Keith Austin takes in the purified air in Japan and gets a buzz.

Fifty bucks doesn't seem costly, as indulgences go, but the cynic in me initially baulked at paying cash money to breathe air. Still, if it's good enough for David Beckham, it's good enough for me. The advertisement for the oxygen capsule first caught my eye in the foyer of the plush JR Tower Hotel Nikko in Sapporo, the capital of Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost island. The words were all, um, Japanese to me, but the picture of the gleaming "O2 capsule" proved irresistible.

Read the full story