and it was really green.”
And perhaps the experience is fitting — her husband, Prime Minister-elect Yukio Hatoyama, was once nicknamed “the alien” for his prominent eyes.
Real men make lunch
It seems that in Japan, when the economy get’s tough, the men go cooking, and the result is a marketer’s dream in a recession.
Men are turning to the traditional art of making boxed lunches, or bento – compartmentalised boxes with a mix of rice, vegetables and meat dishes.
