Japanese Ski Resort Prank

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http://www.filecabi.net/video/japspaprank.html

If this is real, this is one of the funniest and most elaborate pranks I've ever seen.

It takes place in the men's locker room at a ski resort (I assume it's a locker room because a lot of the guys in there are naked or just wearing towels). There is a so-called massage chair (I think that's what it's claimed to be; it's all in Japanese and there are no subtitles). The user enters a coin and sits back as the chair counts back from 10 to when the massage will supposedly start. When the timer reaches zero, however, the chair flips over backwards secret-passage style and dumps the naked person outside of the building, then the chair returns to its previous position which essentially traps the naked man outside in the snow in the middle of a crowded ski run.

Alright, that's feasible. I don't think you could get away with it in the US, but from what I've seen on Japanese TV it would go over alright in Japan. They do it to three or four guys then they move on to their next prank, which is the one I'm not quite sure is real or staged.

It's similar to the first prank, but this time as the timer nears zero the chair rotates around and the wall opens up. Right at zero, some sort of propulsion device ignites on the back of the chair and it then proceeds to be jetted across the ski slope with the naked victim holding on for dear life while skiers on the slope look on.

It looks real enough, but I'm just wondering if something like that would really be done to an unsuspecting victim or whether these might be willing participants who are just playing the part of an unsuspecting victim. Also, the inherent risks of a chair being jettisoned across a ski slope seem like they might be too much for people not to be in on it.

Either way, though, this is still one of the funniest things I've ever seen.

[Barns & No Bull]

I read about this particular clip on another site that suggested it comes from a source that regularly stages pseudo-pranks. The actors already know what's coming. The last guy riding the rocket chair really appears to be acting.

I do think it's funny.

[Richard W]

They would have to know what's coming - even the first prank could easily kill you if you were a random member of the public that wasn't expecting it. They're being dumped backwards onto their heads, after all... In the one where the little boy gets up to give the man a drink as he's sitting in the chair, if that had happened at the wrong moment and he'd not been standing back, then the chair flipping would have caught him under the chin. And in the second clip with the chair going down the slope, when it crashes it almost falls on the rider and crushes him.

I know Japanese shows have different attitudes to safety, but surely they wouldn't do anything that dangerous to unsuspecting victims...