Bodybuilding improves your health and physique, improves your mood, reduces stress and frustration, improves your sleeping patterns, diverts your attention from problems and unpleasant life events and situations, and helps you acquire control of your life, body, and mind. The following are some of Japan's bodybuilders worth appreciating.
1. Naoki Go
Naoki Go carefully places his feet on the ground, gently raises both arms, and shuffles as if prepared to carry a massive fictitious weight. He flexes his biceps the next second. Each arm's muscles rise like bread in an oven.
2. Hide Yamagushi
Hidetada "Hide" Yamagushi is an IFBB professional bodybuilder from Japan. He was the first Japanese bodybuilder to compete in the Mr. Olympia contest and the first Japanese bodybuilder to compete in the Arnold Classic in 2007.
3. Sunpian Kawasaki
Sunpian Kawasaki is one of 11 bodybuilders vying for a spot in the first round of the annual Japan Open. The seven judges in the front row must narrow the field of 68 competitors down to 20, judging their bodies as they run through a sequence of four predetermined positions.
4. Ken Yasuda
Ken Yasuda (also known as Japan's Arnold Schwarzenegger) is a Japanese professional bodybuilder. He was born on May 2, 1971, in Kyoto, Japan. He formerly served as the International Fight League's Tokyo Sabres' mixed martial arts head coach.
5. Tsutomu Tosaka
Most men in their 70s are content to sit back and reflect on their previous years when they were more physically fit. Tsutomu Tosaka, a 74-year-old Japanese weightlifter, demonstrates that you are never too old to have a fantastic body. Tsutomu won the senior division of the Japan Masters Bodybuilding Championships over the weekend.
6. Shigeru Sugita
Shigeru Sugita is a Japanese bodybuilding champion who became the first Japanese bodybuilder to win Mr. Universe in 1976.
7. Yukio Mishima
Yukio Mishima was a Japanese novelist, poet, dramatist, actor, model, Shintoist, patriot, and creator of the Tatenokai, an unarmed civilian army. Mishima is one of the most influential Japanese novelists of the twentieth century.
8. Kenta Kobashi
Kenta Kobashi is a retired Japanese professional wrestler. He began his career in All Japan Pro Wrestling in 1988 and quickly rose to prominence, capturing the Triple Crown Heavyweight Championship three times and winning the Champion Carnival in 2000.
9. Satoko Yamanouchi
Satoko Yamanouchi's biceps ripple and her neck veins pulse as she takes a frightening stance during the Japan bodybuilding championships. An hour later, the pint-sized Nagoya housewife is in tears after barely losing her title to a field of 34 bronzed and exceptionally buff females, most of whom are in their forties.
10. Megumi Sawada
Megumi Sawada, the ultimate winner, stunned Yamanouchi by striking a sequence of jaw-dropping postures to the theme song of Godzilla. "Incredibly, I've won," said the 56-year-old gym teacher, who used to compete behind closed doors to avoid upsetting her mother.
