Flowers, Beds and Bad Quality TV

Coming from London, and being a typical city-ite, I can't tell one flower from another but there is a lovely smell coming from some blossom or other at the moment near me, which I love cycling past.

Quick apology, J. for forgetting your birthday. I emailed you. I'm crap. I apologise!

We've been hit by a typhoon, which is going to be around for the next few days. Great. I love being wet. Especially when I'm cycling. NOT!

Japanese telly is something I generally try to avoid, apart from watching the bilingual news (crap and VERY selective reporting) and bilingual movies (old and cheesy, so I can put up with them).

Last night though I had no short DVD's or downloaded programs to watch, and didn't feel like watching a movie, so I put the telly on. Now, my take is that British humour on TV is, generally, quite subtle whereas Japanese humour on TV is more, er, physical: think British kids TV in the eighties. I'm seen many Japanese 'comedy' programs where the humour comes from hitting someone or watching someone hurting themselves, etc.

One programme that I couldn't drag myself away from last night, revolved around a hidden camera watching a Japanese girl in her bedroom, sitting on her bed, and watching TV. We carried on looking at the girl for some time as the comedians laughed at her and as she kept shifting position, all the time waiting for the MAN HIDING UNDER HER BED to get the opportunity to grab her remote control, hide it, and then start changing the channels of her TV, before finally revealing he was there. We then saw the 'comedians' laughing their arses off as the poor bint screamed and started crying in a corner in fright - before they all walked into her room.

Lowest common denominator programming is what this is known as in the BBC. IE - it's cheap and it's crap.

Another programme I flicked on and gawped, trying desparately to see what the point was, had girls in bikinis (I have a feeling THAT was the point) foot wrestling, arm wrestling, wrestling wrestling, tit wrestling (using their tits to push their opponant off a podium), etc. And giggling a lot.

Shit do I miss the quality programmes that Channel 5 used to put out! Kidding. I do miss Channel 4 and the BBC sometimes. Only sometimes though!

I think this is all part of the bigger pattern though: the general childness of the Japanese psyche - the love of 'cute', of pink, of physical humiliating (school yard) humour, of little dogs in silly clothes, of over accessorising, of high pitched voices and pigeon-toed walks, of the love of manga and anime and so on.

On another note, I am laughing my arse off at the BBC's fuck up, when they interviewed the wrong man on a live news programme. Shockingly (as NHK normally ignores the rest of the world) they showed the interview on the news. Good on the bloke, but I wonder if any heads rolled for the cock up?

Update: there's a 'comedy' programme on now: one comedian is wearing little (very little) rubber/leather shorts and has a huge white clown like circle painted around his mouth from nose to chin, he is jumping around like a monkey. He is being whipped by a female in a pink (of course) tracksuit top and leather skirt, whilst another comedian dressed as a schoolgirl stands and giggles. The girl with the whip seems to be randomly hitting people. Another is a male dressed as a girl. Not as a transvestite, but as a 'comedy man-as-girl', er, person. Various other images have been inflicted on the other comedians. I can't bear to watch any more. My brain cells are dying.