Japanese TV never fails to entertain. One show I’ve watched a few times is called TATExHOKO (meaning “shield vs. spear”), which pits the products of two different companies against each other in a dramatic battle to see which will prevail. For example, one episode included a company that boasted that their commercial adhesives were so good that there was nothing that wouldn’t stick to them. They did battle with a kani (crab) crane, a new type of small crane in Japan that has normal tractor treads but also four crab-like legs for walking, which enabled the crane to defeat the super-adhesive. In an episode I saw last week, Japan’s #1 drill maker Furukawa Rock Drill took on famed industrial materials manufacturer Nippon Tungsten in a head-to-head battle. Could Furukawa’s engineers create a drill that could drill a hole in the hardest metal Nippon Tungsten could create? It was a long drawn-out battle (complete with dramatic music and posing by engineers on each side of the battle), but in the end the drill failed in a spectacular melt-down as the special alloy proved stronger.
I for one salute our new “crab crane” overlords.
