It was reportedly good enough for Elizabeth Taylor. It kept Chairman Mao forever young (until he died). And Charlie Chaplin went straight to the source — a clinic in Bucharest — for it.
Now, thanks to a tieup between Romania's government and the high-class healing resort Hotel New Akao Royal Wing in Atami, Shizuoka Prefecture, the famed antiaging treatment developed by controversial late gerontologist Ana Aslan is at hand — and it's available less than 40 minutes from Tokyo by train.
Skeptical but spent after partying too hard over the festive holidays, I leave the Tokyo office at lunchtime and find myself stretched out on a massage bed by 2 p.m.