[travel] Live Japanese TV show

[mattbell]

There's a subset of male Japanese tourists that seem to derive a lot of pleasure from taking their immaculately made-up and demure girlfriends and putting them in degrading situations. I saw it many times in Italy – I saw several men put pigeon feed in their girlfriends' hair and then take pictures as the rats of the air landed on their screaming heads for a bit of a snack. Perhaps they fancy themselves the directors of one of the many extreme game shows that form the bulk of Japanese TV.

In any case, there's one Japanese tourist who brought his poor girlfriend along to the bungee jump I did. She was dressed in a short skirt with stockings and heels, almost as if she had been directly airlifted out of a major city tourist attraction into the outdoor sports paradise of Interlaken. It's actually fortunate her skirt wasn't longer because then the bungee harness leg loops would have scrunched it up into a goofy pair of leg wings. Prior to the bungee jump there was a weigh-in.

Woman: “I'm 59kg.”
Bungee operator: “Please get on the scale.”
Woman: “I'm 59kg.”
Bungee operator: “We need your exact weight. It's very important. You could get hurt if we set the bungee wrong.”
Woman: “I'm 59kg.”
Bungee operator: “If you don't get on the scale, you can't go.”
A few seconds pass. Woman gets on the scale.
Bungee operator: (Loudly) “67kg. Put her in group B!”
Bungee operator 2 (Loudly): “67kg. Got it!”
Bungee operator: (Loudly) “Yep, 67kg!”

Socially constructed embarrassment vs physical danger... Ah, priorities.

I talked to her after the jump and she said she liked it, though she could have just been saying that to be
polite. She screamed a perfect horror-movie scream on the way out of the gondola.