New Year’s is one of the few times Japanese sit down and watch sports as a family. Unfortunately, the most popular sport for this is Marathon Relay.

Also unfortunately, the networks insist on covering every minute live in real time. All five hours of it.

To the uninitiated, marathon relay (or ekiden) is a 100 km (63ish mile) long relay where five to seven runners run legs of various distances and pass of a sash that represents their team. During the new year holiday, there are two major ekidens, one of which happens over two days.

First is the New Year Ekiden, which takes place in Gunma on New Year’s Day and features teams representing different companies. We watched a bit this year because the company where She Who Must Be Obeyed works part time had a team running. (They stunk the place up and I’m not going to allow She Who Must Be Obeyed to work there anymore. Or, more specifically, I suggested they weren’t worth her awesomeness and she should find employment elsewhere.)

January 2nd and 3rd see the running of the Hakone Ekiden. This is the granddaddy of all ekidens and is run between 20 universities and a special team made up of representatives from the loser universities that didn’t make the top 20. Oddly, this team only runs for pride and experience as their time doesn’t count and they can’t win.

The Hakone ekiden starts in downtown Tokyo and finishes in the resort town of Hakone 108 or so kilometers away. The final leg (the fifth of five) is a mountain climb that breaks lots of runners. The winners of day one get a special prize and an early start on day two when five different runners run the relay back to Tokyo.

The race is somewhat controversial as only a certain number of foreign runners are allowed on each time and those runners aren’t allowed in the first and final legs so that cameras get to see a Japanese cross the finish line.

Despite the lack of any action (in defense of the sport, at least, unlike baseball, there is constant movement) the network deploys a shocking number of fixed and mobile cameras that put the audience in the middle of the race. If a runner stumbles, the network has cameras all over it and the announcer and color commentator begin shouting “Look! Look! Something actually happened! Something actually happened!” (Something like that.)

Today a runner barely managed to run the final few steps. He fell down several times but kept getting up until he finally staggered through the tape. It made for a great highlight reel, but not for a great television event.