Olympics vs the Idiot Box

I'm not a big watcher of sport, but I do enjoy watching judo at the Olympics. Judo is a great sport. A match lasts only a few minutes, which is about my attention span. Fighters are quickly penalized for time wasting so there's always action. There's no trash talking or bragging - every one is most polite even as they grind someone's face into the mat or have their ears turned into gyoza. I also really like the scoring wherein one can win by either accumulating points or ippon, and that there are various ways to do either of those - pinning, throwing or submission. Ippon keeps the match interesting right until the expiration of time as either fighter could still win at any moment.

Fortunately I live in a country rather renowned for judo, so I can watch pretty good coverage of the sport at the Olympics. Unfortunately I can't watch good interviews with the medalists or their families. In case you don't already know, Japanese TV is dire. Japanese interviewers are helping to correct this. Not.

A morning ritual is Mino Monta's Breakfast Show. I like to try and guess whether he's drunk or stoned, and when he gets a bee in his buffed bonnet about something or other he becomes serious and talks to the camera about how things aint what they used to be. I'm also currently in love with both Nemoto-kun the genki weather girl, and Takahata-chan the super genki sports reporter. There being weather everyday, and it being the Olympics and me with nothing to do, I can get my fill of this delightful pair every morning. In her jealousy Mari claims they both 'stink of the countryside' (a Japanese expression that means one is unsophisticated) but she won't dissuade me. Coming from the countryside myself, I find their plainness sexually enticing.

Well, enough about me. Time to bring this post back on track. Sadly the man himself, Mino Monta, is on summer vacation now so I can't enjoy his rambling, backslapping, nudge-nudge-wink-wink interviews. Instead there's a fill-in MC for the morning show. I can't remember his name, but his interviews with the athletes or their families are just terrible. Take the other morning. Ms Ayumi Tanimoto won gold in the under 63kg class. She was also the gold medalist at Athens 4 years previous, and has been a medalist at the World Championships and Asian Games. Obviously a woman at the top of her game and devoted to judo. The MC gets her father on the phone and his question is "Did you ever oppose her committing to judo because it will affect her chances to get married?" WTF? After all, there are no married current Olympians out there. The father made light of the question by saying that as she's got a cute smile (she has) he's happy to have her at home. But like a zombiefied dog with a still-attached human hand in its jaws the MC wouldn't let go of the subject of marriage, and after another equally vacuous question he returned to it. Mari said that as a woman she wanted to ring the studio to complain about the stupidity of the marriage questions. I asked her that when she does would she mind getting Nemoto-kun's and/or Takahata-san's phone numbers.

And then there's Mr. Yuki Ota's silver medal for fencing in the men's foil. Fencing is not a major sport in Japan, so not unexpectedly there's been no coverage of it here. However there was not even a live telecast of either of Mr. Ota's final two bouts, despite them being first a chance for bronze and then gold. Comes time to report Mr. Ota's victory, and it's a mere 30 seconds pretty much comprised of the two anchors talking about how they have no understanding of the rules of fencing. A perfunctory congratulations was issued and then onto the report about baseball, a sport that they do understand and a game in which Japan lost. It was given 5 minutes.

At least there's no Japanese equivalent of Darrel Eastlake.