The Japanese are at it again (thank god, this would be a boring blog without them)

The Japanese have some TV shows thats for sure.

I stumbled on the story of Nasubi the other day and couldn’t believe what I was reading.

Back in the pre-Y2K days of 1998 Japanese TV producers held an audition for a new show. A comedian named Nasubi (Japanese for eggplant) “won” the audition and was blindfolded and brought to a one room apartment somewhere in Tokyo. The apartment was stocked with a stack of magazines and a pile of postcards. Nasubi was told to strip naked and left with a cushion, a table, a small radio, a telephone, and some notebooks pens. He had no food.

Nasubi was told that in order to escape his prison he had to win a million Yen ($10,000) in prizes via magazine mail-in contests. This was also the only way he could eat- his first two weeks were without calories until he won some jelly in a contest (what kind of contest prize is jelly?).

Nasubi soon won a 5kg bag of rice but didn’t have anything to cook it with. He worked up a prison style cooking method using a cup of water and rice placed on the heater. He also won a TV set but didn’t have a cable or antennae. When he finally won a VCR the only videos he had were an exercise and cycling video.

The whole story is nuts. The guy was locked away for 15 months all by himself, forced into a starvation diet, and had his entire ordeal broadcast on TV and the internet. His diary became a best seller on the outside world.

At the end of his show Nasubi was placed in yet another small enclosed space, where out of force of habit he took off his clothes. Imagine the crazyness he went through when the walls fell away and he found himself in front of a large studio audience, where he was finally told the details of what had happened to him over the past year and change.

Nasubi’s adventures makes Survivor seem pretty tame. Head over to the Quirky Japan Home Page to read the whole story, if anything it’s even stranger than I’ve been able to write here.

Maybe being married to me isn't so bad after all - Mrs B take note.