TV party tonight!

Culture time:


Japanese TV, what is it?


It is not like American TV, that is for sure! The majority of the shows seem to be either like a game show or like an advertisement show (what are they called, on at two am in the states...oh, yeah, an infomercial; geez, how could I forget that?) with a liberal dose of the news sprinkled in, often every hour for a short bit. There are also a few dramas (translated soaps from Korea are supposed to be popular, but I really have no idea--I am still working on describing locations and asking where things are in Japanese). There is anime too, at 3am I am told; so if you want to stay up that late...


Let`s talk about the game show and advertisement show first. Here is a link to YouTube. Watch and return, please.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u171-byIUV4

Finished?

OK, what did you notice?


Yeah, it was like an infomercial. This was some super-high tech thing, but it could just have easily been for something common (a new rice cooker or coffee pot) or for a restaurant. However, unlike a regular infomercial, it is only a few minutes long. Some of the day talk shows have 2o minutes segments.

Did you notice there were two hosts at the egg dropping site outside the building? Very common. Back at the studio, there were probably a lot more. This is a morning show (did you notice the time and weather?), so there could be almost ten hosts. In addition to the lead or two leads there would be the headline news people, the sports, the weather and the gossip. In addition, there is the watching audience in the studio. Different from an audience in the states, these are a small select group of people who sit on the stage and are shown in a small box on the screen watching the same thing that you are. They tend to laugh when you laugh and cry when you cry. We western gaijin joke about how this is part of the Japanese way to never be alone.

How many people are on Today or Good Morning America?

One thing they do here that really strikes me is the use of boards with headlines and pictures. They do not do this during the evening news, but on another shows, especially the morning shows, they use physical boards to show things for which we would use computers for in the states. Sometimes they will have stickers covering an area and then pull off the sticker to show some special information. Sometimes you can tell the information is merely the blown up photocopy of a newspaper. In sports, they often add stickers to add information, like denoting an MVP.

For a sample of a game show, check out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pc3zOSge9sY

Pretty hilarious, eh? They usually are pretty funny, even if you have no clue what is being said. A very important thing to know though is that these are not regular people off the street doing the contest. There is a whole profession of people who go from show to show as guests. They also are often on commercials. There is even a stable of foreigners who know Japanese and do these shows! These shows often have a regular studio audience watching, but not always.


One last sample:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YwoP0thR1k&mode=related&search=

I didn`t watch this one all the way through. I chose it because it has the all-important subtitles. So many shows have subtitles, even in the original Japanese. If a person is being interviewed, you can read his/her words on the screen 99% of the time. Well, you would if you could read Japanese! I have been frustrated a few times during the news when they are interviewing an English speaker and they not only dub what he/she is saying but also subtitle it in Japanese.

Just so you know, they do have regular infomercials too. I was up at 5:30am to go to Osaka Saturday and their was an infomercial about some weird vacuum thing. They had Japanese testimonials interspersed with footage from the states or Europe; those were probably from an infomercial! Yes, infomercials are terrible no matter where you live!