TV highlights

Please understand that these are only the highlights of Japanese television. Normal, everyday TV is still very strange, but there are some that really make you stop and stare. Here they are, for your blogging enjoyment.
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7/something
This is the picture that started this post. I thought I was done ranting about the television until I saw this. It appeared to be a top 40 hit list music show, not that you'd ever guess from their outfits.

7/16

There's an ad for I don't even know what during which they play Hava Nagila. I'm guessing it's not for menorahs.

7/19
Some African guy who speaks very good Japanese was going around asking Japanese girls(?) about their 'charm points'. For some reason, this question had to be posed in English (side note - his English was just as bad as the Japanese girls' was.) After asking why her nose/mouth/forehead was particularly charming, he then asked if they'd had plastic surgery. At least I think that was the question, because then they had bets for yes or no, and then a price was flashed on the screen along with an old photo of the girl(?) in question.

Why the question marks after girl? Because one totally wasn't female, at least not at the beginning of their life. She was really cute, though, both as a girl and a guy. Really really strange. And why the big African guy?

7/22
A talk show during which the main feature is making this horrible guy into a teen idol. He's rather sturdily built, but has a high voice, so they dressed him up like a girl and taught his really girly dances to go with his girly song...they basically spent a month preparing him for his 'debut' on the show. Of course, it's horrible in a funny sort of way. But then at the end of his song they catch him in a net and leave him hanging in the air in front of everyone...then when they let him down they, well, let him down and tell him that it's all a giant joke.

To literally add insult to injury, some sumo wrestler who's on the show tells him something about maybe about how it'll be ok if he lets the sumo wrestler hit him? Not too clear on this part, but the end result is that the sumo wrestler gives this poor guy the king of all slaps on the back, which makes him somersault across the stage and ends up cutting his head.

Summary: some guy is convinced to waste a month and a half becoming super girly, then humiliated and beat up on national tv. This (apparently) is entertainment.


7/24
It's an ad for lamps. It's not particularly strange, except for the fact that these paper lanterns are used during the festival of Obon to attract your dead ancestors and invite them to come inside....only 3,990 yen for reconciliation with your estranged (late) grandfather today!

7/27 (or so)

Another quiz show. There's a doctor (he's got white hair and really is more of a mad scientist, I think) and two patients. The goal is to answer health and nutrition related questions correctly. So far, not so bad. The devil's in the details.

• Questions are delivered by an extremely tall black guy who runs up to them in the street semi-randomly through the show.
• Patients answer questions by pushing buttons, which raise a flag on the top of their Uncle San style hats.
• The patient who correctly answers a question gets to eat, but the other has to excersize.
  

8/2

This, by far, is the most bizarre show I have ever seen in my life. It took a diagram in order to explain it to my friends. It starts out with five guys in jail. (Jail is some boxes to sit on behind one moveable wall of bars, cubicle wall style.) They're wearing newspaper samurai hats, cardboard armor, and white T-shirts with muscles drawn on them in sharpie. On the other side of the stage is the host (normal by Japanese TV standards) and the hostess (not normal at all.)

The contestants come out of jail and have to imitate the hostess' dance moves, Mother-May-I style. Did I mention that the hostess is a white girl, wearing American football shoulder pads? Or that the music included such top hits as Beyonce's In Da Club as well as the Ghostbuster's theme music?

No one won. The hostess eliminated everyone and took the prize for herself.

8/8
Three teams of guys, two trendy, one dorky, are wandering around the streets of Tokyo looking for a virgin who'd be willing to...I'm not sure yet. The first part is an interview with two kinda ugly girls who ask her what her type is, ask her to play with a yellow ball, and then start freakinig out - like pounding on the calculator or ripping out tissues from the box - and then ask her some question that no one says yes to so it must be bad. Something about H, or eitchi. Hey you Japanese people, what's going on? Do I really want to know?

Oh, wait, now someone said yes. The ugly girls took her out into the streets again and after some small talk, ran to the side of the bridge and yelled "Virgin in Stock!!"

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Also, I seem to be unable to find the same show twice, with only two exceptions. One is a drama from the eighties about a girl who wants to be a movie/entertainment star and the other is celebrity bowling.