It's that time again

Tonight's show is the one led by Mr. Masahiro Nakai, member of the ubiquitous pop group SMAP (which means Sports Music Assemble People, for obvious reasons), that focuses on women. Let me start off by saying that I think Nakai is a creepy guy who has a Mao-like grip of terror on Japanese TV. He's on at least 4 or 5 primetime shows a week regardless of the fact that he is severely lacking any sort of entertaining personality or marketable skills (each of the current five SMAP members has a singular feature that defines them: the cute one, the romantic one, the crazy one; Nakai is known as the one who isn't very good at singing). Why this guy is on so many shows is beyond me. He's not funny, he's not particularly attractive, and he's pretty dumb from what I gather. Yet he's one of the highest paid entertainers in Japan. I don't get it.

Anyway, back to TV. So Nakai hosts this weekly show called 'KinSma,' meaning Gold SMAP, again for obvious reasons. For what I understand the show has two recurring features. The show is set up with a couple celebrities on stage, surrounded by an audience of 20 something ladies all wearing red pantsuits. Nakai is wearing a weird, over-the-top Napoleon style uniform. The first feature involves telling the scandalous story of some random young Japanese lady that does something weird. One episode I saw was about a lady that really enjoyed getting making other people angry, so she got hired and fired at a rather rapid pace and ran through boyfriends quickly. This week's feature is showing the lives of a couple really really old ladies who are bedridden. It's accompanied by the ever present picture-in-picture showing the faces of the various celebrities as they are watching the feature. It's not interesting, and it seems the celebrities agree with me.

Finally, the show closes out with the ever popular 'Find the Hottest Mom in a Certain Area of Japan' game. The show sends a camera crew to some random area in Japan, and they ask around for some hot middle-aged women. They find three and bring them back to the studio where they get all dressed up. They are then presented to the celebrities, usually accompanied with a home cooked specialty, and one of the mom's is chosen as the hottest of the three by Mr. Nakai. They win a prize or something and the show ends. It's as creepy as it sounds.

On a separate note, QVC is selling these. It rocks back and forth and, even though they seem to be the next big thing in Japan, every woman that gives it a ride looks very embarrassed.