JJNN: Konishiki on TV

There are a lot of strange shows on Japanese TV. You have all probably seen clips of old Japanese game shows where people have to run though mazes or crash through walls or have to be careful not to fall into a vat of slime. I don't know if it is because of the Japanese sense of humor or another reason, but it seems that the stranger the show the longer it lasts.

The show that I want to talk about today is not as crazy as a lot of the shows on Japanese TV, but it is weird. The name of the show is Inaka in Tomarou, or "Let's spend the night in the country." The concept of the show is simple. A famous person is taken some small place in Japan and dropped off with just a camera man. They have to talk with the people of the area, find out where they are and complete a task that was decided before they left. After that, the famous person has to get someone from the town to let them stay at their house. This is always the hardest part because the famous person can not stay at a hotel or any other normal place, they must work up the courage to ask someone to let them stay over for the night. If they can not find a place to stay they have to stay outside for the night. If they do find someplace to stay, the next day they have to do something nice for the person that let them stay.

The reason I am talking about Inaka ni Tomarou is a blog post by Konishiki, which gives an interesting view on how hard it really is to sleep somewhere warm on that show. Konishiki (pictured below) is a Hawaiian born sumo wrestler who was on the circuit from 1984 to 1997. He never go to the rank of yokozuna, but he was very popular. After he stopped wrestling he starting making many TV appearances and even got a few TV shows.



Konishi appeared on Inaka ni Tomarou on the 7th of this month. He was dropped off in Kagoshima in Southern Japan. According to his blog, he was so happy to appear on the show and go to a place he has never been to before, but he had a lot of trouble actually asking people to let him stay in their house for the night. He says that it was really hard, but the experience was worth it.

Any way, it is now time for the word of the day. Today's word is 田舎(いなか). It is pronounced inaka and it means countryside. Personally I think it better to live in the country side than in the city. Question of the day: Which would you rather live in: The city or the country side? Which is better place to raise kids?

See you next time at JJNN

JJNN 8 May 29th, 2008

Welcome again to JJNN for Thursday May 29th, 2008. Today I will be doing only one story because I am a little busy tonight.

Today's story is about one particular blog in Japan. The original story can be found here. You maybe be thinking that I will be talking about cool new blogging technologies or fads in Japan, but this is going to be going in another direction.

The news story is about a 16 year old high school girl who lived in Osaka. This girl thought it would be a fun thing to take a bunch of thumb tacks and put them into hair wax. Not only did she do it once but she did it many times from February until April. Well, that's not a cool. But, that really has nothing to do with blogs, right? Wrong. The girl though it would be cool to brag about what she did on her blog. She wrote in her blog "I put thumb tacks into hair wax and in a lot of different places in a lot of different stores." She also mentioned that she put nail polish remover into a bottle of tea at a convenience store.

This is the best part of the story: A person who worked at one of the stores read the blog post. That person was able to find another blog the student wrote which listed her birthday and, more importantly, had a picture of her! That information lead to her arrest. The moral of the story: If you admit you do something against the law on your blog make sure it can't be linked back to you.

I guess this is not a big crime, but there have been people in Japan that have admitted to bigger things on the internet in either blogs or BBS. I vaguely remember a story of someone that brutally killed another person and than wrote about it on the internet the next day. Why would anyone do that? I guess it is a new high tech version of bragging. I guess this gives a new meaning to e-penis, huh?

Any way it is now time for the word of the day. Today's word is 除光液(じょこうえき). It is pronounced jokou-eki and means nail polish remover. I always had fun light nail polish remover on fire when I was a kid. I am not a pyromaniac!

That's it for today. See you next time at JJNN.