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 When I set out to do a piece on
hitomi, I had to contend with a name that is as epidemic as the
star herself. Going through the phone book might have been easier
than resorting to the usual channels. Just for starters, there
was Yuki Hitomi, Yaida Hitomi, and Shimatani Hitomi, all popular
idols in their own right, not to mention Okazaki Hitomi, the
radio personality, and let's not forget every other Hitomi with
an online resume. One would think it's not the best choice of
names to get noticed in the entertainment industry, but hitomi,
as I soon discovered, is a girl who knows how to stand out.
There she was, towering over the Shibuya crosswalk au naturel,
her hair falling in all the right places like Sheena, Queen of
the Jungle. This was the girl I was looking for: the one who'd
discarded her last name as confidently as she'd chucked her clothing.
Her promo loomed larger than life, bigger than the Starbucks
mermaid with whom she shared the same billboard space, not to
mention modesty conserving locks.
hitomi's similarity to the caffeinated naiad can't be entirely
coincidental. She lists Starbucks and aquariums as some of her
favorite spots; and her zodiac sign is, at the risk of sounding
redundant, Aquarius. Indeed, hitomi spends much of her most recent
video, Kimi Ni Kiss, staring longingly into a fish tank, wreathed
in a tiara that could only have been meant for Sea Monkey royalty.
Whether or not Poseidon takes a shine to her video, Kimi Ni Kiss
marks the singer's nineteenth single; a formidable number for
a music career that spans only six years. Far more impressive
has been her choice of collaborators. An open admirer of another
uni-titled star, Madonna, hitomi has a similar nose for premium
composers and musicians: collaborators who have consistently
maintained the balance between cutting edge musical trends and
mainstream pop. From her early years with Komuro Tetsuya, to
her current alliance with Watanabe Zentaro and Tago Kunio, hitomi's
success is proof that decision making ability and talent are
equal attributes in the music business. Accessibility must count
as well. Her web page resembles something close to a lonely hearts
profile, going into explicit detail on the singer's likes and
dislikes. She enjoys beer in the summer, shochu with umeboshi
in the winter, Disneyland, and vulnerable outlaws. She also has
a low tolerance for those who treat others insensitively, or
don't walk their talk. She posts pictures of things she's picked
up on tour, or abroad; mainly an eccentric collection of My Little
Pony and Betty Boop figurines. For the most part, hitomi seems
to be a person who enjoys the mundane as much as the exhilarating,
as long as both work to bring on personal transformation. "I'm
growing and developing and have got a lot of incomplete parts.
Every day I meet different people, I cry, I'm happy, and out
of all of this I'm changing little by little, growing as a person."
Her latest release is an album with true crossover potential.
Taking influences from U.S., U.K., and Nikkei indies, LOVE LIFE
is an album which rocks as much as it bops.
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 I hate Sunday nights. Going to
bed having to think about waking up early definitely takes all
the enjoyment out of falling asleep. I'm sure I'm not the only
one that has this attitude, either. Well for the Japanese weekday
workaholics, other than meditating your way out of the dread
for the upcoming week straight into timeless-bliss-nirvana, there
is a more simple and light way to help ease the pain, which is
television.
Yes, those ingenious minds controlling the broadcast waves flying
all in and around Tokyo have produced the miracle stress reliever
program that somehow keeps the whole of Japan from breaking down
in chaos from pre-Monday blues disorder.
"Susunu Denpa Shonen", The Electrical-Transmission-Wave
Boy Doesn't
Go On, formerly known as "Susumu Denpa Shonen", The
Electrical-Transmission-Wave Boy Goes On, Nihon Television's
hit series that airs every Sunday night at 10:30, is the relaxing
ointment applied weekly to the brains of millions of Japanese
yearning to break free from the normality of life that is to
recommence Monday morning to enjoy and share some time off on
a journey into the fabulous potential of human beings. This dream-like
program consists of weekly updates of people who are attempting
to do seemingly useless feats of immense magnitude just for the
sake of our viewing pleasure.
The intensity of the feats that these people partake remind the
workaholics just how lucky they are to be able to lead 'normal'
9-5 (or most often 9-9 or 10, 11 12) lifestyles.
"Susunu Denpa Shonen" is a kooky television program,
but nonetheless, it is all true real life - no acting, no script.
This is how one of the stories begins. Young comedians and actors
go to an audition to be on the show, but for what feat they will
be assigned, they don't know. A couple of days later, the producer
comes along to the chosen one, Ito Takashi's house in the early
morning without any prior warning - barges in with a replicate
key, and tells him that it's time to go. What we see on the television
screen is the back of the producer as he opens up the door of
Ito's apartment room somewhere in Tokyo, and walks into a dark
room where Ito is sleeping, then Ito's face as he is in bed and
awakened by the producer's voice. After giving him a rude awakening,
the producer, puts an eye mask over Ito's sleep-goggled eyes,
and earphones playing loud music preventing him to hear anything
and then leads him out of his house (this is known as consented
abduction).
After sitting in a car, a plane, another plane,and another, then
a bus - all in all, a couple of days later, the whole time completely
shut off from the outside world by the eye mask and earphones,
Ito finally reaches the destination point, the place where his
journey is to begin.
The producer of the show then tells him to take off his eye mask,
and whoops! guess where he is - the Cape of Good Hope, the southernmost
tip of Africa, as far south as you can get on the globe short
of the South Pole, right by the ocean. Ito stands in utter disarray,
unable to understand what's going on, while the producer informs
us, the viewers, and him that this is the beginning of Susunu
Denpa Shonen's version of "hitchhiking across the African
and European continents." He goes on to further explain
that the mission is to start from the Cape of Good Hope and reach
the goal, which is at the Northern most tip of Norway, a lighthouse
right by the Arctic Ocean.
It's far from being any kind of light prank played on this guy
- there is no punch line where a guy in a rainbow colored clown
suit jumps out with a little flag, "We're just kidding"
on it and saying "Got you scared huh?!" No, the show
is real, and they really mean it. Ito meets up with his partner
there at the starting point, Chuyan, a Chinese guy who can't
speak a lick of Japanese, brought there in the same way, and
they partake on a journey that takes them nearly a year to complete.
A cameraman follows them along through the trip, and every Sunday,
we get to look in on the two who first struggle to communicate
with each other, eventually finding enough positive energy to
push themselves through the journey with so much gusto that it
makes us wonder about the great potential that humans have when
faced with impossible tasks.
Standing in the heat of the South African sun for hours without
a car passing by allowing for a meager chance for a hitchhike
into the nearest town, feeling the mosquitoes and the fear of
disease as they lay down in their sleeping bags for an uncomfortable
night in the middle of nowhere, what can be more exciting than
watching this kind of action to take away the Sunday night blues?
This is typical "Susunu Denpa Shonen."
After 290 days of hitchhiking, and a total distance of 22,170
kilometers, Ito and Chuyan finally reach their goal in the freezing
temperatures of nearly polar circumstances where a little 'goal'
flag and "Susunu Denpa Shonen" crew with television
camera and hot soup awaits them. In the past, they have done
these journey versions in the same way, recruiting budding comedians,
one that involved hitchhiking from Tokyo to London through the
Eurasian continent, and another from South America to Alaska.
These journey sessions have brought a lot of popularity to the
program, and many faithful watchers are glued to the screen every
Sunday night to find out the most recent happenings of their
traveling buddies roaming around the world, poor and hungry,
heading for that goal, ever so far away.
Chuyan not only managed to reach his goal, he also landed a spot
on the show as a regular host. Fans of the show watch him look
on in pleasure and amazement, others attempt the seemingly impossible.
If he gives them a pep talk, the contestants know for a fact
that it's coming from someone who has been in their position
and succeeded.
Susunu Denpa Shonen also did the 20th century version of Robinson
Crusoe, where they got a pair of comedians, Rocotsu Mania, eye
masked, earphoned, and taken to a deserted island somewhere off
the coast of Japan, were they were left with a cameraman to find
some way to get back to the mainland. Left alone with there own
devices, they somehow adventure the island, finding food for
their lives in the sea (clams and fish) and forests (plants like
mugwort), and a little deserted cabin to live in. After making
a raft from logs, they succeed in leaving the island and yet,
after this mission, they are assigned an even more strenuous
one, which had to do with traveling the open waters.
The producer, who realized the potential of Rocotsu Mania to
bear the hardships of ocean travel (via their ingenuity to get
out of a deserted island), assigned them to get on a paddle boat
shaped like a swan and travel from India to Indonesia by this
two seater swan boat. Without any delay, they are sent on a 4,000-kilometer
journey by paddling their swan boat like a bicycle. The deserted
island mission and India to Indonesia mission combined took them
a year and a half to complete, and we watched every step of the
way.
However, these adventuring missions aren't the only ones that
Sunsunu Denpa Shonen has in store. Their most recent adventure
has a very different style to it, but is nevertheless, something
quite intriguing to watch. One of Japan's famous female singers,
Kahara Tomomi, a former regular in the hit charts a couple of
years ago, was chosen to partake on a mission for the program.
Former missions were always assigned to comedians or actors who
hadn't made a name for themselves at all in the Japanese entertainment
business, so the viewing audience got to know them first through
the show. In the case of this particular lady singer though,
she was well known already, therefore, the mission took on a
different approach. She was to go to America and find a way to
debut as a singer by herself. Eye masked and earphoned, she was
taken on a plane to the States, given a meager sum of money,
about $1,000, and then left there with a cameraman to somehow
find her way into the American music business. If she would had
declined the offer, she could have comfortably remained one of
the top singers in Japan, but solely for interest, Susunu Denpa
Shonen staff persuaded her easily to try.
If you've been keeping up with recent trends in the Japanese
society, you are sure to know that many of the youth today have
a distinct dislike for studying. College classes are half empty,
and many high school and middle school students just don't go
to school all together and stay pent up in their homes. "Susunu
Denpa Shonen," in its traditional way of trying to bring
about some kind of positivity to the society, has recently commenced
to create its version of the "ideal pupil" in its usual
spartan way. Sakamoto, a budding comedian who auditioned to appear
on the show, stated in his interview that he wanted to go to
college. So naturally, the producer of the show came up to him
one day and asked him if he really wanted to go. Sakamoto agreed,
and thus started the "Susunu Denpa Shonen" version
of "Going Straight Into Tokyo University." What Sakamoto
has to do is to live in a barren apartment room, which only has
a desk and books, and to learn from a teacher all he must so
that he may take the entrance exam for Tokyo University (the
most highly respected University in Japan) and get accepted.
Of course this may seem to you like a completely normal thing
for any aspiring high school senior, but Sakamoto's knowledge
(which was measured by tests) was found to be on the average,
around the 7th grade. You can imagine the work he had cut out
for him. The program prepares his meals for him, but in order
for him to get to eat them, he takes a small test before every
meal on which he must score higher than 80 points. Otherwise
he doesn't get to eat. And as you can guess, for the first couple
of days, he went without any food. But recently, his studying
has started to pay off, and he averages around 2 meals per day.
Quite the improvement. Soon we will witness on the show, the
grand finale which will culminate on the day of the Tokyo University
entrance exams. Will he succeed on showing to us that the human
brain never does lose it's potential no matter how long it remains
unused?
What makes the program alluring is that all the missions seem
impossible in the beginning, but as the weeks go by, and while
we the viewers get to watch, the heroes gradually struggle to
find their way to somehow complete them. The participants really
don't get any benefits for doing these missions that Susunu Denpa
Shonen gives them. It's just that they get the prestige and confidence
in themselves over what they have accomplished.
Ahh, yes, it's the power and pull of television and fame. These
young comedians and actors are well aware of what Susunu Denpa
Shonen is capable of doing to them. But countless numbers of
actors are just hoping for their chance to become somehow part
of the crew and partake on another absurd mission. As long as
Susunu Denpa Shonen reigns as the premier attraction for Sunday
nights, Japanese workaholics will continue to put their hearts
into their work in the upcoming weeks.
"Sunsunu Denpa Shonen" is an odd program indeed. On
the one hand, the hitchhiking series and Kahara Tomomi's journey
into the American entertainment business is serious business,
and there's no joking around. But on the other, it does these
completely wacky pranks just as seriously that it is impossible
to fathom the programs real intent (if any). "Susunu Denpa
Shonen" aired on New Years Eve; a 2 hour program from 11:00
till 1:00 in the New Year, and in it they featured all the latest
events that were occurring to the people involved in missions
at that time. Up to there, the program was just one of the special
programs that all the broadcast channels was doing. As the New
Year's approached, just like every other program, they commenced
the countdown. Up to here, nothing special, everyone watching
the show enjoying the night with great expectations as the countdown
approached zero. The program counts down, "four, three,
two, one, Happy New Years!" Cheers and shouts, and everyone
watching rejoicing as well as another new century starts off
from there. Or so it was thought. As everyone was shouting "kanpai"
with their champagne glasses, the lady announcer on the show
shouts out, "Wait, there's been a mistake! There's actually
two more minutes till the New Years! Sorry about this!"
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