A quick mental exercise: look at your hands and locate the tips, the last knuckle length on each finger. See that quarter inch or so, the very edge of your fingertips? Now, imagine you had to suspend yourself from a metal ledge on which you could only fit that much of your hands. Not only that, imagine you had to traverse this ledge, hand over hand, for a distance of over twenty feet, with the ledges' height and angle changing at different parts of the run. Do you have that image, that feeling in your mind, how absolutely impossible that feat of strength and skill seems? Good, because that's exactly what the contestants of Ninja Warrior have to do to win. Of course, that's only one stepping stone out of the nearly 25 obstacles and four stages the competitors face.

Ninja Warrior, or SASUKE as it is known in Japan, is a sports entertainment special best described as the ultimate obstacle course challenge. The goal is very simple: beat the clock through four stages of increasingly difficult challenges, all the while managing to stave off exhaustion and avoid falling into the swampy water far below. Of course, these aren't just any ordinary obstacles. They require the utmost pinnacle of human strength, skill, and endurance. Many competitors fail not because they run out of time or lose thier balance, but because they simply didn't have the strength to continue. Including the above mentioned 'Cliff Hanger' obstacle, everything imaginable is thrown at the competitors, including rope climbs, trampolines, balance beams, chain swings, wall running, and curtain clinging.

Beginning in 1997, Ninja Warrior has been held bi-annually in Japan on the top of Mt. Midoriyama. Each competition (now up to its 19th) 100 competitors are selected and given the task of conquering the insanely difficult course. To give you an idea of how hard it is, to date, only two men have ever completed the entire thing, out of over 1,000 contestants. That's right, only two. And if no one completes the course for that year's competition, no one wins, a very interesting aspect that heightens the tension and thrill of victory even more. The contestants themselves are as diverse as the obstacles they face. They include all manner of athletes, from pros to amateurs, and trace all walks of life, from lawyers to firemen to dancers to fisherman. Even Olympic medal winners like the twins Paul and Morgan Hamm have made appearances on the show.

Though Ninja Warrior has only just recently arrived

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