Day 46 in Japan - Japanese TV!

I forgot one vital thing about yesterday - WE GOT A TV!!! One lovely lady from work donated her old television to us - she is so cute and lovely and she is my new best friend (now that I know the TV works :P). We didn't really get it working yesterday, although we made a stop at the hundred yen store to try to find some cables to plug it into the wall. We hit autotune, and let the TV do it's thing, and then lost interest and went to bed.

Today, we have actually had the time to watch some TV. And, oh boy, does Japanese TV live up to my expectations! Started with kids TV when I got home from school - very random and odd, but not really that different to the random oddness of kids TV at home. It wasn't until about 7 or so that the real gold appeared. The first show that caught my attention, and probably still my favourite, was called (something about escape) DERO! It's a show where celebrities get locked in rooms, surprising things happen and they have to solve puzzles in order to escape, or something scary happens to them. YES IT IS. Tonight there was a guy in a pink vest who's famous, a couple of boy band members (is JOY a boy band?), and a member of AKB48 (a 48 member girl band) trying not to fall down well shafts, solving kanji riddles, and escaping from locked rooms while chained up. Pure viewing gold.

A scene from DERO! My new favourite Japanese TV show.

After DERO! we channel surfed a bit, and eventually found another TV show to appeal to my delicate sensibilities - it combined three of my great loves - Antiques Roadshow, the hundred yen store and cross-dressing. In the show there seem to be a bunch of people standing around a table, choosing things to buy at the fake hundred yen store. All them men are dressed as old women (always funny), and they have to try to pick the things that are worth 100 yen from the things that are actually valuable collectibles or antiques. Television just does not get any better than that. I couldn't find it's name anywhere, so I will have to keep watching television randomly hoping to find it again.

I... I think this is a dating show? I just don't know anymore.

The other thing that has really made me happy about Japanese television is the ads. They are every bit as cliched, terrifying and brilliant as the snippets that we get in Australia make them seem. Pretty much every ad is noteworthy for some reason. The brightly coloured sets with cows singing about wanting you to eat them. The slow motion chip-eating with old man voices and young girl faces. The man playing cello in a room in a serious and dignified ad for melon bread. I hope that I never get used to it and that I am always as awed with Japanese television as I am right now.

In terms of work, today was a little gentler than yesterday, although I had my first ESS (English Speaking Society) club meeting. I will have 3-4 ESS culbs to run per week! So I have to think of at least 2 x 2 hour activities (and recycle them at my other school) per week to do with these poor bored students. I think that it will be a big challenge, and we may end up watching a few movies before the end of the year. And I am pretty sure that I won't be getting my daikyu (time in lieu) to make up for the extra 8 hours per week I'm now required to be at school. I asked today, and just got a lot of "well no one ever has before" (although my predecessors had only 2 ESS meetings per week), and "other teachers don't get any time off", and I think I'm just going to have to do it. I will keep asking, though. My classes today were quite good - I have now taught 9 classes at Akashi Kita (putting me halfway through my self-intros), and 5 classes at Akashi Shimizu. Oh, and my bento lunch was DELICIOUS! But it was a stolen bento - I ordered a small lunch but ate a large one accidentally (I thought the other containers were just the large rices for the people who ordered them). Oops! I apologise profusely and paid the lady the difference between the lunches. Dumb thing number fifty for the month.

Delicious stolen bento - the only thing I didn't
eat was the fishy stuff at bottom right.

Food Highlight of the Day: Tonight's dinner was brought to me courtesy of a very thoughtful Sam, who walked to MacDonald's to get us some tired gaijin food. I had a tsukimi (moon viewing) burger - egg, bacon, cheeseburger patty and cheese with a sauce that is best described as orange. It was delicious, totally unhealthy and lazy, and I regret nothing.