The Paint Thinner Of The Masses, more like...

Saturday 21st March 1998

Japanese TV: Banality & Cruelty | The Beatles (really!) | Tax | Fridge Update | Japlish

Well, well, well; it's that time of the week again. I find myself sat in an internet cafe in the Greater Tokyo sprawl with nothing better to do than let you, my friends, know what I'm getting up to. And this week, the answer is: "Not much". So, without further ado, have a bit more rambling weirdness.

Japanese TV

continues to get worse. And worse. And then, normally just after I've seen something which I *really* thought was bad, it gets worse again, but in an even more depraved way.

Take last week, for example; the game shows here seem to alternate between two extremes:
1) Banality
2) Cruelness
Sitting inbetween these two bookends comes:
3) Banality stretched to new levels of cruelty.

1) Banality Case Study: Jungle Hammer
A game show where tracksuit-clad celebrity guests get fawned over incessantly whilst taking turns to hit a fairground "test your strength" machine to choose events to compete in. Highlights in recent weeks have included:
* the "try to snatch a towel out of your opponent's outstretched hand before he can grab it" game. We used to do this as reaction training for fencing; little did I realise I could have made a fortune by selling it to NHK. I must just have been stupid as a 14-yr-old, I guess.
* arm-wrestling
* the "see how close to the end of a small-gague railway track you can propel yourself without going over the end whilst kneeling on a trolley" game. Sort of one-man bobsleigh meets shove-ha'penny.
* the "race to over-inflate a balloon above your competitor's head by pumping a stairmaster-type-device" game. There's no water or anything in the balloon; just air. But Boy! The noise sure is scary! Wow! See them jump!

One interesting thing about Jungle Hammer is that the host wears sunglasses. All the time. No wonder, really, as I wouldn't want people to recognise me in the street either, if I were him.

2) Cruelty Case Study: Title Unknown
Two men wearing only dressing gowns are strapped into heavy armchairs. Nasty things are done to them. The audience laugh. The men suffer irreversible psychological trauma. All of the following happened in one (1) show, in this order:
* onions were chopped right under their eyes
* their feet were tickled with feathers until their convulsions caused their chairs to fall over
* cigarette smoke was blown into their eyes. Want to ensure you don't waste any of the smoke? Make them wear diving goggles, obviously; bloody inventive, those Japanese, eh?
* assistants plucked their nose hairs for them
* they had to eat something rather foul (spoon fed, obviously they were still restrained at this point)
* the weirdest one of all - what looked like a poetry reading. Certainly it was very sad; both contestants were in tears, as were most of the audience, within thirty seconds.

3) Cruelly-twisted Banality Case Study - Not 100
This could actually be a fascinating game theory puzzle; four guys are sat around a bowl of noodles, with a bottle of tabasco sauce. They take turns to shake either 1, 2 or 3 drops of tabasco onto the noodles.

We cut to the important bit. We've reached 85, and I've twigged that whoever puts the 100th drop on will have to eat the noodles. Oh shit. They're not using drops any more; they're using dollops. One of them empties the entire bottle onto the noodles. If this is a subtle attempt to cheat the powers-that-be of their fun, then it fails - they are given a second bottle, and then a third when the next guy does exactly the same thing.

They're going more slowly now; you can see them thinking. Eventually it gets to the stage where one guy is on 98. He can therefore do 99 and 100, and force the person immediately to his left to eat (or drink, by this stage), or just do the one and dump on the guy opposite. I so wish I spoke Japanese; I'd love to know what the two potential victims were offering him in return for clemency. The fourth bloke knows he's in the clear and, perhaps unsurprisingly, is having a right old laugh at this...

So, basically, one of them (the latter, in the end, presumably because he couldn't quite match the bid of the first guy) is forced to drink the stuff. He has difficulty, especially because he's shaking and convulsing so much that he can hardly hold the bowl to his lips. He succeeds in exacting some measure of revenge by flinging some of the stuff at his tormentors, catching one full in the face and probably blinding him for life, but I doubt that was much in the way of consolation...

Footnote: These programmes are undoubtedly shit. Yet I still watched them, didn't I?

Last Night - The Roots

TV is bunk. (Mind you, I notice that bunk beds are also fairly bunk, by definition, and it doesn't seem to have done them any harm, does it?) What you really want to do is go out with a few friends to a small bar and end up singing your heart out whilst dancing to Twist and Shout as played by a band of Japanese who sound exactly like the Beatles (as opposed to Deacon Blue) with what ends up being close to thirty friends and colleagues at 3am. So that's what I did.

"John" sang every song they did *absolutely* faithfully. Forget Lisa Stansfield's accent disappearing when she sings, this was something else - the guy doesn't even speak English. Paul was likewise phenomenal, actually managing to sound like the real McCoy/McCartney rather than just some Japanese guy in a dark suit and a black polo-neck with a bowlcut, and they even had a quiet George, minding his own business in centre stage. The only let-down was that their Ringo was far superior to the real thing, but I suppose you can't have everything, can you? Absolutely *top* evening, all in all. Musically it was spot on, and it gave me one of those "I must buy everything this band have ever recorded" moments that you can get at a really good gig, which could be expensive in this case.

Breakfast was at an all-night diner at 4:30am; I can report that smoked salmon and cream cheese bagels go surprisingly well with chocolate sundaes and off-key renditions of A Hard Day's Night.

Tax

Got a pleasant surprise last week; in an attempt to stimulate the economy, the government are giving everybody a one-off tax break of 18,000yen. It certainly worked in my case; I went out and bought a Playstation immediately. The price? 17,143yen, plus 5% VAT. You work it out, and then tell me it wasn't fated to happen.

Fridge Update

Contents:

* Grapes-in-jelly-thing
* Gerald. He has made the freezer compartment, missing a separate door as it is, into a kind of atelier studio loft. It's quite tastefully done, actually. He complains about the lack of conversation from the grapes-in-jelly-thing, but I'm sure it's only a matter of time before it acquires a sentience of its own.

There is nothing else in my fridge. This week I have been mostly eating other people's food.

Japlish du Jour

(as seen on a student's pencil case:)

Full of Joy are Here!!
These Nice
And Special Days.

(and heaven forbid you should be without your pencil case when Full of Joy turn(/s?) up)

A Happy Easter to all of you who care about that sort of thing.

And a Happy Easter to all of you who don't care about that sort of thing - have some chocolate and cheer up, you dour bastards.

Chris

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