Japanese TV

Oh, boy. Here we go.

I’ve been talking with my new Japanese friends and one of the things they keep telling me to do is watch more TV. As a kid, I was never told that. In order to be more fit in high school, I was also not told that. But in college in Japan, people suddenly want me to watch as much TV as I can in my spare time. I can see why: it would expose me to overhear real Japanese conversation without being creepy, it is available all the time, even when everyone else has gone to bed or is busy, there are pictures and video recordings to help me understand what is going on, and many Japanese shows now throw colorful and large subtitles at the bottoms of the screen for added emphasis on something funny or interesting. But I hardly watched TV in America and, besides, Japanese TV has some very strange topics that I don’t know the vocab for and it all goes so fast! But I have been giving it a try recently and here is some of that I’ve found.

Of course you have the news, but Japanese news is more colorful, trendy, and young than American news. The only problem? Japanese news reports are given in keigo, an honorific language in Japanese that gives us such humorous translations as “I meekly suggest that you honorably shut up before I humbly punch you in your great and wonderful face.” Don’t get me wrong, I love a good bout of keigo as much as the next foreign student, and it is much easier to hear than to use, but it is rather tiring, so I can only do it for a little while before I need to change the channel. Next are dramas! Every country has them, but Japanese dramas can be as typical as Days of Our Lives, as far-out and unbelievable as Star Treck, or as historically inaccurate as Memoirs of a Geisha (which is an entirely different rant). I like to watch dramas on my computer (with subtitles to help catch words I don’t know yet), but watching a drama on TV? I’m just not ready for that. Then, I thought that I’d be safe with a children’s program. They are cute and easy to understand, and one that I was watching tried to teach kids the difference between the trashcan and the toy box. It is a very important difference! However, my television is in the common room, and I’d get a lot of looks if that were all I watched.

I was finally saved when I realized that versatility of variety shows. Let me just say, they are varied! You can find anything on variety shows: art/history education, world travel, famous actors/singers/comedians, pranks, quizzes, stories, music, live performances, games, and fun acts. Also, no matter which variety show you pick, at least one other person on the floor will like it, too, and want to watch it with you. I usually stick with variety show with famous people I recognize or like (Johnny’s Entertainment members like Nikishido Ryo and Tegoshi Yuya, for instance). If none of those are on, I’ll pick one whose rules I can understand within the first 3 minutes. Usually, they all end in a batsu (punishment) for the loser or a prize for the person who gets the most points. All in all, very fun, but be careful because they get more strange and less understandable as you near the early morning hours. Then, somewhere in the TV broadcasting waves, something trips and everything turns back to news. Peculiar…