This is always good news, no matter where it comes from.

The Toronto Star is carrying a story from the Wall Street Journal about how reportedly, Japanese women's breasts are getting bigger and they are in general become curvier. This is always good news, and I mean that for both men and women.

Curvier=healthier, as far as I'm concerned. The fact that it also=sexier to my gaze is just a delightful bonus.

The story carries the perhaps-inevitable headline of

Japanese women bust out

It also contains the four sexiest paragraphs ever to appear, certainly in the Wall Street Journal, but probably in the Toronto Star as well.

Nami Sakamoto, an advertising-agency employee, embodies the new look. The 26-year-old is tall – by Japanese standards – at 5 feet 5 inches. She's also voluptuous, with a 35-inch bust and 35-inch hips.

"I had a hard time finding button-down shirts that would close," says Sakamoto, especially when she was in high school and there were fewer foreign retailers in Japan that actually sold bigger sizes.

"Sometimes the buttons would burst off." Now she buys clothes at Western retailers that carry larger sizes.

Other young women are buying special items to flaunt their new physique. "It's just more fun to show some skin," says Ayami Arii, a 19-year-old vocational school student, who recently sported a tiny denim mini skirt and an iridescent push-up bra that peeks out from below her low-cut blouse. Her bra, a big seller at boutiques in Tokyo's Shibuya 109 department store, is called a "Showy Bra." Similar to a string bikini top, the $60 bras, made to be peeking out of a low-cut blouse, started appearing last year and come in a variety of colours, from red patent leather to leopard print and orange sequins.

My stars! (fans face) It's getting hot in here...