Getting 'buried alive' in Japan is hot stuff

Frankly, I am nervous. The sauna at the Hakusuikan resort on Ibusuki on the tip of the southern Japanese island of Kyushu may be recommended as a cure for any number of ailments, but it also involves being buried up to your neck in geothermally heated sand.

And, I cannot help thinking, it did not do Yeltsin that much good in the end.

This being Japan, there is a whole heap of ceremony involved in the burial process. First, I change into a blue and white cotton yukata. This must be worn left over right. Wear it the other way and you are dead. Really. Only the star of the show at a funeral gets to wear the garment that way. Then I tie it up with a blue belt, or obi, which has to wrap twice around the body. I finish off the ensemble with a pair of brown plastic slippers.

Actually, that is not strictly speaking the entire ensemble. Beneath my Japanese-style rig lurks a pair of 100 percent polyester, navy blue football shorts. I shuffle across the main reception, passing guests dressed in identical yukata and concentrating hard on not throwing a slipper. From here I am directed into a changing room where I change into a seemingly identical yukata and ibo. The shorts and slippers have to go, too.

Five minutes later I am sitting on the back bench of a row of four. As people are summoned we all move forward a place. Soon I am at the front, waiting on the edge like someone about to embark on a parachute jump.