Last week on comedian Sanma Akashiya's Nippon TV talk show, TV personality Chiaki, whose family is rich, betrayed envy for her less fortunate colleagues when she complained, "Poor people always have lots of interesting stories."
That's the premise of the series "Shiawase Bombi Garu" ("Happy Poor Girls"; Nippon TV, Tues., 7:56 p.m.). This week's three-hour special reports on a woman who came in third in a national beauty pageant but nevertheless lives in a 43-year-old Tokyo apartment with no bathroom that rents for only ¥28,000 a month. Then there's the woman who offsets the expense of living in pricey Kamakura by furnishing her home with nothing but items bought at ¥100 shops.
Breaking the show's gender divide, presenter Tatsuya Yamaguchi goes shopping at a discount supermarket in Iwate Prefecture and tries to prepare lunch for 10 staff members with only ¥2,000.