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IBUSUKI, Kagoshima Prefecture: A cold winter spell is still blanketing many countries in the northern hemisphere.
In Japan, many are looking for unique ways to keep warm, while reaping health benefits.
The warm sand by the sea in Kagoshima is among the hottest around the globe. The closer one gets to the shore, the hotter it gets. At some places, it is regarded to be around 85 degrees Celsius, while the maximum temperature most people can withstand is around 50 degrees Celsius.
Although the mechanism is said to be unknown, it is said to be the only such place in the world.
Kazufumi Tateyama, Sand Bath Hall Saraku said: "For women, it is effective for those who have bad circulation, shoulder aches and lower back pain. For the skin, it said to be good for those with atopy."
The steam bath of Ibusuki has a recorded history of about 300 years. Since the late 1800s to 1930s, sand bathing has developed into a popular form of therapy, which in turn has prompted some 60 inns to sprout here.
And since the early days, many visitors believe that a good sand bath is able to keep the doctor away.
Kagoshima University conducted a study in 1985, to examine the effects of the sand bath on blood pressure, cardiovascular system, and respiratory system. It believed the sand baths at Ibusuki are three to four times more effective than the average hot spring.
Aside from the therapeutic effect, it helps to cool in the summer and warm up in the winter, and it is no wonder that it attracts 500 to 600 visitors daily.
Increasing numbers of Asian men, particularly in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are marrying foreigners because fewer women in their homelands are willing to wed, a new study said Monday.
The phenomenon, which dates back more than a decade, has even created a detectable trend in women's migration, said the study by Daniele Belanger of the University of Western Ontario University.
In Taiwan, 15 per cent of wives were of foreign origin in 2009; eight per cent in South Korea.
In Japan, the phenomenon started earlier, in the 1980s, but has remained at a modest level: only five or six per cent of marriages in the mid-2000s involved foreign wives.
But in all three places, foreign brides represented the largest group of new immigrants apart from the temporary workers, wrote Belanger in the journal of France's National Institute for Demographic Studies (INED). And the reason the men went looking abroad was the lack of women at home, she added.
With women's education levels rising so was their representation in the workplace, she explained.
Increasing numbers of them were not willing to settle for the traditional role of a wife -- at least as it exists in its current form. They preferred to keep their jobs and stay single.
For men however, "they have the responsibility to continue the paternal line by giving birth to a son and, in many cases, looking after their aged parents. They could not therefore remain bachelors.
The foreign brides generally came from China and Vietnam, and if at first this kind of marriage was more common among the rural poor, it subsequently spread to the urban middle classes. Some observers have expressed fears that some of the brides involved are victims of trafficking but the great majority of migrant women marry of their own accord and not under parental pressure, and their objective is both to marry and to migrate."
