Happiness is...

My mom had a Peanuts book called, I think, "Happiness is..."  Each page featured a Peanuts character and something which equated to happiness for them.  For example, under Linus was a caption that read something like, "Happiness is a warm security blanket."  I believe the goal was to crack jokes in that dry-humor-kids-acting-like-adults-but-not-like-south-park manner that Peanuts has while giving the reader a warm, fuzzy feeling inside.

I had an entry to add to that book today.

Happiness is ... a new episode of ピタゴラスイッチ (Pitagora Suicchi/Pythagoras Switch) after a long day.

Yes, Pitagora Switch.  The Japanese Sesame Street-type show to help kids learn, think, and read.  It's an amazing show, really.  All the Japanese is pretty basic, so even I, having had no formal Japanese language classes, can understand a lot of it.  The show begins usually with a short vignette featuring two penguin children, a large old-man talking book, a mouse in a small car, and a dog that's actually a television.  (If you're not interested by THAT sentence, I don't know WHAT it'll take.)  The kids have a problem, the book explains a bit, the mouse helps out, and then the TV dog comes in to show a video clip which helps drive the point home.  But this segment doesn't just teach kids the alphabet or to eat their veggies.  No, it often teaches them critical thinking skills.  For instance, the topic in the episode I watched today was how to figure things out about unseen things.  I mean, whoah!  The penguins had a hole in their beach ball, so the book showed them how to find the hole using a bucket of water, since they couldn't actually SEE the hole.  Then the video showed other examples of how things can be deduced about objects even when you can't see any evidence.  I mean!  This is a KID'S show!  For like preschoolers!  Amazing!

Next up today was "Otousan Suicchi" or "Father Switch" where a kid makes a remote control for their father out of a shoebox and a straw, puts 5 buttons on it, and puts a hiragana character on each of those buttons.  When they press the button, the father has to act out a word that starts with that character.  For a language that has an "alphabet" of 40-some characters (arranged in rows of 5, btw), this is BRILLIANT.  And it's something the viewers can do themselves and play with THEIR dads!  Also brilliant.

Then they usually have a fun animation-style segment.  This week was "Juppon Anime" or, roughly translated, "10-stick Cartoon."  These are simple little animations which, I think, are just fun.  One could probably argue that these segments teach some sort of spacial/shape recognition (the sticks combine to form other things, and similar things happen with the other segments here), but I think a large part of it is just a fun, cute animation section.

The last part again is amazing!  It's either the "Algorithm March" or the "Algorithm Exercise."  Either way, it's actually exercises that are meant to get kids watching this show in front of their televisions to get up and move around!  You don't see Sesame Street do THAT.

But perhaps the best part from purely an entertainment perspective are the Rune Goldberg devices that go between the sketches.  These devices (called "Pythagoras Switches" in Japan - hence the name of the show) are elaborate, intricate, and brilliantly executed.  If you've never seen these in action, it is a sight to behold.  And none of it is computer-generated.  Someone actually took the time to set it up in real life - and that's just darn impressive.

All in all, the show runs about 15 mins without commercials, and is just fantastic for a Japanese preschooler or the beginner student of Japanese who wants to do a bit of listening practice and have good, clean fun while doing so.