Why I Love Wednesdays.

[sechan19]

On Wednesday nights, beginning at 7pm, Fuji Television shows some of the funniest programing known to man. First off is Hexagon - a variety game show that ranks eighteen participants by their score on an entrance quiz and then proceeds to put them through a series of word games and questions - making fun of the dummies along the way.

Hexagon is followed by はねるのトびら (Haneru no to bira - still not quite sure what that means, although "Haneru" means to reject), a variety show staring a number of famous Japanese comedians who participate in games, skits, and - sometimes - endurance tests. The hijinks these people get up to are truly astonishing. If you want a taste of the madness click here. It's just a short clip that I recorded with my digital camera. The quality isn't that good, but you can get an idea of what some TV is like here.

Tonight I happened to stay up to watch Best House 123. Ordinarily I head up to my room to study after Haneru, but I'm glad I didn't miss this episode - which featured one of the regulars visiting Korea to try out spicy Korean food. He was given progressively spicy dishes until he was ultimately reduced to tears, sweat, and pathetic pleas for water. Finally, after crying that he wanted to go back to Japan, he was taken out of the restaurant and blasted with a fire hose. Then he was - inexplicably - slapped in the face by a passing Korean woman. (And she really slapped him, yo. He fell over and everything.)

It was one of the damnedest things I've ever seen.

Comments

[lordameth.livejournal.com]

I *loved* hexagon the one time I saw it, though I never did manage when I was in Japan to learn which nights and times which shows were on, so i rarely caught the same thing twice...

トびら, the way you have it written out, confuses me too. But 扉(とびら) is a door or a gate, isn't it?

[reteva.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's why I can't quite figure it out. They use katakana to isolate that one syllable in the title. No idea if it's just a weird aesthetic thing and the title is supposed to be "Door of Rejection" (or some variation of that) or not. Either way it's a fantastic show, and they're all on Wednesday nights on Fuji TV, which in the Tokyo area is channel 8. It could be different in Yokohama, but hopefully not. I mean, Yokohama is only a hop, skip, and a jump away from Tokyo proper, so...