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With its heavy tinge of eroticism and skimpy outfits flashing even the minutest quantities of body fat, it takes a lot of guts to become a belly dancer, but that's precisely what a skyrocketing number of young Japanese women are doing, according to Yomiuri Weekly (10/30). Belly dancing has become something of a craze for the young women, most of who are 20- or 30-somethings doing regular office work for top companies. Just like Nahako Sugiyama, who's been learning belly dancing for the past three years and now performs at an Indian restaurant. "I started because I felt there was something fresh about Arabian dance. When I dance, it's like this passion that had been asleep inside me suddenly awakes and surfaces," she tells Yomiuri Weekly. "Our customers are looking for something sexy and I always try to give them that." Many belly dancing classes are held at nights and on weekends when most of the OLs taking up the craze are off work. They're going to learn at places like the Belly Dance Studios run in Yokohama and Tokyo's trendy Shibuya by Kaoru "Kareema" Komatsu, the 47-year-old woman acknowledged as Japan's first belly dancer and now a teacher of the art to over 300 students. Komatsu, a nuclear physics major at college and a one-time computer programmer got into belly dancing while studying in New York. "I was doing aerobics for my health, but wanted to do something a bit different to everybody else. The first place I visited overseas was Morocco and I was inspired by the belly dancers I saw performing there. There are a lot of women like that now," she tells Yomiuri Weekly. "Many women are going to the Middle East and developing an interest in an Arabian culture they weren't taught about at school. Many belly dancers are also intellectuals." Japanese belly dancers have proved to be pretty adept on a world stage. In June, the Belly Dance Festival attracted over 1,000 belly dancers from all over the world to compete in Egypt, with 29-year-old Japanese dancer Nicole selected as the "newcomer presenting the greatest expectations of future success." Simple as it seems, belly dancing is anything but. Dancers have got to have a great sense of rhythm to start off with, and then be able to adjust it to the slightly peculiar beat of Arabic music. Nonetheless, the number of places hosting belly dancing shows is now growing year by year. Tokyo alone is seeing a greater number of Egyptian, Turkish, Iranian, Indian and other Middle Eastern and South Asian restaurants, many of which offer belly dancing shows for their customers. This is cache, read story here
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