In the Kushami Room and beyond

[Bombast]

I sometimes allude to an imaginary 'parallel universe' where we are the normal ones and everyone else needs to have their heads looked at. Thing is, that universe does exist on the Asian continent. There are models who actually enjoy competing in inducing contests which are routinely filmed and broadcast. Oh to understand what is being said on those shows. It doesn't seem to be a big fringe thing either. All the trappings are very mainstream. I recall some pretty bizarre fads in the '80s that I read about, particularly in Japan, but they faded away fairly quickly. Could you believe if this trend infiltrated western pop culture? We could have sneezing contests integrated in many of the reality shows. We've already had dung throwing contests and a show where a group of men were vying for a paid vacation with a very convincing supermodel who was really a pre-op transsexual. I was just curious if anyone could tell me, and there appears to be a sizable Asian presence on this board, or a group that is knowledgable about the culture, why is it accepted, even embraced over there while here it scares the crap out of the general public.

[Daphine]

When I wrote my story about the three college girls who mistakenly enter a Japanese sneezing contest, I wonderd the exact same thing It really made me wonder if we as a sociaty are so close minded that we are just not ready to explore such things. As you already mentioned with reality shows the way they are these days and everyone looking for there 15 minutes of fame why wouldn't US broadcasters start exploring what other cultures are doing on the air and see if it would work over here.