Personal Dork Assistant

Sad and Unfortunate

Apparently Japanese TV stations like to show ultimate-fighting-type bouts for New Years. K-1 is the biggest show in town, thanks to characters like Bob Sapp. But the big bad black man needed a big bad opponent. Akebono? I thought a sumo yokozuna was suppose to have more dignity than that. But I guess you can't pay the bills with dignity. Wasn't much of a fight, though, as a 500-pound man with bad knees = punching bag.

Personally, I prefer the NHK's Red-and-White Song Contest ("Kohaku Utagassen" = 紅白歌合戦), which is grandma's (and apparently half of Japan's) favorite TV event of the year. Unfortunately, KTSF only ran an abridged version of it in the Bay Area, but I can only handle so much old-school crooning anyway. The contest is men vs. women, but it wasn't really fair this year, as the White team (of males) had SMAP batting cleanup. You could hear the girls in the audience squealing with delight like three acts before SMAP even came on stage. And middle-aged kimono-wearing ladies just weren't going to beat out the biggest boy-band in town.

Then there was the poor sap who had to watch everything on New Year's eve and write about it. Yes, even New Year's programming on Japanese TV is falling to new lows in taste, so it's not just Western Civilization that's going to hell in a handbasket.