Horie, Bobby, and The Man

It's been an interesting week in Japan, first and foremost everyone is still talking about the arrest of Takafumi Horie the now former CEO of Livedoor, Japan's premier IT company or I should say former premier IT company. Seems there are some financial irregularities and because of that Livedoor was first raided by investigators and then later Horie was arrested and taken to Jail for questioning with an avalanche of interesting news to follow in the when it rains it pours style. Livedoor did this livedoor did that, all week long you can't avoid what live door has done, of course all of the networks have been showing thier past interviews and shows involving the man especially the shows where he shows what his billions of yen have bought. And of course it wouldn't be a Japanese program if they didn't show what his prison cell looked like and analyze his menu of delicious jailhouse food...Oishii! Ahhh it is funny, how everyone is crucifying the man even the LDP have apologized for having him run as a party candidate in the last election, a seat he lost. Having been arrested though he now is truley qualified to run for the Diet.

On the other end of the spectrum we have Japan's favorite Nigerian, Bobby who's whole schtick on TV is playing the dumb foriegner who constantly makes mistakes in Japanese while speaking in a buffoon like accent, almost like some have called it a modern day minstrel show, which isn't far off the mark. The Japanese love it so much they do blackface imitations of him on other TV shows. The sad thing is he speaks perfect Japanese and seems to be a smart guy. This week like Horie he spent some time with the Police after apparently going crazy in his promoters office, tearing the place apart as they let the cameras in to see, a story which BTW knocked Horie's plight out of first place on Fuji's 5:00 news program. Ahh bobby what were you thinking. He had a press conference on Friday to apologize for the troubles he caused and cried, which should be recieved as a sincere apology and allow him to keep shuckin and jivin in his broken Japanese across TV screens from Hokkaido to Okinawa.

Back to watching more TV.