It's Saturday, and we got hooked on a new show

Most Americans are probably somewhat familiar with a show called Most Extreme Elimination on Spike TV. It was imported from Japan. The original name of the Japanese show was Takeshi's Castle, I believe, and it features ordinary Japanese people humiliating themselves, often while wearing bizarre costumes, as they attempted to complete an difficult obstacle course of stunts. That show was funny, if sometimes painful to watch. People really cracked their faces, legs, and other body parts sometimes, before they fell into pools of nasty-looking muddy water.

At some point, someone must have decided that it might be interesting to have the same basic premise but let genuine athletes give an obstacle course a try. Thus the show we saw this morning, which was called Ninja Warrior. It's Japanese name was Sasuke. This was a great show!

One hundred people of various backgrounds attempted to complete Stage One without falling into the same type of muddy pools of water. The Stage One obstacles included a series of slanted blocks that you had to bounce between, a large log bouncing down a slanted channel that you had to grasp with arms and legs and roll along with, a turning screw like thing that you had to run across, an obstacle where you had to use a rope to jump out over water and then swing back to land underneath the first platform, a vertical trampoline used to body-bounce from one ramp to another, a cargo net obstacle hanging over a pool of water that you had to be careful not to touch, a semi-circle ramp that you had to run up and climb over, and a rope swing to a large wall that had to be overcome. At the top, if you made it, you hit a button. The contestants had 100 seconds.

In the first episode that we watched, seven men made it through the first stage, including a firefighter, a medical worker, a gas station attendant (wearing his uniform, if you can believe that), and an army officer. Those men went on to other stages, most of which involved obstacles requiring extensive hanging from their hands.

It was heartbreaking to see these guys, who do all the competition over a one or two day period, fall in the water because their arms can't take anymore. The announcers would go on about how the lactic acid must really be building up in their muscles by now and then the men would fall. In another episode, 16 men made it through the first stage. Eight made it through the second set of different obstacles, and all eight failed in the third stage.

There has only been one man in the history of the show who made it through the fourth stage (that's in 15 years--or maybe 15 cycles, it wasn't clear). He won 2 million yen, or about $17,000. And a hell of a lot of bragging rights. I think we watched the show for at least two hours.

It must be Saturday.