more madness
After a short sabbatical from watching Japanese TV, I plunged myself back into the chaos. All Japanese tv shows center around food in one way or another. There is no escaping it. Flick through the channels at any given time of day and you are likely to find:
A cooking show. A talkshow in which the celebrities have to eat things. A gameshow in which the players have to eat things. A drama about a restaurant. A documentary about a restaurant.
And so on in that fashion. On a good day.
With food on TV, the uniform reaction no matter what the taste of the food is always “oishii” or “umai”, both meaning ‘delicious’. No other descriptions are ever offered, such as sweet, spicy, bitter, sour, hot, cold, or god forbid, ‘not nice’. The predictability of this verges ever so slightly on annoying. However, I for one do not know how I would react if a wide-eyed, pretty-but-vacant talento didn’t taste some food, pause dramatically, then utter “oihiiiiii!” (this is ‘oishii’, but said with more hyperbole, mouth full and lips half-closed to prevent food spilling out). My world would probably collapse around me.
I watched a show in which 5 celebrities were made to eat Japanese gourmet food, and guess the prices. Amongst the delights were Turtle stew, Baked Tuna eyeball (which was absolutely massive) and some kind of oyster nabe.
Just before the point where the audience realises this is the same formula for every single TV show ever, they vary the content slightly. Cue a ‘game’ to decide who gets to eat the last dish. Celebrities were paired up and had to use a foot pump to inflate a balloon that was on top of their partners’ head, secured by a woman’s stocking over their whole face. Whoever burst their opponents balloon first was the winner. I think the pictures speak for themselves, on this account.
Layton brewers triumphed!meanest!microwaves mugging enroll:Troy!contrasts
Sarasota.spitfire reconfigure heckle:paunch hitchhike confessing migrations
casseroles ditch maiming toads,snuggles,abstracts .