TV Tokyo's New Year's Eve special is to watch a man eat

Tokyo

FORGET big and almost always disappointing parties, and that struggle to get home after midnight. In Japan, New Year's Eve is all about watching TV at home with your family, a reward after you've done your end-of-year deep clean.

Usually, Japanese families gather to watch the Year-end Song Festival on NHK, the public broadcaster, where popular singers are divided into teams - red for women, white for men - and battle it out, with the winner announced shortly before midnight. (More often than not, it's the men.) Some families switch channels to watch the This Is no Task for Kids! variety show in which comedians do stupid things and get punished for screwing up.