Japanese show to televise live from Oregon hotel

[Bucky]

The ghosts at Oregon's Geiser Grand Hotel are going live.

A popular Japanese television show highlighting the supernatural will broadcast live on New Year's Eve from the restored 1889 hotel in the historic Old West town of Baker City, Ore.

That's live for Japan, that is: The broadcast begins Wednesday evening and concludes at 6 a.m. Thursday.

So will the ghosts that visitors have gossiped about for years, such as the Lady in Blue, make an appearance?

"I wish so," Takayoshi Nakayama, director of the television show "Unbelievable," said through a translator. "Other than news and sports, this type of live broadcasting is extremely rare in Japan."

The broadcast is the first time the show is taping live at the Geiser Grand Hotel, but overall it is Nakayama's third visit. Twelve years ago, he was convinced he took a spirit home from the hotel in his suitcase after his toddler son spent days chatting with it.

The last taped broadcast, in October, drew 25 million viewers on television and more than 400 million hits on Yahoo, Nakayama said, much of it likely from viewers in Korea and China.

"Unbelievable" is one of the highest-rated television shows in Japan, with more than 15 million viewers each episode. Broadcast by the Fuji Television Network, the show is entering its 11th season.

Baker City is relatively remote.

[Greji]

Baker City[/URL] is relatively remote.

"....."That is why the Japanese audience is so impressed and interested in it," he said....."

Of course the fact that Oregon has always claimed Fast Frank Matsuoka as one of its own, has never hurt J-interest in the place. Even though Frankie Boy was a U of Org lawyer, he developed an especially mean anti-US stance in the late part of his career, even after he helped developed and signed the Tripartite Pact.

After the war a great interest has developed into Oregon, a lot of which I think is an unannounced interest in Frankie, whose falling out with Prince Konoye and his own death before his war crimes trial, left Frankie free of a lot of blame for the war and Policies of Japan at that time.

A natural hero for the currently love starved otaku in their search for a fifth season...