The $10,000 Question

What would you do for 100 万円?

A. Go on a snake hunt and then brush your teeth with the fine still-living specimen you’ve just captured.

B. Sink a hole-in-one on a Par 3 with no prior golfing experience. Time limit: 2 days.

C. Clean the country’s nastiest public restroom and then lick a urinal glistening from your labor.

D. Travel to Paris and solicit a kiss from a complete stranger.

Who thinks up these things??

Sumo Trivia 101

Myth or Fact?: Sumo wrestlers have bigger toilet seats than the average person.

Fact: Determined while watching an hour-long special touring a sumo stable, 10 minutes of which were spent on certain facilities complete with measuring tape and comparison components.

It’s a little sad this is the main thing I remember from this show aired a few months ago… mostly because it seemed like such an odd thing to focus on with such a great deal of energy.

Pocky!

Brother-dearest, you crazy zombie-lover, this is for you.

I don't know why, but this commercial amuses me to no end.

A Band of Grands

Grand pianos, that is. 7 of them, to be precise. Arranged in a circle on a stage with nothing but their respective players and dramatic lighting. At a sign from the conductor practiced hands lifted to lightly rest on the ivory keys. Silence was observed as each musician became, for a moment, indistinguishable from graceful marble statues reposing in a museum. Thus composed, the performance began.

Our television, an ancient relic passed down to countless numbers of ALTs upon their arrival at City Hall, doesn’t do much in terms of a breathtaking auditory experience. And yet… as the pianists began their work of reproducing everything from swing to famous pieces featured in the cinematic world, the white drywall around me fell away as I stood, captivated, by the power of those grands. The rich notes that poured from the seven giants, black polish glistening, produced a fullness and astonishing depth in their music that I’ve rarely experienced.

It was a fabulous, first class hour of Japanese programming :)

Mario Kart

This clip is for those of you who have fond memories of Mario Kart, whether it be nostalgic or consisting of fierce head-to-head combat in the bid for roommate superiority. I will never forget the sound of shells dropping, cries of outrage, and *ping*ing of airsoft gun pellets floating up from the basement of the Del Clair house in my attempts to drop in on my fiance-now-husband. It's clear that the spirit of competition lives on to this day.

Ninja Algorithm March

This has got to be one of my favorite things to watch on Mondays when the children’s show “Pitagora Suicchi” (also known as Pythagorean Switch) airs. It’s just fascinating.

The fact that this particular clip features ninjas just makes it that much better. I predict it will be forcibly taken down from YouTube before too long, so enjoy it while it lasts!

dangerous to talk to kyle about ninja it is, hooked you become

Gun vs. Japanese Sword

We saw the oddest thing today. Somehow someone somewhere got the bright idea of pitting an American military-issued .45 caliber handgun against an exquisitely made Japanese sword. Granted, the lead bullet didn’t have the metal casing the military requires nowadays, but that doesn’t make it any less of a bullet, which was being aimed at the edge of the aforementioned samurai weapon.

Many slow-motion playbacks later revealed an astonishing thing. The blade was so insanely sharp that, upon impact, it sliced the bullet completely in half.

The question of whether or not a sword would be able to survive being shot at from any angle other than dead-on the business end will be saved for another day. What matters now is we have undeniable proof that the samurai who is able to wield his blade fast enough to slice bullets in mid-air while simultaneously dodging the fragments would be a) invincible and b) able to obtain a real-life bullet-slicing weapon for all his bullet-slicing needs.

No Price is Too High...

… to embarrass a Japanese comedian on his birthday. His 39th birthday, to be exact. At Universal Studios, in front of young and old alike.

I mean, consider what 8 million yen can buy you:

• the construction of a float bearing a giant paper mache likeness of the birthday boy


• an effeminate pastel bodysuit that glitters like the pink star-tipped wand the comedian will have to don upon his person


• an entire parade’s worth of dancers


• a special parade that will take place on Universal Studio’s Main Street

This doesn’t include the priceless expressions on the faces of parents when the comedian is, in all his pink & yellow glory, dragged from atop the float to the street to engage in a dance he doesn’t know the steps to and a choreographed fight he is destined to win, once he figures out the key to victory is waving his wand at the bad guys.

And to think, I would have just used the money to entice my husband to quit his job and travel around the country for a while.

The Math Says it All

The Short Version:
Fire + Loincloths = Hilarity

The Longer Version:
Two men dressed only in white loincloths shiver as the night’s dusting of rain gives their trembling skin an iridescent sheen. They stand side by side, arms folded across their chests and necks craning to watch the black-clad man behind them. This man is a good 25 yards away, at the point where both their loincloths end.

Yes. These men are wearing loincloths that stretch 25 yards behind them.

At a pre-determined signal, the man in black brandishes two flaming torches and touches each loincloth on the ground simultaneously. A good soak in some sort of flammable liquid is the only feasible explanation for the white cloth’s embrace of the fire so readily in such a wet environment.

The scantily clad men freeze as twin lines of flame race toward them at a startling pace, leaving nothing but black dust in their wake as they hungrily devour the fabric… fabric that was once connected to their waist.

I imagine it’s kind of like being tied to a pile of explosives and watching the burning fuse creep ever closer to your impending doom.

Still they wait.

And wait.

Why do they wait, unblinking eyes glued to the greedy element coming to greet them?

Apparently, it’s a contest… to see who will allow the fire to come the closest to burning the only piece of clothing adorning them… and quite possibly some flesh along with it.

Finally, one contestant can no longer take the pressure. He bolts forward like a startled buck, running as fast as he can towards the steaming pool of water set 50 yards in front of him. A half-second later, his opponent follows at full-speed.

Sparks fly from the loincloths that flutter behind them as the fires continue their relentless pursuit, undeterred by the sudden rush of wind.

Their waists begin to glow like embers as the flames reach their goal… and are almost immediately quenched after some desperate pool-side belly flops.

Up they come, gasping for air… ending with the characteristic abruptness that marks Japanese television, and we’re carried off into the night by yet another eating show.

Math has its uses.

lawyers are not welcome here

Glorified Pictionary

Tonight we watched (amongst doing other things) a 2-hour TV special that consisted of four four-person teams, all made up of television personalities, playing an incredibly long game of pictionary… only it was called Eden, there were golden apples involved, the snatching of said apples, and a monkey.

… I made the monkey part up… although one of the comedians did act like a monkey when he stole another team’s apples.

During one segment they showed a video clip taken inside a host club in Kabuki-cho, which was also coincidentally named Eden, and had the men working the bar draw the word for the team that was up. It turns out one of the hosts has some decent artistic ability, for the team guessed correctly and scored 3 apples without much trouble.

Later, another team was lucky enough to land on the square that had them watching a video of Christian Lassen and trying to guess what he was drawing. Painting is his forte hands-down, but I have to admit he’s not too shabby with a pen.

By the end, I felt the same way I always do whenever I watch the extravaganzas that epitomize Japanese game shows (real game shows, not comedians-getting-whacked game shows), which is amazed at the lengths they go to for something that will only be used or seen once. If you ever get the chance to catch a glimpse of the elaborate sets or costumes they use, you’ll understand exactly what I’m talking about. I mean, who suspends a few horses from a full-size merry-go-round from the ceiling? The answer, of course, is who wouldn’t after they’ve come to Japan.

Then there’s the other end of the spectrum, like our favorite show where two comedians (known collectively as Cocorico) dress up in outrageous renaissance costumes (one in brown, the other in hot pink, both in “kingly” attire), go to a family’s house, and basically play hide-and-seek, only a better version because they get to more-or-less ransack the residence while springing trap after delightful trap. If the family can successfully hide one of 3 members from the searchers for 30 minutes (and some of them get pretty darn creative, both in hiding places and trappy goodness), they win one million yen (about the equivalent of $10,000).

Sure, that’s a lot of cash for the studio to potentially lose, but I bet they spend that on sets alone for other shows easy, not counting personnel, guests, behind-the-scenes essentials, camera men, production, etc etc.

… all this to say here’s hoping for a way to receive Japanese television via satellite or cable when we return to the states.