"She is like an energy-refuelling base"

An article from this morning's Toronto Star:

Japanese premier's wife claims alien abduction

TOKYO–The wife of Japan's incoming prime minister Yukio Hatoyama is a lifestyle guru, a macrobiotics enthusiast, a cookbook author and a retired actress.

Miyuki Hatoyama also says she was abducted by aliens nearly 20 years ago and taken to Venus.

She wrote in Very Strange Things I've Encountered, a book published last year, that she visited another planet before she divorced her first husband.

"While my body was sleeping, I think my spirit flew on a triangular-shaped UFO to Venus," she wrote. "It was an extremely beautiful place and was very green."

Her husband at the time dismissed it as just a dream. "My current husband has a different way of thinking," she said. "He would surely say, `Oh, that's great!'"

Hatoyama, 66, said she also knew actor Tom Cruise in a former incarnation – she says he was Japanese in a previous life – and wants to make a movie with him.

"I believe he'd get it if I said to him, `Long time no see,' when we meet," she said in a recent interview.

Hatoyama has appeared on TV variety shows to discuss topics ranging from spirituality to politics, and became an important part of her husband's election campaign.

She performed a moonwalk while campaigning for a Democratic candidate last month, a Japanese newspaper reported.

Yukio Hatoyama, who heads the Democratic Party of Japan, will be installed as prime minister Sept. 16.

Hatoyama, 62, once said of his wife: "I feel relieved when I get home. She is like an energy-refuelling base."

(From the Star's news services)

Ah, Japan...I sure do miss you.