I'm on Japanese TV

and making a damn fool of myself!

so the other day I was pulled aside randomly by a TV crew in downtown Fukuoka while bumbling around Tenjin station. Actually it wasnt so much a crew as it was a short bald man with a navy blue jacket and a funny red bow-tie, being followed by a dude with a camera.

I didn't take it too seriously, but it turns out they were filming a regular segment for the show "Mentai WIDE" in which gaijin are summarily poked at in quick goofy interviews . After the usual barrage of Japanese-people questions such as name, age, job, girlfriend (Y/N?) you have cool glasses, etc, he asked what has been surprising about life in Japan.

I TOTALLY BLANKED. couldn't think of anything. After a long UMMMMMMM, i blurted out "everything!" and then something about gameshows, and school graduation. After that they asked to see what was in my bag, and I revealed my Judo gi--I was going to practice Jujitsu later that night. Did i mention that I practice jujitsu now? That's a story for another post--It's a used gi borrowed from my school, so it says a former student's name, "AKIYAMA," on the back. After making fun of the fact that my gi says Akiyama, I was encouraged to put on the gi and do judo on him then and there, but by that point I was way too embarrassed to attempt to ippon seoi nage him right there near the train station.

So perhaps this is a virginity-losing event for all gaijin living in Nippon, but let it be known that Ihave officially made an idiot of myself on national Japanese TV. It aired today. My friend Jeanette caught it on tape!

The first clip just shows a second of us "playing judo" during the show intro:

This one features a longer portion of my interview. They actually cut out most of the horribly emberassing bits! Yatta!

EDIT: Omg, do you see the girl drawing Chinen-san in the first clip? That's one of my good friends, Cira! She was interviewed by him on the SAME DAY. What a crazy world.