The Spring of Trivia - Mar 15th 2006
「トリビアの泉」は僕の世界中の一番大好きなテレビの番組だよ。 日本語が分かる方はもうご存知でしょう。解説することはないだろう。
よく書くテーマが考えないから、英語で短い翻訳を書こうと思っている。説明が長いし日本についてトリビアの翻訳は無理思っているからそのトリビアを翻訳しない。Googleを見るとこのようなページがなさそう。僕は最初かなあ。
英語に翻訳するから日本語がここで終わり。
The Spring of Trivia is, hands down, my favourite TV program in the world ever. The premise is very simple, every week you learn some new useless trivia sent in by viewers, some of it funny, some a bit stupid. Each item receives 100 yen per “wow” point given by the celeb panel. They also have an item where they create a new bit of trivia, this tends to be the best segment of the show.
Since I can’t think of stuff to write about regularly, I thought I’d briefly report here some of useless trivia I learn from it. A lot of the trivia are very Japanese culture related (about celebs, food, stories) so I won’t write those. A quick Google glance doesn’t show anyone else doing this so hopefully I’m the first.
“When you stand facing a wall, you can not tip toe” - 75 points
When you tip toe, the center of balance shifts so your body moves forward to balance itself, now that you no longer stand on the flat of your feet.
“When transporting Flamingos to another location, Zoo’s insert the animals into women’s stockings” - 77 points
This has to be seen to be believed. The legs of the stockings are cut to form a tube, which is then put over the Flamingo’s head and pulled over the body holding the wings in place stopping the bird from moving around. The end result is a bound black body with the pink neck sticking out.
“How much (yen) would Japan’s best crane operator need to spend to empty a ‘crane game’?” - Seed of Trivia #123
The crane game in question are those machines in arcades with the dodgy griping devices where you try to lift up the soft toy and transport it to the exit so you can keep it.
For this task they found Japan’s best Crane operator Mr Uehata (62y/o). A machine was filled with 50 “Hello Kitty” toys. Each try was 100yen.
He started off well and managed to get a toy straight away (although that was somewhat luck as it fell from the grippers, but happened to bounce and fell into the exit box). His tactic was to start with the big toys first, as they would be easiest. He had a lot of trouble with the smaller toys and when he got down to the last 7 he realised that normally, these could not be reached by the crane (it has a limited operating area, and the remaining toys were too close to the edge), however not to be beaten, Mr Uehata used the crane to nudge them into the grab-able area. This tactic cost approximately 1000 yen per toy. However, the final 4 just would not move no matter how much he tried and the staff of the arcade moved the toys a few inches towards the center to allow completion.
After more than 5 hours of play, Mr Uehata, Japan’s finest crane operator spent 37,100 yen. About 7 tries per toy. Mr Uehata got to keep the toys he won.