Since I'm in a Life Safety class this week, I felt like I should share my boredom with you. Japan actually takes fire safety pretty seriously since they get so many earthquakes and resulting fires. My classrooms in Japan actually had these cool vertical escape chute dealies.
Fire fighting in Japan is also a completely different story than in America. If you've ever seen a road in Japan you would understand - there is no way an American fire truck would get through those streets. Japanese fire trucks are pretty tiny and you'll often find jugs of water tied up to utility poles in the back roads to use for fire fighting (by civilians I'm assuming). I've been told that fire fighters don't typically go in to buildings to rescue people either - but Japanese buildings aren't really designed to last and after an earthquake you don't really want to be running in to a building anyways.
To reward you for reading the above, check this out. Japan past a law for persons over 40 to keep their wasteline in check. 85 centimeters or 33.5 inches for men and 90 centimeters or 35.4 inches for women. Is this a great country or what?? When is the last time you saw ANYONE in a Wal-Mart that would actually meet this criteria?? I'm just so proud of Japan right now. This obviously isn't the best way to fight an obesity problem, but its a hell of a good start! Considering Burger King introduced a 7 patty burger to help advertise Windows 7 just recently, this law couldn't have come at a better time.
