Elsewhere in the world women are concerned about politics, social issues, family, warfare or simply survival. In Japan, it seems their interests are centered on just one thing: bi (beauty).

Oh, the Japanese female predicament! The pressure exerted on us to be utsukushii (beautiful) and kirei (pretty) 24-7! The drive to develop and maintain female youth and beauty in this country borders on the manic-obsessive -- as a nation, we're probably in need of collective therapy.

According to the media everything in life links directly to the bi factor, from the vocabulary a woman knows and deploys (consider the best seller called "Kirei ni Naru Nihongo -- Japanese That Makes You Beautiful") to the kind of food one consumes (please, no animal fat or heavy starch) to the way one conducts oneself during, um, sex. (Reacting is OK, but overacting distorts the facial muscles.) For the record, I just jeopardized some of my own bi points by writing out such a hashitanai (ribald and shameless) sentence in broad daylight, which shows the lengths I go to for the readers of this paper.