Fuzz...

Today while walking to lunch with my friend Matt, we came across a very interesting difference in Japan and America. The "crazy people" in Japan all seem to devote themselves to jobs. This might be an illusion since maybe we don't see all of them. However, riding the trains, there are frequently people who just stand at the doors and anounce the train stops out loud to everyone. They don't work for the train company, they just kind of harmlessly stand around screaming out train stop names. There's a guy who goes to the same corner every day and is a crossing guard. For hours. It's not his "real job" but it seems that to him, it's his job. Some people just sit on the train platform with a watch and check to see if the trains come ontime or not. They aren't harmful, but I frequently see these people who have "jobs" that they aren't assigned, they just feel some obligation to do them. It's almost backwards... The people that seem to be out killing and brutally murdering people are stressed school students and business men. The people doing jobs for the community...are the "crazy people." Just an interesting little thing I noticed.

I am currently watching a commercial on TV for an air conditioner that has a sensor on it so it knows where you are in the room and blows air towards you... wow.

I get to watch a lot of TV here. 1) it's really funny and entertaining. 2) It's great listening practice. 3) The first thing my family does when they get home from anything is turn on TV. If we're sitting down for dinner and the TV is off, they turn it on, and actually move it so they can see it better. One day the TV broke and they had to take it in to get fixed. Dinner that night was so awkward that night because there wasn't TV going in the background. We don't have cable or anything so we don't have many channels, maybe 9. It seems the only types of shows they have on...ever...are News, Dramas, Game Shows, Food Shows, or Food Game Shows. My favorite game shows are the following...

1) People get guest chefs to make them the most expensive menu they can make. The contestants order the food not knowing the price. Each person gets to eat their meal then guess how much it costs. The person farthest off has to pay the whole bill in the end. Meals are usually between about 80 and 200 dollars and there are usually about 6 or7 contestants so you could imagine the bill.

2) There are two teams of 5 and they are asked questions with 5 letter answers. They each are at a booth and can't see each other and have to write one letter of the answer. For instance... A question could be "What instrument does Herbie Hancock Play" The first person writes "P" the second write "I" third "A" fourth "N" fifth "O". Except the words are harder and they change language sometimes. Sometimes they are in english, japanese, kanji... you get the idea. It's really entertaining.

3) Two teams of two people, there's a comedian and a guest famous person. The comedians ask the other teams guest questions that require words borrowed from english or other languages as answers and if the other person uses one of them, they lose. Like "Whats your favorite kind of juice?" if they say "Apple Juice" they'd lose points because the Japanese word for "Apple juice" sounds like "Ahpooroo (Apple) joosoo (Juice)". Another fun show. They have random interludes of food too.

Then of course, there are a ton of random shows with people having to guess what the Kanji readings are and things like that. Let's not forget the late night ones where people have to do ridiculous things like wear raw meat on their heads and put their head inside a cage of alligators...but I don't tune into those TOO often. There are also tons of cooking competition shows with celebrity guest judges, those are fun too, especially all the dessert competitions. They are kind of masters of dessert here...though the Malarkey's could give them a run for their money maybe.

Naked Man Festival... 18 hours!