A new and bizarre beauty treatment is about to hit us in the face - not with a bang, but with a beep-beep-beep.
The computer games company Nintendo, purveyors of Super Mario Brothers and Streets Of Rage 3, has invented a dinky little facial - exercise computer game called Face Training.
Face Training promises that far from sitting slack-jawed in front of your gaming console and drooling, it will, if you spend ten minutes a day playing, give you a kissable face.
"Through a camera and a series of daily exercises the computer helps improve facial muscle tone, improving your appearance," claims Nintendo.
Computer games that make you photogenic are a great idea. But do they actually work?
Face Training isn't available in the UK yet, but it is out in the land of hyper-electronics, Japan, and will apparently be available here before Christmas.
So in the meantime, Nintendo lends me a prototype and I beg my Japanese-speaking friend Paul to translate the instructions.
When it arrives, I open it curiously. The console is a black plastic rectangle, about the size of a Prada wallet. Welcome to the future of beauty, ye uglies.
I switch it on. The console twinkles and starts playing sleazy 1970s music. On the left-hand screen a cartoon head appears and starts talking Japanese; on the right screen a real head and body appear.
The body is wearing a blue top and blue shorts and she has very defined collarbones, possibly because women stuck in games consoles don't eat carbohydrates.
She looks a bit like Posh Spice and I am supposed to follow her movements.
Little coloured buttons float around her, which I have to press with an electronic pen to navigate the system, choosing either a face or body warm-up.
It is very strange, the sort of workout you can imagine Ripley doing in Alien, alone on a vast space ship light years away.
I'm not sure if I feel incredibly post-modern, or incredibly stupid, taking orders from a miniature cartoon woman.
Now, she wants me to do a body warm-up. She rolls her head from side to side in one direction, and the other urges me on in a soothing Japanese voice.
I roll my head around, a slave to the cartoon, holding my DS console and pen, which makes my palms itch slightly.
Then I roll my head in the other direction, move my shoulders up to my ears, and sit in the lotus position, holding my palms upwards in my lap.
Next, I drop the console, and, with the aid of my friend Paul's exhaustive notes, I begin Face Training properly.
The Posh Spice lookalike closes her eyes slowly, down into the "calm" position and I follow her.
This is bizarre - I am working harder to follow the instructions than I am working to "train" my face.
Red down-pointing arrows appear on her cartoon eyes - a bit like wounds - to remind me that I should be closing my eyes.
Her eyes then open slowly (I only realise this because I sneak a look and see that the red arrows are now pointing upwards) and settle into the "surprised" position.
Next we roll our eyeballs together, to the left and the right - I hope no one can see me do this - and then on to our first mouth exercise.
A word of warning: do not do this in public unless you want the men in white coats to confiscate your DS console.
The cartoon pushes her mouth sideways and upwards to the right, as if she is trying to touch her cheekbone with her lips.
Then she opens her mouth very wide into a Disney heroine smile, which falls into a frightening grimace.
Next a sweet 'O' and she opens her eyes very wide.
More twinkling music plays and she disappears. My head now appears on the screen instead, courtesy of the tiny camera attached to the console (ugh!).
Unfortunately, I have to watch myself do this - although ubiquitous cartoon woman is now on the other side, demonstrating.
And somehow, I seem to have gone to a higher level, because the exercises are more challenging.
Using the red arrows, the cartoon orders me to close just one eye, then the other, and then to swivel my eyeballs around. It hurts.
We move on to mouth manipulation - up to left, up to right then open wide into an open smile, as if to receive a large slice of pie.
And that seems to be it for today.
The computer will store every movement I make and put it into a computerised calendar so I can plot future workouts and know exactly how many times I opened and closed my eyes and made "O" shapes with my lips on any given day.
The cartoon congratulates me in Japanese and disappears.
I observe my face - it looks exactly the same, perhaps slightly angrier.
Using the pen, I explore the programme, looking for more challenging exercises. I find one where the cartoon sticks her tongue out at me. I retaliate and do the same.
Another seems to want me to push my right nostril up towards my eye. Perhaps this event will make it into the Olympics in 2012.
Roll eyeballs up! Roll eyeballs down! Roll eyeballs north-east! Roll eyeballs north-west! Take the gold medal!
Cartoon woman now resembles Michael Myers from the film Halloween, after being captured by Donald Pleasance.
She squeezes her mouth up to the right, and closes her right eye. She raises her nostrils and closes her eyes.
Then she does something my mother does when she is angry - she pushes her mouth up into a grimace, then into a deepest "O", while waggling her cheeks and raising her eyebrows.
Is my mother moonlighting at Nintendo? I snap the DS shut.
Face Training is only the beginning of computerised exercise.
Soon, no one will ever need to leave the house. Nintendo will launch sight training "to help train visual abilities" later this month, and Wii Fit, a computerised personal trainer that "will turn the living room into a fitness centre for the whole family" is on its way.
Although I know in my heart that this is the sort of thing Yummy Mummies will try, I find the future depressing.
Why turn my living room into a fitness centre? Why not just walk in the woods, among real trees using your real legs breathing in fresh air? And why must I stick my tongue out at a heartless computer?
Isn't that, even in this brave new world, what my friends are for?
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