Top 10 TV Shows People in Japan Want Back On TV

I know, I know, I love these top 10 lists that come out. Even if they don’t mean anything they sure put a little spotlight on Japan for us. This poll is especially fun because if you’ve been here going on fifteen years like some newzjapan bloggers I know, you learned Japanese watching some of them…  I’m looking at YOU, Mr. Tamori and that crazy Bokyabura (Vocabula).

Anyway, here’s the list and some videos so you guys can relive those innocent days when you first arrived in Japan, and the idea of bread filled with spaghetti still disgusted you.

1.Downtown no Gottsu Eekanji: a great skit comedy show with Downtown and a bunch of others. Downtown cancelled it by choice after a dispute with a network over being delayed for a baseball game.

Here’s an example of the brilliance kids today miss out on:

2. Tamori no Bokyabura Tengoku
Part was about lyrics that viewers misheard in various songs both international and Japanese and wrote to the show about. Pretty funny. The other part was a contest in which young comedians made a pun or otherwise toyed with vocabulary for both comedic and intellectual fun. Bakusho Mondai, Cream Stew (when they were known as Kaijari Suigyo), and Neptune all became popular doing this show.

3. Suiyo Do Desho
Truth is, I don’t know this one. Anybody? Produced by Hokkaido TV apparently.

4. Uchan Nanchan no Hono no Challenger Kore Ga Dekitara 1,000,000 yen!
People try to do wacky stuff. If they succeed, they get a million yen! Good fun!

5. Toko! Tokuho Okoku
People that think they have unique talents send in a post card and get featured on the show. Being able to break chopsticks with butt cheek muscles while wearing a bikini seems to have been a sure way to get on the show.

6. Dempa Shonen
Great show. This is the show that made two budding Japanese comedians hitchhike from Hong Kong to London, and made the first “web cam” type star by having a guy known only as “Nasubi” or “Eggplant”. He started out naked and had to earn his keep through the postcard contests earning clothes and food. As he strolled around the house naked they covered his private parts with a little eggplant instead of mosaic…all this while being filmed round the clock.

7. Uchan Nanchan no Yarunara Yaraneba
Another fine show from Uchan and Nanchan.

8.Asayan
This is the show that gave birth to Morning Musume… you must know who they are?! It was American Idol in Japan, many many years before American Idol… or maybe the Making of the Band, was there a show by that name in the U.S.?

9. Wandafuru (Wonderful)
Sorry. I don’t know this one either. Hope some of the commenters know it.

10. Ninkimono de Iko!
This still comes on as a special every winter vacation around New Year’s. Funny stuff as stars try to prove that they are true celebrities by tasting top quality wine and 500 yen wine and trying to tell the difference. Everybody probably sits at home thinking they would know the difference, but it’s kind of sad and funny when a professional singer can’t tell the difference between a professional piano player and a 9 year old girl who’s been playing for just to years.