Variety Shows

The vast majority of Japanese television is dominated by variety shows. These come in various styles or with an amazing array of themes, but are most easily spotted by the subtitles. Perhaps to enhance the ridiculous things people say in strange situations, subtitles pop up as people talk while doing bizarre things on TV.

Sometimes I'll turn on the television and find what looks like a nature program, only to discover later, that there are in fact a large room of people who are watching the show and then must comment on it afterwards. A whole five minute movie about wild birds in Canada will be followed by people of various talents playing trivia games or responding in any number of ways.

Some games are quite simply and its amazing to think about who thought to put them on tv. For example, on New Years I saw a show about people driving cars in difficult places. They had to back cars into spaces by going diagonally backwards through other cars or drive around sharp turns. Another time I watched a show where people guess whether a vegetable has been cut enough into a bin to reach a certain amount. Even more frequently are games where players must draw Kanji (Chinese Characters) in the correct order and think of all the possible pronuncations. This can be surprisingly difficult for the native speakers (let alone those of us who are new to Japanese). Most of these shows star minor or major celebrities. SMAP (a popular J-Pop group) members are often on at least one show a night, and famous comedians might be on a different show every night of the week!

The funniest show I've seen yet involved one SMAP member doing all sorts of activities while wearing a heart moniter. He had to get people out of a building in a fake police situation and he had to jump from a high ledge. However, what got his heart beating the hardest was the girl who walked up the stairs in front of him wearing a very short skirt. Later I saw him on another variety show. This one, however, was a little disturbing. A number of contestents, mostly male, had to guess the cup size of a model wearing pajamas. They would tell her to jump and bend over before finally deciding on her size. She would then shed her clothes so that she was only wearing a bikini with a label in her bikini top revealing her size. While most of the time I find Japanese television hilarious, I was a little shocked by this one. To check out a video of this check out: Pastries and Cups. I think SMAPxSMAP will always beat this one for me.