SMAP leader Masahiro Nakai hosts a late-night talk show, "Nakai no Mado" ("Nakai's Window"; Nippon TV, Wed., 12:13 a.m.), that attempts to get more candid with both the questions and the answers. The point is to reveal the "true face" of his celebrity guests.
This week, the theme is geino puro, or the "show business production companies" that rule these TV personalities' lives. All the guests, who include comedian Teruyuki Tsuchida and former Morning Musume member Yuko Nakazawa, provide the lowdown on their employers. They even talk about how much money they're cheated out of. One tells of how 80 percent of his colleagues are young women who never seem to work, while another says that her workplace always "smells like barbecued beef." A few admit that "anyone could get a job at my company," and all complain that they have dishonest personal managers. Even Nakai gets into the spirit of things and spills the beans on Johnny & Associates.
This week, on the "social" variety show "Takeshi no Nippon Mikata" ("Takeshi's Way of Seeing Japan"; TV Tokyo, Fri., 10 p.m.), king of all media "Beat" Takeshi Kitano discusses the sensitive topic of internationalization, and how Japan can no longer do without its foreign residents, if, in fact, it ever could. There is such an acute shortage of medical personnel in Japan that the health of the population would be greatly at risk if all the foreign-born doctors and nurses had to leave tomorrow. Also, cameras go into public-housing complexes, where up to 30 percent of the residents are non-Japanese.