Japanese Wake Up to Rice, Soup and Us Crazy Americans

It’s breakfast time and all over Japan people are looking up from their rice and soup to watch a morning news show that might be called “Stupid American Tricks.”

The actual name of the increasingly popular program on the national Asahi TV network is “Daybreak.” But in tone and substance, it frequently resembles David Letterman’s “Stupid Pet Tricks”--with Americans providing the amusement.

The hourlong show features news clips, mainly provided by Cable News Network, about current doings in the United States.

Among the stories shown in recent weeks have been these slices of American life: a man in Louisiana who turned a room of his house into a shrine honoring a roll of toilet paper he stole from Graceland, the Elvis Presley museum in Memphis; a contest in Texas in which men reach into a basket of rattlesnakes to see who can pick up the most without being bitten; women in Florida arguing for their constitutional right to reveal bare buttocks on the beach; a “pierce boom” in California, where some teen-agers have pierced not only ears but also noses, navels, nipples, chins and fingers to wear jewelry.

After each news clip, the show’s two anchors, Katsuya Konishi and Mayumi Kawase, offer explanatory comments. After a report on U.S. women suffering permanent bone injuries due to overexercise, Kawase told the audience that Americans “have a need to be perfect.”

The two commentators work from a studio set similar to that on U.S. evening news shows. Except for short interludes devoted to the day’s top stories, weather and a daily golf lesson, “Daybreak” focuses on foreign news, most of it features about the United States.

Some of the stories are laudatory. “Daybreak” has reported on clever ideas that came out at an American inventors’ convention. A Japanese sports writer who visited the show after touring America was clearly impressed with the racial harmony he observed in big-league athletics.

Mainly, though, “Daybreak” is about strange American happenings, such as comedienne Roseanne Barr croaking the national anthem with her fingers in her ears.

“America is so interesting,” Konishi said. “I admit that in our editing process, we might pick stories that are unusual, just because that’s what interests us Japanese.”