Ninja Warrior!

Before I start today's post I need to mention that my favorite sno-cone place, Sno Beach, opened up from their winter close-down on March 1st, so on Sunday I had my first delicious, sugary, mmmmmmmm-good sno-cone of the year. These are the Best. Sno-Cones. Ever. I'm not kidding. And if you don't like them, I will fight you. Anyway, if you are ever in Austin, make sure you visit Sno Beach. I'm in a state of euphoria right now - mainly because I love iced treats so much...

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I mentioned the Turtles a while ago (and probably heard more about that post than any other post), and I've talked about them in the past, but I never really talk about why I like them.

Of course, that would take too long. Suffice it to say they were awesome. That said, who didn't love that they were ninjas. I love ninjas, ninjas, even if they be stealing my beer, my bucket or maybe even my coat.

Anyway, why do I love ninjas so much? I don't know. Probably because they do so much cool/ridiculous stuff and because of games like Ninja Gaiden (which you can play online here). On a side note, did anyone really ever beat that game? I spent hours and could get prtty far. Apparently somebody did, but I don't know them. Also, is Ryu from Ninja Gaiden the same guy from Street Fighter?

Anyway, I was watching tv with my non-wife roommate the other day and we stumbled across a Japanese show called Ninja Warrior. The show was subtitled (sadly, no MXC-style voiceovers). On this show, they make normal Japanese dudes perform feats that only ninjas could do. And by normal Japanese dudes I mean fairly athletic ninja looking dudes.

I watch about 10 minutes and similarly to MXC, when the dudes failed, they usually fell in some shallow pit of water. Only when they get up, they look disgraced.

Since I have zero-to-negative amounts of time for an attention span, I immediately went to my homeboys at the YouTube.com for more video of this show. And I found this one of Makoto Nagano, a 34-year old fisherman. It's a 9 minute video, but its worth watching every second.



I'm not sure how a fisherman gets on this show. More importantly, I'm not sure how you figure out that you can do some of this shit. How do you figure out that you can swing across a moat on a rope and then scale a wall from said rope. Furthermore, who has moats anymore? And, more importantly, if you have a moat/wall combo, why are you dumb enough to tie a rope across the moat? Nevermind, dumb question - Ninjas always have grappling hooks. I guess I should ask - where are you testing your grappling hook skills?

Finally, and this may be the most important question, is there a place where I can try some of this? I think someone needs to open a ninja training facility that's bascially just a big obsticle course. Then, everything else will fall into place - there's no need to educate people to ninja principles or other skills like bo-staff skills, nunchucking skills...

On second thought, maybe we need to include that stuff - lest all of our ninjas turn out like this: