A popular sub-genre of reality TV is the home-improvement show, and as with many things having to do with television, Japan did it first.

On TV Asahi's "The Before and After," which launched as a weekly series in 2002, superannuated, usually cramped properties are magically transformed into marvels of modern design. The producers hit on a foolproof hook for the show that they exploited successfully for years (the show continues to this day, though reduced to semiannual specials) without getting redundant.

People with houses they want to fix up contact the producers, who then sift through candidates looking for the most broken-down or unusual cases. The best installments highlight homes that would seem impossible to renovate due to their environment or state of disrepair. A surefire hit would be a hovel located in a warren-like urban residential area dating from just after the war, when neighborhoods were developed on the fly. These require not just inventive construction skills, but also superhuman feats of planning, since narrow alleys or streets leaves little room to get heavy machinery to the property.