My (mostly female) staff have been jabbering on about ikumen this week
and have posted to the blog
http://preview.tinyurl.com/29kdac6
(http://www.businessjapanese.com/news/post/2010/05/14/
JBPPe69599e7a791e69bb8e291a1.aspx)

The "stay at home dad" tv dorama series seems to be one of the
reasons.
(for non japanese reading folk: http://tinyurl.com/24vpmkx)

Funnily (and worryingly) enough, I wasn't even aware that paid
parental leave even existed in Japan. Admittedly most Japanese men
can't utilize it for a variety of reasons.

http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/parental_2008_09.pdf  (page
6 if you're lazy)

Turns out only Australia and the USA don't currently seem to have paid
parental leave.