The Washington Post Discovers Japan’s Billy Blanks Obsession

It’s taken months, but the mainstream western media has finally picked up on the Billy Blanks mania that is overtaking Japan:

Asked to explain his runaway popularity in Japan, Blanks said: “The Japanese people see there is no phoniness to my workout. They see my spirit. Yeah, I am giving them orders, but they see I care. They see my heart.”

Then he showed off his abs: Not a Brad Pitt washboard, but impressive for a man of 52.

“Billy is a god,” said Kumiko Maezawa, 41, a homemaker who was among the paying and sweating customers when the BootCamp tour stopped in Yokohama.

“I’m not a masochist,” she said, “but it is nice to be bullied around by him.”

While the article is a pretty interesting and fair representation of the Billy fad, I was a bit baffled by this line:

In the streets of Tokyo, it can take hours of looking before spotting a single person who could honestly be called tubby.

I readily agree there are far fewer obese people in Japan than there are in America, but I’d like to think that one doesn’t need to write wild exaggerations about it taking hours to spot a fat person to get such a point across. Overweight Japanese people exist, and it doesn’t take so long to find one if you’re in a crowded area!