Fall 2004 J TV notes/observations
I had a ton of stuff when I came back from Japan and I couldn’t be bothered to sort through it all immediately after I got back. I opted to box it up and would go through it later. I’ve started to go through some of now and I thought I would post some my notes/observations I made when I was there last fall…most in this batch are ones I took while watching Japanese TV.
• When going through a good sized bookstore in Shibuya (inside the famed Q Front building), I was looking through the small foreign books section (i.e., books in English). I was amused to see that among their canon of western lit they had the novelization of the film “Garfield”.
• Shortly after I arrived in Tokyo, a family was murdered in their home in the countryside. By the next day, one of the TV stations had developed a 3D computer generated walk-though of the house, showing where the mother and children were murdered and in what order they though the killings were done. The bodies were color coded red for female victims and blue for male victims. This color convention is used frequently in media reports. While this type of event is somewhat unusual for Japan (although they’ve had their share of spree killings), what I found interesting was how the media handled it. It was a big story for three days and then it completely fell off the face of the earth. While killings are not rare (although much less frequent than in the US), usually there is some clear reason for it (lover spat, bad business dealings, gang wars, ect). In this case, there was no clear reason for an entire family to be slaughtered in their home in the middle of the night and the press stopped covering it after three days.
• In a showcase for Japanese “team” mentality, I found an Asahi Super Dry beer TV commercial interesting. It shows a mid twenties Japanese guy of average J size playing basketball at a semi-pro level (judging by the crowds and uniforms). He’s clearly smaller than the other guys on his team and his opponents, many of who look to be foreigners. But while he’s smaller in size, he has a big heart and the commercial shows him working out and practicing hard for the big game. Then it is the big game and he gets the ball and he’s making his move down the court (music soaring now) and he PASSES the ball to a team mate who makes the dunk. Yeah, coach, there is no ‘I‘ in team.
Little known facts I learned watching J TV
• You can fend off a charging wild bore by opening an umbrella in front yourself.
• When trying to find a wild hive of hornets that are bothering people, Japanese hornet exterminators will capture hornets in the area where the problem is and tie small rags to hornets and then release them. They follow the now slow moving hornets (which they can see because of the rag) on foot or bike to the wild hive.
• There are over 14,000 restaurants in the Minato-ku ward of Tokyo. Minato is one of the 23 Ku that make up the Tokyo Metropolitan area. I believe that Ku are similar to a borough in NYC, although the Federal/State/local divisions in Japan are much different in scope and structure of those in the US.
• There is a man by the name of Gorie, who dresses like a female cheerleader and sings a J version of Toni Basil’s “Mickey. http://www.fujitv.co.jp/onenight/g_cd.html
• In response to a typhoon bearing down on Tokyo, TV news crews went out on the street to talk to people to see what they were doing in response to it. One women, leaving Shibuya, remarked, according to the English translators on the SAP channel, “I decided to give up on drinking this evening due to the storm.”
• There is a product in Japan called “Chatty Parrot”, which is a hand held device that combines optical character recognition with English-Japanese dictionary and onboard speech synthesizer. So a Japanese person could use the Chatty Parrot by running it over a word or phase in an English document/book/catalogue and then look at the LCD on the Chatty Parrot to see the word defined in Japanese. Press another button and it will say the word in English.
• There is a weekly TV show that focuses only on new pachinko machines. The cast of the show sits down and actually play the machines on camera in a real pachinko parlor to see all the features and what happens when various jackpots are reached. Video screens have been added to Pachinko machines, so there are many options and events that can happen when you get your ball in a flower. Imagine a TV show that showed off new pinball machines and had people actually locking up balls for multi-ball, and then getting the multi-ball and showing what it took to get the multi-ball jackpot. That is the level of detail this show was going to.
• When going through a good sized bookstore in Shibuya (inside the famed Q Front building), I was looking through the small foreign books section (i.e., books in English). I was amused to see that among their canon of western lit they had the novelization of the film “Garfield”.
• Shortly after I arrived in Tokyo, a family was murdered in their home in the countryside. By the next day, one of the TV stations had developed a 3D computer generated walk-though of the house, showing where the mother and children were murdered and in what order they though the killings were done. The bodies were color coded red for female victims and blue for male victims. This color convention is used frequently in media reports. While this type of event is somewhat unusual for Japan (although they’ve had their share of spree killings), what I found interesting was how the media handled it. It was a big story for three days and then it completely fell off the face of the earth. While killings are not rare (although much less frequent than in the US), usually there is some clear reason for it (lover spat, bad business dealings, gang wars, ect). In this case, there was no clear reason for an entire family to be slaughtered in their home in the middle of the night and the press stopped covering it after three days.
• In a showcase for Japanese “team” mentality, I found an Asahi Super Dry beer TV commercial interesting. It shows a mid twenties Japanese guy of average J size playing basketball at a semi-pro level (judging by the crowds and uniforms). He’s clearly smaller than the other guys on his team and his opponents, many of who look to be foreigners. But while he’s smaller in size, he has a big heart and the commercial shows him working out and practicing hard for the big game. Then it is the big game and he gets the ball and he’s making his move down the court (music soaring now) and he PASSES the ball to a team mate who makes the dunk. Yeah, coach, there is no ‘I‘ in team.
Little known facts I learned watching J TV
• You can fend off a charging wild bore by opening an umbrella in front yourself.
• When trying to find a wild hive of hornets that are bothering people, Japanese hornet exterminators will capture hornets in the area where the problem is and tie small rags to hornets and then release them. They follow the now slow moving hornets (which they can see because of the rag) on foot or bike to the wild hive.
• There are over 14,000 restaurants in the Minato-ku ward of Tokyo. Minato is one of the 23 Ku that make up the Tokyo Metropolitan area. I believe that Ku are similar to a borough in NYC, although the Federal/State/local divisions in Japan are much different in scope and structure of those in the US.
• There is a man by the name of Gorie, who dresses like a female cheerleader and sings a J version of Toni Basil’s “Mickey. http://www.fujitv.co.jp/onenight/g_cd.html
• In response to a typhoon bearing down on Tokyo, TV news crews went out on the street to talk to people to see what they were doing in response to it. One women, leaving Shibuya, remarked, according to the English translators on the SAP channel, “I decided to give up on drinking this evening due to the storm.”
• There is a product in Japan called “Chatty Parrot”, which is a hand held device that combines optical character recognition with English-Japanese dictionary and onboard speech synthesizer. So a Japanese person could use the Chatty Parrot by running it over a word or phase in an English document/book/catalogue and then look at the LCD on the Chatty Parrot to see the word defined in Japanese. Press another button and it will say the word in English.
• There is a weekly TV show that focuses only on new pachinko machines. The cast of the show sits down and actually play the machines on camera in a real pachinko parlor to see all the features and what happens when various jackpots are reached. Video screens have been added to Pachinko machines, so there are many options and events that can happen when you get your ball in a flower. Imagine a TV show that showed off new pinball machines and had people actually locking up balls for multi-ball, and then getting the multi-ball and showing what it took to get the multi-ball jackpot. That is the level of detail this show was going to.
posted by O.G. at 12:21 PM
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