Kelly Osbourne: Turning Japanese
Kelly Osbourne has a new show on ITV2 in the UK called “Turning Japanese.” Apparently Kelly has always had a fascination with Japanese culture, and the program rather sadistically aims to test her love of Japan to the limit with a series of grueling challenges and weird jobs. In the first episode, she has to serve coffee and cake to geeks in an Akihabara “maid cafe”, work for a day in a sleazy love hotel (she describes the smell as if “someone came in a wet sock then put it in the microwave”), and learn to sword-fight with a samurai master. Although she’s hoping to become “more Japanese”, most of the bizarre tasks Kelly faces are beyond the realm of experience for most Japanese folks, let alone westerners in Japan. (Anyone had to deliver a foot-massage in a maid cafe, or sell dildos in a love hotel?) Well, at least she doesn’t have to teach English!
Kelly is a self confessed “spoiled brat who grew up in Buckinghamshire and Beverly Hills” and her incessant whining grows tiresome after a while, and makes you wish her dad was the star of the show instead. But at least she avoids the casual racism that you usually find in this kind of show, and it’s not as painful to watch as, say, Tom Green’s “Subway Monkey Hour” special. In next week’s show, Kelly learns how to be a nun, which is about as Japanese as it gets (?!)
