After minus-ion bottled water to transform your entire being, and natto (fermented soybeans) that was claimed to effortlessly turn chubbies into model specimens, "power spots" look to be taking their turn at the pinnacle of Japan's ever-fleeting (but ever-marketable) fascination with the slightly otherworldly.
Hit any bookshop these days and you'll find any number of tomes extolling places to go to get extra energy -- locales as esoteric as shrines, mountains and parks. But unlike those books identifying power spots far distant from Tokyo, like the Hieizan "holy mountain" in Kyoto, "Tokyo Power Spot Guide" reveals such supercharged sites right in the belly of the metropolis.
"This book tells you about secret spots where working men and women in Tokyo can recharge themselves even during lunch breaks," said self-described clairvoyant Reika Akatsuki, who penned this work.