Ninja Stuff

For starters, there is...

Ninja Warrior!

Ninja Warrior or Sasuke as it's called in Japan is a different kind of TV game show brought to the US by cable station G4. The G4 website for Ninja Warrior is found here.

You can look up the links I posted above, but it's basically a really really hard obstacle course with 4 stages. Only two competitors have ever completed all 4 stages and they make the course harder each time, especially when someone has conquered the course.

The crab fisherman was the first to finish. The course was relatively tame back then, but still quite an accomplishment. Unfortunately in later seasons, his eyesight was failing and he was unable to compete.

Then much later, Nagano, the captain of his own fishing vessel, finished the course when it was much harder. He trains like mad and seems like quite a nice, humble guy for having achieved... total victory.

There are several things that I really like about the show - the diversity of the competitors like the All Stars who train all year for the event and cheer each other on. Among them is a physical fitness guy from a small town, a gas station attendant, a firefighter, a fisherman, and others who appear to be great friends. Then there are different athletes who come from all over the world, many of whom have competed in the Olympics. There are entertainers and comedians and recently hosts from G4 TV who have entered the competition. There are also fun characters like the guy who dresses up like Superman - in the costume underneath a suit. When the buzzer sounds, he rips off the suit and competes - sometimes even coming out of a phone booth. There are the old friends the Octopus and the hang-glider guy who seem to have fun despite not usually getting past the first couple of obstacles in the first stage.

There have been sons of the guy who brought the Ninja craze to America and a Shaolin monk who did some crazy cool moves that they put into the intro of the show...

Anyway, cool show.

That leads into my idea for entertainment of the future...

Ninja Opera!

I think it would be quite a challenge for an Opera singer to mouth words in one language and sing them in another... they could have all of the drama of classic Ninja tales. Besides that, with cables they could do super anti-gravity kicks and other Ninja moves. As someone pointed out though, if anyone watched the show, they would technically have to be killed at the end. Ninjas kill all who see them...

Ninja Links!

Other nice Ninja links:
http://askaninja.com/ - Silly ask a Ninja guy
Mythbusters Episodes - They do a couple of episodes on Ninja myths
Descriptions of Ninjas for those who don't know...