Quiz Society

I love my wife. My wife loves TV. I want to be with my wife. Therefore, I watch TV. Surfing the channels on any given night, it might look like this: drama, quiz show, people eating, quiz show, stupid comedians, quiz show, men that look like women and quiz show. Japan is obsessed with quizzes! You can’t escape them. Here is how a typical show goes: There is this monkey. The monkey wants a banana. A banana is in an upside-down bucket submerged underwater. How does the monkey get the banana? The panel of the quiz show consists of famous and semi-famous people, called “talent”. When I ask my wife what these “talent” do? She replies by saying that they are “talent”. “Yes, but what IS their talent?” I ask meekly. “They are JUST TALENT!” she retorts. Anyway, these “talent”, draw their answers on cards as the audience eagerly waits for the answer to the monkey’s dilemma. “Why can’t they just TELL me how the monkey gets the banana? Why does it need to be a quiz?” I ask, reluctantly. My wife shouts, “Urusai” which means “shut up” in Japanese. Next follows, endless commercials for cell phones, green tea, instant ramen, beer, and cosmetics to name a few. In the meantime, I could have gone to Africa to give the monkey a banana and STILL have time to see the answer. Finally, the “talent” reveal their answers (sometimes acting out their answers) and all are satisfied (including the monkey). Actually these types of low budget quiz shows are a brilliant way of extending a one-minute film clip (in this case a monkey) into a 30-minute program. The obsession with quizzes is not limited to just TV. It extends into every aspect of life in Japan. The other day a boy asked me, “ Do you know what my favorite sport is? “No, I don’t” I replied. “Is it, A: baseball, B: soccer or C: basketball?”