Japanese Women's new weight loss technique, Samurai camps and Techno!

 Aerobics is for wimps, marathons are for the uncommitted and kickboxing is yesterday’s game. If you really want to vanquish your flab, no exercise can compete with an hour of vigorous feudal massacre Just a  Samurai Camp, yup that's what the modern Japanese women are doing,imaginary bloodbath and throbbing techno music, sounds like a whole loada fun!! I should try it........
The traditional katana swords may be plastic and the slaughter imaginary, but as timesonline.co.uk discovered, when it joined a session, the sweat and fury of battle is real and exhausting. There is a sense that every grimaced slash is meant for someone — a deadweight boyfriend, perhaps, or an intolerable boss. The drum-and-bass score intensifies the rage.

It Devised late last year, the growing popularity of Samurai Camp has already outpaced the expectations of Takafuji Ukon, the young choreographer who founded the sport.The nightly classes have reached their maximum capacity of panting, crimson-faced warriors. New instructors are now being hastily trained to export the craze to other cities.
One of the stranger aspects of the class is that its devotees are entirely women. Despite being open to both sexes, the male heirs to Japan’s bushido warrior tradition cannot handle the pace. “When the class started, it was all men coming to symbolically cut the fat from around their middles,” said Mr Takafuji, “but they weren’t like real samurai, and quit. The women stick to it. They are Japan’s modern samurai.”

The exercise regime — an hour of unrelenting fake-fighting broken by a single minute of rest and green tea at the halfway mark — offers to lop 5kg (11lb) from a generous samurai gut after a mere month of classes.
For others, the class is another facet of a wider craze for all things 16thcentury that has chiefly affected Japanese women. Recent months have seen a growing fascination, particularly among those in their thirties, with the “swords and samurai” roots of the modern nation. Books, cafés, clothing and prime-time television have all begun pandering to the fad. Sounds like a good deal to me, swords and techno and techno!