If we apply Western standards, Japanese television is definitely strange. Some shows have a certain preference for activities that demand physical skill, and one of the most popular is pitting three professional soccer players against an army of little ones (a hundred to be precise), desperate to get the ball. Trust me: it's much more entertaining than it sounds.
Japanese TV has let me watch a man drink a liter and a half of juice in less than five seconds, a sort of “human Tetris”, a transformer owl, and the most intense tire throwing competition on Earth. It's a kind of entertainment that would probably last 30 seconds on Western screens, but besides being very popular in its homeland, it also found a privileged place on YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/GE25b1eZe8YA Very Particular Soccer Challenge
One of the most recent examples involves soccer. Yosuke Ideguchi of Leeds United (on loan at Cultural Leonesa), Hiroshi Kiyotake and Hotaru Yamaguchi of Cerezo Osaka received a very particular challenge: playing against 100 kids at the same time. If seeing 90 little players running after the ball like automatons doesn't make you laugh, I imagine the 10 goalkeepers will. From what I've seen, the kids' team isn't required to score goals; it's enough to get the ball off the field.
The challenge ended 2-1 in favor of the professionals, although it's worth acknowledging the effort of one of the goalkeepers on the final shot. The future of Ideguchi, Kiyotake, and Yamaguchi will surely be in the Japanese national team, ahead of the FIFA international break scheduled for the final weeks of March. The opponents aren't confirmed yet (all signs point to Ukraine and Argentina), and organizing is always complicated with the World Cup so close on the calendar.
