NSTAAF International Factball: Greece v Japan

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Hello, and welcome to another episode of the No Such Thing as a Fish International Fact Ball.

Brought to you by the QI Elves and visitengland.com.

Today I'm joined by John Mitchenson.

Hello.

Molly Oldfield and James Harkin.

My name's Anna Tashinski and today we'll be pitting Greece against Japan to find out which is the most quite interesting country.

Let's kick off with Greece.

Oh, I've got a good fact about Greece.

Go on.

Nobody knows how many islands there are.

The estimates are between 1,400 and 6,000.

Wow.

But there are only 227 are inhabited, so that's like one in 26 if you go for the higher estimate.

That means there's a load of Greek islands up for grapes.

Yeah.

You're saying we could claim them as our own?

Well, why not?

So during austerity last year, which was obviously a tough time for the Greek, a TV programme was cancelled live on air, which I would urge you to look up.

It's pretty awkward.

I can't tell what they're saying because I'm not fluent Greek, but it looks like a news programme and people just walk on at the end of it and like pack up all their stuff around them.

It's kind of sad.

Wow.

Lions used to live in Europe and the last place they were before they died out was in Greece.

Really?

Yeah.

What happened was they were hunted to extinction because they needed them for the gladiator fights and eventually they died out because of that.

But yeah, lions on Greece.

Really, until when?

That was until around 1 AD.

Oh, okay, a while ago.

Yeah.

It's not like there are probably some still roaming around out there.

Unfound.

Could be on one of the uncounted 4,000 islands, you know.

So do you know what the Greeks call themselves?

They don't call themselves Greeks.

Hellenics?

Well, yeah, it's the Hellenic Republic.

But I was quite interested to discover that every single European country, except for one, calls them some version of Greece.

So it's, you know, Grecia in Italian or Grecia in Spanish.

But there's one country

in Europe that calls them Hellas, and that's, weirdly, Norwegian.

Really?

Yeah.

Random.

That's weird that the Hellas.

And do you know what the Turks call them?

This is even more interesting.

Yunanistan.

Yunnan is the Persian for Greece because the bit of Greece that used to be in Asia Minor called Ionia,

which they were all kicked out of in the early 20th century, that's how they got the name.

But Yunanistan, it's weird.

The Greeks don't like Macedonia, do they?

They don't like them taking that name

because they think that Macedonia is actually in Greece.

And there is a Macedonia in Greece.

And then there's a bit of Bulgaria that's also called Macedonia.

And they're all trying to claim Macedonia because they all want to be the place where Philip is.

By just calling themselves Macedonia.

Like if I, living in the village of Chislehampton, called it Rome, I could tell people that I lived in Rome.

And that works.

All roads lead to Chiselhampton.

Chiselhampton.

Chiselhampton.

That's brilliant.

So the Greek flag is blue, right?

Blue and white.

Blue and white.

So what do we know about the Greeks and blue?

They had no word for it.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, ancient.

It's kind of weird.

It must be difficult for Greek commentators.

You see our beautiful flag over there that is white and that other thing, that's strange.

I think it speaks for itself.

Well, Homer called the sea bronze, didn't he?

Yeah, he did.

The idea is that Homeric colours were more like intensities of light and shade rather than actual colours.

So Aristotle said there were seven shades of colour, all of which derived from black and white.

How many shades of grey did he see?

I don't know, but I know you've got a good fact about shades of grey.

That wasn't a deliberate shoehog, but yeah, I went on the Pantone website to see how many shades of grey they sell, and they sell 104 shades of grey.

Brilliant.

Nice.

Between 1920 and 1983, leprosy was specified in Greek law as grounds for divorce.

Well, that's fair enough, really.

I mean,

I would use that as a grounds for divorce.

Would you not?

I guess you could leave a little something of yourself behind with your loved one.

Or maybe if your ring finger fell off.

It's not my fault.

About 10% of people worldwide have got something called Greek foot.

Do you think any of you have it?

What's that?

It's when your second toe is longer than your big toe, and it was a really idealised form in Greek sculpture.

And actually, the Statue of Liberty has got Greek feet.

Wow.

Wow, I have that.

I have it.

You have Greek feet.

Yeah, definitely.

Second toe longer.

Cool.

It's gone down very well in ancient Greece.

Yeah, my sixth toe is the longest.

Is that normal?

You're afraid.

Join a circus.

Speaking of Greek statues, so we always imagine them.

I guess we we always see them in that grey colour, but they were really colourful.

So they've done lots of colour sampling now.

We've got modern technology which can tell us what colour Greek statues were and what colour the Parthenon was.

And they used like really bright primary colours.

In the Parthenon, they found a really bright blue.

I think it's called Egyptian blue.

Although they would have just called it Egyptian, that colour that is quite sort of bright.

Tourism in Greece is huge.

Twenty million visitors a year.

One in six of those visitors are British.

We, I think, are the biggest single kind of tourist body in Greece, which is interesting.

Closely followed, of course, by the Germans.

Yeah.

We're usually closely following them to the sun lounges.

So weirdly, the Greeks didn't have pockets in their clothes.

So apparently when they went shopping, they used to carry small change in their mouth.

This is the ancient Greeks, right?

Yeah, yeah.

How did they ask for things?

And they will all fall out.

Do you think that's why

when you die in Greece, you'd put a coin in the mouth of the dead person, do you?

Yeah, exactly.

Speaking of death, Greece is the only European country without a crematorium.

Really?

Do they just bury them?

I think the Greek Orthodox don't agree with that

kind of thing.

Yeah, that makes sense.

There are two Greek Orthodox churches on the island of Chios and every Easter they fire rockets at each other.

Oh yeah, I've read about this.

80,000 rockets are fired

on the evening of Easter.

Yeah, it's a brilliant thing to see these things, but until 1889 they used real cannons.

And now they just use home fireworks, which is probably just as dangerous in a way.

Yeah, you're right.

I actually read some ancient Greek jokes.

So, just going to round off on a really, really bad ancient Greek joke.

So, wanting to train his donkey not to eat, an idiot stopped giving him any food.

When the donkey died of starvation, the man said, What a loss.

Just when he'd learned not to eat, he died.

Well, Mitch likes that one.

I'm chuckling.

I thought it was quite good.

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So that's the halftime whistle, I think.

Well, now it's time for our visitengland.com quiz about England.

And I think each of my three fellow panelists have brought a question about England.

Let's start off with James.

What's your question?

My question is relating to the town of my birth, Bolton.

When Icelandic footballer Goodney Bergson left Bolton, what did he say he would miss the most?

Was it you?

Oh, no.

No, that didn't seem plausible.

Okay, that's James's question.

Molly, what's yours?

My question is, what did Harold Godwinson have tattooed on his chest?

Was it my name?

Unfortunately, not.

No, it seemed unlikely as well.

Mitch.

My question is: Rugby School, where the game of rugby union was invented, had, as it's part of its first official kit, an item of formal wear.

What was it?

Hmm.

Interesting.

Intriguing.

Okay, thanks, guys.

And if any of you listeners want to hear the answers to those questions, you're going to have to listen to the rest of the podcast because that's when we're going to reveal them.

Or you can fast forward to the end.

So.

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Oh, I think that's the whistle to kick off with the second half and we're gonna go with Japan.

Anything interesting about Japan, anyone?

Well, the Japanese at least do know how many islands they have.

There are 6,852 islands, although only four make up 97% of the whole land area of Japan.

And more than 80% of Japan is forest.

Do you guys know what Inamuri is?

No.

So it's a positive thing, and it literally means sleeping whilst present, and it's sleeping on the job.

And it's sort of as a good thing in Japan because it's symptomatic of like a really hard worker.

And the Prime Minister's been seen doing it.

People have faked it so that their bosses think they're working really hard.

So it's, you know, it's really always a great thing to do.

That probably explains why Dan's been asleep all the way through this podcast.

The average Japanese person gets two hours less sleep per night than the average Chinese person.

Pretty good.

What about during the day?

They catch up then.

Yeah, I guess they do, yeah.

Nintendo translates to English as leave luck to heaven, and Canon used to be called Huanon after a Buddhist goddess.

Oh, really?

Oh, that's quite good.

Right, so Canon's a good example of this thing they do in Japan, which means that 98% of their adoptions men in their 20s and 30s.

Really?

Yeah, because so there's a strong history of family businesses that pass down through the family.

But the Japanese worked out in the 16th century, I think, or the 17th century, that if you pass it down through the bloodline, often your son's a bit crap and ruins the business.

So rather than just say we're going to stop passing through the bloodline, they now adopt people.

So like examples of this are Canon, Toyota, Suzuki.

And in almost every generation, rather than handing down the business to their son, they adopt a 20 or 30 something guy to take it over, and it's much more successful than companies that don't do it.

That is a nice idea, but I imagine the real son must get really annoyed.

Oh, there must be so many resentful sons in Japan.

And venge killings.

Well,

I'm not blaming anyone.

I've said about Greece how leprosy was grounds for divorce.

Well, in the early 20th century, left-handedness in a wife was sufficient to divorce her.

Fair.

Unfair.

They love vending machines in Japan.

There's one vending machine for every 23 people.

You find them everywhere, and you can get pretty much anything from pot plants and live lobsters to, well, sexual lubricants, that kind of thing.

I love the idea of a vending machine for a live lobster.

That's just a brilliant idea.

For dinner, or?

Well, I guess.

I mean, I don't suppose there's a pet.

Gérald de Nerval.

He had a pet one that he used to take out.

They can live for a week out of water.

I'm not sure they love doing it, but they can, as long as they're moist.

But

there's a machine at the summit of Mount Fuji, a vending machine at the summit of Mount Fuji.

What does it sell?

Coffee in a can or picari sweat.

What is Picari sweat?

Pekari sweat is a soft drink.

Is it salty?

I don't know that it is particularly salty.

It's just been advertised on the moon.

It's the first piece of advertising to have happened on the moon.

They sent a can of Picari sweat up there as a PR campaign, and now that's where it is.

Here's a fact for you, just out of the blue.

The Mariko Aoki phenomenon is a phenomenon consisting of the urge to defecate while visiting a bookstore.

Originating in Japan, it is named for the woman who first publicized such an urge.

That is getting your name to live on in history, isn't it?

Did she publicize it by acting it out?

I think she just wrote about it.

Okay.

I didn't know this was a phenomenon.

It's never occurred to me, but has it?

Have you felt that sensation?

No.

Yes.

Yes, I have.

But I used to work in a bookstore.

So I felt almost everything, almost every known human emotion I have at some point felt in a bookstore.

Maybe I'll just switch these microphones off.

Speaking of emotion, there's something called Paris syndrome, which is when about a dozen or so Japanese people a year have to be repatriated after they go to Paris and they think, oh my goodness, this place is not what I imagined.

People are mean to them.

It's really noisy and polluted and they just totally freak out.

Oh really?

Adult nappies outsell baby nappies in Japan.

Do they?

Oh yeah they do.

Don't they wear them on the train to go home?

Like on the holidays there's like so many people traveling on the train that nobody can use the loot so they wear nappies to go home.

Maybe.

They certainly wear them in bookshops.

Indeed they do.

Tintin in

Japanese is tantan because tintin means penis in Japanese.

So they just thought they ought to.

It's not not a great name for a character.

It's not ideal.

Oh, so they have an annual penis festival in Japan.

It's called Festival of the Steel Phallus.

And it's in Kanemara.

It's the first Sunday of every April.

And there's a legend behind it saying there's a demon who invaded a woman's vagina and bit off any penises coming her way until a blacksmith forged a steel phallus that defeated the demon.

And if you Google the photos, it's pretty mental.

There's just giant pink wheelies everywhere.

I think I'd rather not.

I also like the idea of

any penis coming her way.

It's just like they're just walking down the street and they see her, oh I just go and check.

We should wrap up on that.

I think I just heard the full-time whistle, in fact.

Nope, there it is.

There it is.

Yeah.

And that's the end of the match.

So before we reveal who won, it's time to tell you the answers to our visitengland.com quiz.

So James, what was your question and the answer to it?

My question was relating to Icelandic footballer Goodney Bergson and what did he miss most about Bolton when he left?

Well, he missed the good old Bolton drizzle.

Why wouldn't you?

He just liked this

very fine rain we get in Bolton that they don't get in Iceland.

Okay,

thanks for that.

Molly, what was your question?

My question was, what did Harold Godwinson have tattooed on his chest?

According to William of Poitiers, he had Edith, which was his wife's name, and England tattooed on his chest.

And it came in handy when he lost at the Battle of Hastings because that's how Edith identified his body.

Mitch, what was your question?

My question was, which bit of the original rugby school rugby union kit was a piece of formal wear?

And the answer was they had a bow tie, which is kind of fantastic.

You can imagine.

Yeah, you can imagine it now, sort of round the thick neck of

the England front row.

Okay, so there are all the answers.

Of course, you didn't get to win any prizes, even if you knew all the answers, but you can win a prize if you go to visitengland.com, where you'll have the chance to enter a ballot and win some marvellous QI goodies.

And if you would like to confront any of these guys about their questions and answers, you can get James on

and you can get me on elves at QI.com.

But here's for the grand finale, the climax of the whole event.

Who's going to be the winner of this match?

And someone's going to pick a random.

And I think it's going to be Mitch.

Who do you think should win?

James?

No!

Oh, which country?

Oh, I see.

Of the game.

That's designed.

I understand.

Two teams.

I think absolutely Greece without a shadow of a doubt.

Greece without a shadow of a doubt.

There we go.

There you go.

That's the answer.

Thanks a lot for listening, guys, and tune in tomorrow when it's going to be.

It's going to be a triple threat match between Iran, Argentina, and Ecuador.

Okay, so join us with that three-way tomorrow.

See you then.

Bye.

Bye.

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