Andy in Tokyo

Cool Japan

Imagine if the BBC created a programme called ‘Cool Britain’, in which a group of foreigners discussed the most mundane aspects of British culture, such as rambling, Sunday Lunch, making a ‘proper’ cup of tea and Shrove Tuesday. The discussion would be occasionally interrupted by snippets of one of the foreigners ‘experiencing’ that week’s cultural item: plodding through the Yorkshire Dales in drizzle wearing an impossibly-coloured Berghaus anorak and occasionally screaming ‘Oooh, isn’t this lovely!’, for example. Presenter Richard Hammond would then throw out thought-provoking questions to the multicultural horde, questions like: “So, Ordinance Survey maps, a classic British navigation tool. Are they cool?”.

At the end of the show, and after much smug, self-congratulatory back-slapping by ‘Hammy’, June Sarpong and a random cultural ‘expert’, the day’s topic would be either voted cool, or not, and… well, that’s it.

Oh, and all the foreigners speak French.

Dying to see such inventive programming? I bet you are, and luckily for you a Japanese version, ingeniously titled ‘Cool Japan’, is aired on NHK’s BShi channel every Tuesday from 10pm. Here’s a clip:

Now, what really makes Japan cool? Kurara Chibana:

Radio Taiso: the master class

50 years since its introduction radio taiso, the set of morning warm-up exercises for children and salarymen everywhere, is still going strong.

Throw away Wii Fit! Impress your friends, dazzle your co-workers and disturb your dalmation by learning radio taiso from Japan’s leading workout professionals: “Ninety-nine”:

Phew! Now, steady yourself, take some deep breaths, stretch out those hams-on-strings and let’s begin part 2:

High school student accosted by pygmy monkey

In what has to be the best news story of the week, a Japanese high school student was accosted by a slow loris pygmy monkey while walking home. Even more intriguingly, the student in question looks remarkably like a species of monkey himself:

The student said: “Firstly, the monkey climbed up onto my back, and after that climbed even further upwards.”

Slow lorises are not native to Japan, and are found mainly in southeast asia. The buying and selling of them was made illegal in September 2007, but they can still be bought on the thriving exotic-species black market for a cool ¥1 million (£5,000).

NHK news report:

Clip of a domesticated slow loris living somewhere in Japan: