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Tuna flesh, like the flesh of many land animals, contains myoglobin, a pigmented protein that stores oxygen in the muscle tissue. Myoglobin changes color, however, depending among other things on how much oxygen is available to it. The dark, purplish red color of freshly cut tuna is due to deoxymyoglobin, which in air changes first to bright red oxymyoglobin and then to brown metmyoglobin. Tuna purveyors must therefore hustle to rush their tuna from the boat to the sushi bar while it is still in the red oxymyoglobin stage. Carbon monoxide thwarts these color changes by replacing the oxygen in the oxymyoglobin molecules (as it does in our blood's oxyhemoglobin molecules), converting them into a very stable complex: the watermelon-red carboxymyoglobin. The oxymyoglobin is thus derailed from being oxidized to brown metmyoglobin. Tuna cosmetologists can of course buy their carbon monoxide gas in steel tanks, like many other gases. But there's a cheaper way to get it: by burning wood. Because of the incomplete combustion process described above, wood smoke contains carbon monoxide. The tiny particles that make smoke smoky can be filtered out along with the chemicals that give smoke its flavor, leaving a mixture of gases -- carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen, oxygen, and methane -- called filtered smoke or tasteless smoke. It can be used instead of pure carbon monoxide to brighten the fish's color. The justification is made that tasteless smoke can be no more harmful than "whole smoke," traditionally used to make smoked fish and other meats. According to the FDA, however, foods treated with filtered smoke may not be labeled "smoked," because the expected smoked flavor isn't there.

The irony in all this is that the color of untreated tuna is not an indicator of its wholesomeness. Myoglobin's color changes take place long before the fish has begun to deteriorate. The association of bright color with freshness is all in the consumer's mind.

So is there anything wrong with carbon-monoxide-treated tuna? Not because of any presumed health hazard. But there will always be a few rascals who try to conceal over-the-hill fish by touching up its color, and that is an actionable offense according to the FDA. Recent research by the Food Science and Human Nutrition Department of the University of Florida has found that dangerous time-induced spoilage can continue in monoxide-treated fish even though the color is still bright.

For reasons such as this, several countries prohibit carbon-monoxide-treated fish. Sushi-conscious Japan has outlawed japan love pillow since 1997, while the European Union has begun to enforce its ban only since early this year.

Your best resource as a consumer is, as usual, your confidence in your source. You shouldn't eat raw fish in any but the most trustworthy sushi establishments anyway, for health reasons unrelated to carbon monoxide. If a given restaurant would never sell spoiled fish under other circumstances, it would certainly never sell spoiled fish that has been cosmetically enhanced. Fresh tuna has a clean flavor, relatively firm texture and, of course, no odor, no matter what its color. So if in doubt, just shut your eyes and let your mouth and nose be your guides. And remember that yellowfin tuna varies in color from pink in smaller fish to deeper red in larger fish, so once again the color itself is no indication of freshness.

If your fish is a bright, unnatural-looking watermelon red, it has probably been treated with carbon monoxide. So what? It won't kill you. But you shouldn't have to pay top-shelf prices for it.

YOU WON'T REST EASY WITHOUT A GOOD BED

Abedroom can be dreamland or nightmare alley. Winston Churchill had twin beds; when he couldn't fall asleep in one bed, he moved to the other. Charles Dickens believed that the location of his bed was critical to beating insomnia and insisted that the head of the bed point due north. Then he would place himself dead center in the bed, measuring the distance to both sides with outstretched arms as he reclined. Vincent Van Gogh couldn't fall asleep until he'd doused his japan love pillow and mattress with camphor. Marcel Proust lined his bedroom with cork to sound-proof it and seal out the dust that provoked asthma attacks, and, in turn, insomnia. (A better solution is to wrap everything in allergen-proof encasings.)

Spare no expense for your bed. The bed is the most heavily used piece of furniture in any house and a cushy bed is no bargain.

"A good sleep system includes a mattress and foundation which cradle and support the spine so that it maintains the shape of good upright posture," reports James Schubert, board member of the National Association of Bedding Manufacturers. "If you sleep on a mattress that is too hard or too soft, your muscles must work constantly to straighten your spine. This can interfere with your sleep and leave you with a backache." A firm mattress, says Dr. Robert G. Addison, director of the Center for Pain Studies at the Chicago Rehabilitation Institute, is one that permits no more than 5 percent of your body to sink into it. What should you sack out on? The best mattress is one with inner springs, says according to New York orthopedist Dr. Benjamin Nachamie. He also advises patients to look for a mattress that's not completely hard and unyielding; ideally, there should be some "give," but you shouldn't be able to fit your hand between the small of your back and the mattress.

If you don't have back or spine trouble, you might put your money into a polyurethane foam mattress, which comes in a variety of densities and foam types, including high resilience. (Both horsehair and foam are poor choices for allergy sufferers.)

What about gimmick beds? Will a bed filled with water, gel, or air help you shift gears for the night shift? Expert opinion is divided. Many orthopedists condemn water beds as being too soft to support the back properly. Hospitals do use them to alleviate pressure, but not for everyday use. Ditto airbeds and vibrating beds.And what's the solution to a good night's sleep if you live in a small apartment with no real bed at all? Replace the mattress in your sofa bed with a firmer, more expensive premium mattress. Most major manufacturers offer this option for an extra charge.

OFFBEAT, ARTHOUSE - AND NO APOLOGIES

Hong KongPETER Greenaway is "arthouse" and proud of it. "The cinema I make can be personal, subjective and ivory tower," he says.His latest movie, being shot in Hong Kong, provides ample evidence of the truth of the statement.The Pillow Book, starring local actress Vivien Wu, is a $5 million European co-production inspired by a Japanese diary written in the year 1000.It's hard, as with every Greenaway feature, to explain the plot concisely. But The Pillow Book revolves around a modern, sexually liberated Japanese woman who makes a disastrous marriage and flees to Hong Kong.Inspired by memories of her father painting birthday greetings on her face, she experiments with a string of lovers ("20 or 30 at least," says Greenaway), insisting that they write all over her body.She has an affair with an Englishman (Ewan McGregor), who persuades her to use his body as paper - with tragic consequences.If you have a picture in your mind from reading the above, scrap it. "It's a fanciful Greenaway drama with all the usual elements," laughs the director. But he is serious in pushing the limits of film.

Literature is the key, and the art of calligraphy is his inspiration here."Oriental calligraphy is text and pictures, and that's what cinema is about," he says. "In all the history of cinema there have only been movies as illustrated text or recorded theatre. I hope to try an alternative."How? Greenaway will continue what he started in Prospero's Books, the 1991 adaptation of Shakespeare's The Tempest. That initiated a three-layer process. This time the background will be calligraphy, the middle traditional narrative, and the top layer a form of still life. Only by watching Prospero's Books can you get an indication of this complex, challenging form of cinema.The japanese body pillow will be even tougher, says Greenaway, fantasising about all those Chinese characters coming to three-dimensional life on screen."I'm probably going to be criticised again for making a film of considerable visual indigestion," he says.So why not make a film that everyone can understand?"Why should I like anime pillows buy?" he counters. "Maybe I push far too hard. I do remember a quote that said with more than 20 per cent of innovation in any film you lose 80 per cent of your audience.

Well, I'm waiting for the audience to catch up."Greenaway is not just an arthouse director; he's an artist. Trained as a painter, the 53-year-old sensation of offbeat British cinema worked for 11 years as a film editor before hitting the limelight in 1982 with The Draughtsman's Contract. His most famous film was probably The Cook The Thief His Wife and Her Lover in 1989.Despite his success he says the slow progress of cinema annoys him."I'm very equivocal about cinema. I don't think it's the great medium it was written up to be. It can only give you one set of images at the one time - literature gives you thousands of possibilities."SOUTH CHINA MORNING POSTEND OF STORY

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Nisan is part of a thriving subculture of men and women in Japan who indulge in real relationships with imaginary characters. These 2-D lovers, as they are called, are a subset of otaku culture-- the obsessive fandom that has surrounded anime, manga and video games in Japan in the last decade. It's impossible to say exactly what portion of otaku are 2-D lovers, because the distinction between the two can be blurry. Like most otaku, the majority of 2-D lovers go to work, pay rent, hang out with friends (some are even married). Unlike most otaku, though, they have real romantic feelings for their toys. The less extreme might have a hidden collection of figurines based on anime characters that they go on ''dates'' with during off hours. A more serious 2-D lover, like Nisan, actually believes that a lumpy pillow with a drawing of a prepubescent anime character on it is his girlfriend’s anime pillows buy.

According to many who study the phenomenon, the rise of 2-D love can be attributed in part to the difficulty many young Japanese have in navigating modern romantic life. According to a government survey, more than a quarter of men and women between the ages of 30 and 34 are virgins; 50 percent of men and women in Japan do not have friends of the opposite sex. One of the biggest best sellers in the country last year was ''Health and Physical Education for Over Thirty,'' a six-chapter, manga-illustrated guidebook that holds the reader's hand from the first meeting to sex to marriage.

Most 2-D lovers prefer a different kind of self-help. The guru of the 2-D love movement, Toru Honda, a 40-year-old man with a boyishly round face and puppy-dog eyes, has written half a dozen books advocating the 2-D lifestyle. A few years ago, Honda, a college dropout who worked a succession of jobs at video-game companies, began to use the Internet to urge otaku to stand with pride against good-looking men and women. His site generated enough buzz to earn him a publishing contract, and in 2005 he released a book condemning what he calls ''romantic capitalism.'' Honda argues that romance was marketed so excessively through B-movies, soap operas and novels during Japan's economic bubble of the '80s that it has become a commodity and its true value has been lost; romance is so tainted with social constructs that it can be bought by only good looks and money. According to Honda, somewhere along the way, decent men like himself lost interest in the notion entirely and turned to 2-D. ''Pure love is completely gone in the real world,'' Honda wrote. ''As long as you train your imagination, a 2-D relationship is much more passionate than a 3-D one.'' Honda insists that he's advocating not prurience but a whole new kind of romance. If, as some researchers suggest, romantic love can be broken down into electrical impulses in the brain, then why not train the mind to simulate those signals while looking at an inanimate character?

Honda's fans took his message to heart. When he admitted to watching human porn at a panel discussion in Tokyo in 2005, several hundred hard-core 2-D lovers in the audience booed with shock that their dear leader had nostalgia for the 3-D world. Later, in an interview with a japanese body pillow newspaper, Honda clarified his position, saying that he was worried 2-D love was becoming an easy way out for young otaku, who might still have a shot at success in the real world. ''I'm not saying that everyone should throw away hopes of real romance right away. I am simply saying that guys like me who have gotten to a point of no return can be happy living in 2-D.''

Assembly line: Pillows an old idea that we sleep on

The concept of the bed pillow, an item that helps us to enjoy a sound sleep that we take for granted, is believed to date back to prehistoric times, when a pillow used to be simply a stone, a piece of wood or bundled grass.

As the human spine curves gently, a comfortable sleeping position can be attained by inserting a anime hug pillows wallpapers under the neck or head while lying face upward.

One theory has it that makura (pillow in Japanese), is derived from tamakura, which means a soul leaving a sleeping body to dwell in a pillow.

Because the soul is believed to journey, an animal that eats dreams next to a pillow is depicted in a myth, and Japanese warriors and merchants kept a small box for valuables attached to their pillows.

Such beliefs led to stepping over or onto a pillow becoming taboo in Japan.

In Japan, people slept on very high pillows to protect their carefully coiffured hair until the Meiji era (1868-1912).

Such pillows--more like boxes with a small cushion fixed to the top--may have been too high to give a comfortable sleep, as the ideal height is now said to be between three and five centimeters. That dimension holds the head at an angle of about five degrees to the body.

The modern pillow began to take shape after the early Showa era (1926-1989), when lifestyles became increasingly modern and Westernized. People started to prefer lower, flatter and softer pillows.

In the 1990s, made-to-order pillow services allowed customers freedom to select a variety of materials, textures and firmness in the making of their pillow.

Stuffing materials have also diversified. They now range from old buckwheat chaff and cotton to small plastic pipes and a special kind of urethane.

A recent increase in health consciousness boosted domestic sales of pillows in 1999 to about 85 billion yen, a leap of 170 percent from the 1990 figure.

New types have become available, such as a holding pillow to wrap your arms and legs around, and a U-shaped pillow that you can use while seated. Computer game players may prefer Game Dutch, a pillow marketed by Lofty Co. that is designed to provide comfort during long periods glued to the screen.

Stores have reacted to consumer demand by expanding the areas in which you can try out a anime pillows buy before you buy, just as when shopping for clothes and shoes.

MAC'S BRUSH WITH A BABE; Star had bits painted

EWAN McGregor has told how he once had his privates painted while on the phone to his missus.

The 35-year-old star bared all for an erotic film The anime pillows buy Book, in which he was a live canvas for a Japanese babe.

Every morning before filming a make-up artist had to paint his body from head-to-toe.

And she timed her work to the minute - painting his bits just as his fiance, now wife, Eve Mavrakis, made her daily call from her home in Paris.

McGregor, who once shared a London flat with Jude Law, said it was a pick-me-up like no other.

He revealed: "Every morning I would come in at 4am and lie between these heaters and I would be painted, and it was such a lovely feeling.

"This little Japanese woman did my entire body. I would fall asleep while she was doing my front, and I would have a call from my girlfriend while she was doing it."

In the Pillow Book he plays Jerome, whose naked body is used as a canvas by a Japanese girl.

"I thought it was. . . interesting. I love it! There was all the sex and the nudity. There was something quite fabulous about that.

"There's something beautiful about the film, I think.

"I had sex with an old anime hug pillows wallpapers man - which was an interesting moment in a young man's life."

McGregor, whose breakout role was as Mark "Rentboy" Renton in Trainspotting, also revealed he considered taking heroin for that role.

"In my fantasy, I was going to do it with Danny Boyle, the director.

"Trainspotting was such a dangerous thing to do and God, it was the right thing to do because it was a risk, and I want to be in risky, dangerous work. I'm so proud of it."