The Tokyo Diet and Beauty Fair: Where the salespeople don’t believe the gimmicks either
One of our intrepid Japanese correspondents recently attended the annual Tokyo Diet and Beauty Fair, which is largely a conference for aesthetic salons where vendors tout the latest and greatest of technological advancements they can use to bilk their unsuspecting customers by offering an effortless chance at health and beauty.
Its website bills it as a rapidly growing event that allows companies “the opportunity to meet new potential clients and the chance to expand your business and promote your company and products in the Japanese beauty and health industry.”
Bikini-clad models help the hokum go down
The first thing a visitor to the event will notice is that there are a lot of women running around in bikinis. Even in the cafeteria during their breaks the presenters remained scantily clad, as if their mere presence in beach attire could convince shop owners of the quality of their products.
Since the event is largely geared toward shop owners, presenters are oddly frank about the usefulness (or lack thereof) of the hyperbaric chambers, vibrating exercisers and devices that claim to photograph the aura (the color of which seemed to be largely driven by the operator of the machine).
Another expensive device allowed salon owners to scan patrons’ waists and produce an outline on a screen, which, over time, would allow the client to see changes in waist size. Of course a tape measure or a series of before and after pictures would do the same thing, but that’s not really the point, is it?
Treating people like food
A reporter for Reuters who also attended the event said the theme seemed to be products and devices that gave the impression of treating people like food.
There was, for example, a device that looked a fair bit like a human panini grill that apparently relaxes people through aroma, a vibrating mattress, music, high-density oxygen and LED light, and a salt room that used high humidity and salt tiles, which apparently are good for the skin as well as making bacon.
The lesson we learned from all this beauty is that if you go to a salon and they offer you a go at some fancy looking, strange device that delivers equally strange promises, run away. At least that way you’ll be getting some exercise, which has proven diet and beauty benefits.
(By Sarah E. White for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News)
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