Japanese Spa Treatment Comes to NYC - It's full of crap.

The lengths New Yorkers will go to for beauty. Shizuka Day Spa in New York City, a high-end Japanese day spa in midtown manhattan, has just introduced a new "Geisha Facial," which promises to cleanse, brighten, and exfoliate a patron's face - thanks to a secret ingredient: bird poop. For centuries in Japan, both Kabuki actors and geishas used uguisu no fun, or nightingale droppings, to clean off their thick white makeup and soothe their faces; apparently, guanine, found in the droppings, helped their complexions. Shizuka's poop has been sanitized through exposure to ultraviolet light, then finely milled and mixed with rice bran.  It's applied as a mask and costs $180 for a 50-minute treatment. "The smell is neutralized," maintains a spokesperson for the spa. - B.L.

New York Magazine - The Intelligencer

April 7, 2008