Several days ago I posted a link to an impassioned Jamie Oliver TED talk on the Presentation Zen website. I'm right behind Jamie on this one. This topic — nutrition, health, & fitness — is one I feel very strongly about. I feel quite sad and even angry at the steady rise in obesity and diet and sedentary lifestyle-related diseases that I have seen in my life. Yes, there is an enormous economic cost to obesity-related complications — hundreds of billions of dollars globally in fact — but what concerns me too are the emotional consequences of chronically poor eating habits and poor fitness that impacts millions of actual people in the USA, UK, etc. We humans were not meant to be sedentary and eat such rubbish. Poor diet and poor fitness influences one's emotional well-being and even cognitive abilities. It does not have to be this way.

Of course, many will push back and say that hotdogs and chips and Twinkies, etc. taste good and are fun to eat. I hear you -- I grew up on that stuff too. I still crave much of it sometimes. But the deal is, once I was exposed consistently to simply-prepared fresh foods and healthy snacks years ago, I discovered that the simple foods -- like many found in a traditional Japanese diet -- actually taste better *and* are better for you. Sadly, what I found in the few years I lived back in the States is that eating healthy (at least for a busy and slightly lazy guy like me) was actually more expensive and more difficult. Eating junk was easy and cheap. There were some good stores like WholeFoods (though they are not perfect and are not cheap), but most neighborhoods don't have such a store.

There are no panaceas and government can't fix the problem, but I am happy to see nutrition and fitness starting to get a lot more attention again. Ultimately it comes down to each individual, but we can do a much better job of at least educating young people and setting good examples. This is not a trivial thing; this is a major issue. I'm right behind Jamie Oliver and Arnold Schwarzenegger on this topic. Below is a good informal presentation by Schwarzenegger -- no teleprompter, just a good emotional appeal from the heart. And if you have not seen the Jamie Oliver TED talk, please watch it and share it with all your friends, co-workers, etc. Every school administrator too may consider sharing these videos with teachers and then thinking together of ways they can do better in their local area.

Obesity Summit - weekly address 02/26/10

Jamie Oliver's TED Prize wish: Teach every child about food
http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/765

Stopped into a Starbucks across the street from Osaka Castle for a cup of coffee before heading to the gym.

Sent from my iPhone

One of the most popular songs from the late '70s by the legendary Chuck Mangione. In the early '80s a few OSU football players and I were running stairs in the university's basketball arena when we stumbled in to Chuck in the hallway with his horn. Later that night Chuck Mangione had a concert there. We asked him if it would be alright if we ran some stairs while they did their sound check (the place seats over 10,000; loads of stairs) and he said sure. Seemed like a very cool guy. Friendly. We were around 20, he must have been about 40 then. I remember thinking how cool it was that we were working out in the coliseum to such great music -- not on our Walkmans but to the actual live performance of a famous artists. It felt very good indeed.

Now here it is all these many years later and I am still running stairs and listening to Chuck Mangione, except I am listening to him through my phone (iPhone) on something called an MP3, and I am running stairs in the Japanese mountainside in the shadows of a famous temple. Wild.

Hope this song takes you back a bit. And if you are hearing this live recording for the first time, I hope you'll explore the sounds of Chuck Mangione. Either way, I hope this video makes you feel good.

Went for a run up in the hills near my house and noticed loads of plum trees in bloom. In another month the cherry trees will be in bloom (sakura) and the entire country will go mental with parties and drinking in the evenings under the cherry trees. The cherry tree has a special place of significance in Japan. The plum blossoms are sort of a sign of the unofficial start of spring.

Jogged by a place in the mountains that makes stone lanterns for your garden. And then on up to the Temple.

I've been a fan of Maria Callas since I was exposed to her work as a young high school student in a music class, at a time not long after her death. Recently though I've been doing some more reading about her career and her personal life. I am fascinated by her. This month NPR has an article and a radio segment on their website. The site also features a short video of Maria Callas singing "Vissi D'arte" from Tosca. There are several good clips of her on the NPR site: http://snipurl.com/ujnma

Maria Callas was also gorgeous, the epitome of beauty and grace. I can think of perhaps only one other woman more beautiful than Maria Callas (not including my mother, of course. Moms always get top billing). Callas was elegant and classy yet very real and very human (and therefore imperfect, perfectly imperfect perhaps). I love this quote by Callas. "I am not an angel and do not pretend to be. That is not one of my roles. But I am not the devil either. I am a woman and a serious artist, and I would like so to be judged."

Here's something upbeat from the UK 20 years ago that you may never have heard of. Nice groove. Maybe it will inspire you to hit the clubs (or just do a little dance in your office). Have a great weekend!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand_New_Heavies

The Ricky Gervais Show podcasts/audio books and older radio shows with Ricky Gervais, Steve Merchant, & Karl Pilkington are raw, fresh, pointless, and absolutely hysterical (at least to me...and a few million other clearly unstable people who don't mind spending a few dollars for complete drivel). I always liked Gervais's work -- I had the BBC version of The Office before I saw the US version. The Extras is fantastic. But these podcasts (they have to call them audiobooks when they charge, but they are essentially podcasts) are brilliant. I have every single podcast and audiobook that they put up on iTunes and have been listening to them for the past 18 months or so on the train. I must look odd sometimes on the train judging from some of the looks I get. I mean there I am, a strange gaijin with sunglasses just sitting there with white headphones coming out of my ears with a big Cheshire Cat grin on my face looking a bit mental. But the thing is, the absurd, unscripted verbal interplay between these three guys just makes me laugh and smile and genuinely feel better. I can say with great certainty -- even if there were not scientific evidence to back me up (but there is) -- that this kind of from-the-gut and from-the-heart laughter is actually good for my mental and physical health (they are obviously interconnected). The content does not matter in this case -- the content is absolute bollocks anyway. Laughter too is infectious and Ricky Gervais's laughter has to be the most infectious of them all.

Screenshot of my iPhone this AM. The latest "Guide to."

Now, it's not for everyone, nothing with a strong following ever is. But I hope this mention here will lead at least a few more people to discover the brilliance of Karl Pilkington (hmmm, is brilliance the right word? Perhaps brilliant idiocy is the better term). Anyway, here is a free sample. They play a clip from the show in the middle of this free podcast. I hope it makes you smile.

http://www.rickygervais.com/ (link to the iTunes store on Ricky's website)

If Ricky Gervais doesn't do it for you, find something else that makes you laugh -- I mean really laugh -- everyday. It's good for you, and it's good for those around you as well, isn't it?

• The Health Benefits of Humor and Laughter
• Laughter Is The Best Medicine (Science Daily)
• Laughter: The Best Medicine (Psychology Today)

This is another TED talk by Bob Thurman. Even though he's at the lectern, he does not read his speech (though he reads a bit at the beginning). The first story he tells to illustrate a key idea is quite graphic and memorable. (You probably do not want to be eating when you hear that part, but his version of the mythical story makes a strong impression.). Later he talks about a seven-step meditation exercise for extending compassion beyond our inner circle. Again, a lot of wisdom in there. I hope there is something in there for you. Give yourself some time to watch this later today. It may sound all too idealistic perhaps, but I think it is actually quite practical and concrete...yet it is not easy.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/robert_thurman_on_compassion.html
Below are just a couple of quotes from the talk I put into slides for a presentation I'll give in future.

This background image is mostly empty space. The lotus (I think this is a pink lilly) is a symbol of enlightenment or purity and peace, and so on.

I used the ripple in the pond as the background as it fits a bit with the idea of how our own compassion and happiness does indeed spread out to others.
More Bob Thurman talks: http://www.bobthurman.com/video

Early morning walk through the park...

Sent from my iPhone

I walked by a McDonald's on the way home (not hard to do; they're ubiquitous) and noticed the new burger poster in the "Big America" campaign. Harada-san at McDonald's Japan has done a great job bringing the company back over the last few years. I'm not having a go at McDonald's. They do what they do. They are not about healthy food and they have obviously given up trying to pretend. Fine. (I mean, who goes to McDonald's to get a salad in a plastic cup? Yum.) Japan does not have nearly the diet-related diseases that the USA and UK (etc.) have, but the younger generation loves this stuff. And that's OK in moderation, but moderation is not what I am seeing. By the way, in Japan McDonald's really has a good reputation and is not the object of ridicule as it is in some other countries. It's a good place to have a part-time job for a kid and the service is the way it is suppose to be: very fast, very friendly, very clean, very safe, etc. Yet few people see the irony in the campaign name "Big America." My fear, however, is that someday they'll have to change the name to "Big Japan."

The previous burger in the campaign was the Texas burger. See ad below.

The voiceover is "Wairudo o tabetsukusou" ("Eat all of this wildness!"). Does not really translate directly; more of a feeling.

See this article: "McDonalds Japan To Launch 4 'Big America' Burgers In 2010"