Japanese Men Eager to Fly?

Many Japanese love American basketball superstars - Jordan, LeBron, Wade... hell, one - Kobe - is even named after a Japanese city (and a type of steak). The Japanese welcomed 24 nations to their homeland during the 2006 Basketball World Championships but reserved special love for the super-athletic American celebrities.

The amount of adulation doesn't differ much if you go across the sea to China or Korea, but China at least has its own NBA players to adulate. Japan, though, has only one former NBA player - Yuta Tabuse, whose official blog looks considerably better than his game.

In the video below, a couple of things are obvious:

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1) Japanese game show audiences relish mounting tension.

2) While I have never seen a Japanese player actually dunk, that doesn't mean there isn't some collective chip on the nation's ego summoning some of its bravest to venture a 30-foot, trampoline-fueled flight across a game show stage for a prize, yes, but - more importantly - validation that the Japanese people need not always look to America for basketball highlights.