FYI: Why is the legislature in Japan called the Diet in English?

The National Diet of Japan is not rice and uncooked fish - it is the English name of the country's governing body. The diet consists of two houses: the House of Representatives and the House of Councillors, both directly elected. As well as passing laws, the diet is formally responsible for selecting the country's prime minister.

'Diet' is the old Prussian word for a meeting or gathering and was used to describe political assemblies such as the Diet of Worms; a 1521 general meeting of the estates of the Holy Roman Empire that took place in a small town in what is now Germany. That meeting is best remembered for persecuting theologian, monk and reformer Martin Luther and assessing the effects of the Protestant Reformation.

Following the Meiji Restoration - a four-year period of political and social upheaval in the 1860s that ostensibly restored power to the emperor - Japan brought in many western experts to modernise its antiquated legal, political, educational and military institutions.

Generally, the British helped to modernise Japan's navy, shipbuilding and technical infrastructure; French legal experts were brought in to update civil and criminal codes; and the Americans and French were involved with revising the educational system.

Believe it or not, the prevalence of sailor-style school uniforms for girls is not for the benefit of salarymen with questionable sexual proclivities. These outfits are based on the 19th-century British naval uniform, which became popular in Europe after a cute, four-year-old Prince Edward (later King Edward VII) was pictured (in engravings and a famous portrait) dressed in a scaled-down copy of the kit worn by sailors on the royal yacht. The uniforms became enormously popular for boys and girls and, by the 1870s, had been adopted as school uniforms around the world. During the early 20th century, while Japan was still westernising, it followed suit and boys took to wearing black military-style uniforms to school, while girls donned sailor suits.

Prussia, meanwhile - a kingdom that existed between 1701 and 1918 (although, from 1871, it was the dominant territory in the German empire) - had been helping to modernise Japan's army and government.